Q: Are we not artists?
Cover of a publication
for the Artworkers Union

About the graphics

Leaving art school
 Upon leaving art school in I was disillusioned about the nature of the art practice that was touted as the model to aspire to. Formalist abstraction 1970's style was de rigueur, it was dry, academic and disconnected from the reality. Fine Art graduates were expected to develop their work, find a studio, find an art dealer and hope for the occasional good review or magazine article. It was an agenda that failed to inspire me, I liked the idea of producing work that wasn't necessarily tailored as gallery work and had an certain amount of popular appeal.

A quick and dirty medium
 I had worked as a darkroom technician in screen printing factories and had been intrigued by the potential of photo-stencil techniques. The beauty of the process is its adaptability to low budgets and low tech studio environments, i.e. the use of cheap gelatine stencils and out of date or pilfered film, hand stretched screens, etc. The other nice thing is the democratic nature of the medium, the prints aren't precious objects and can be given away to anyone who likes them. Another bonus is the affordability of a screen print and I quickly found a print dealer who managed to sell my work on a regular basis.

Posters
 The medium is fast and prolific in output and is eminently suitable for do it yourself poster production. The 1970's was the heyday of poster art in Australia, a proliferation of live music venues and aspiring bands meant that pre-gentrified inner city Melbourne streets looked like an open air poster gallery and several of the universities ran screen printing workshops that could be accessed by the students or Union Arts for publicising events.

 Hardware Street Party was made to publicise a rooftop party at a studio in Hardware Street, Melbourne. This studio that I shared was not unlike many in the area, cheap, large warehouse spaces that artists used to occasionally host cultural events or parties. RMIT Union Nite was produced at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Union Press. Student unionism was compulsory and the the student unions played an important role in left wing politics before universities became money making learning factories. Some of these posters have turned up in unusual places, I spotted one pinned to the wall in the shared household featured in the Richard Lowenstein film 'Dogs in space' with Michael Hutchence, another image was used in the background of Kylie Minogue's video clip 'I could be so lucky' and yet another has ended up in the Performing Arts Museum collection of rock posters. MET Party was commissioned for a night club venue and Fringe Festival made for the first of what is now a well established annual alternative arts festival in Melbourne.

Graffiti
 The rationalisation of the 80's brought the exuberance of public art to an end (unless it had the corporate imprimatur). The Stencil Man (top right this page)was a reaction to this growing corporatisation. It was a quasi terrorist graffiti stencil used to hit any organisation that a small underground group of friends that we called BOZONE (a zone of bozos) decided were either an enemy or a friendly tag for those who weren't. One faded example still exists in South Melbourne and several were documented by well known photographer and graffiti connoisseur Rennie Ellis in one of his anthologies on graffiti.

Desktop publishing
 Within a year of buying my first computer around the mid 90's and learning desktop publishing I started work with the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria. I was responsible for the collectives' publicity which included the magazine Working Girl / Worker Boy, flyers, reports and web site as well as maintaining their computers.

Sadly because of belt tightening enlightened groups such as the Prostitutes Collective are unable to pay artists anymore and Australia's conservative coalition government has recently (march '05) mooted the abolition of compulsory student unionism. Alternative forms of expression happily refuse to go away, one positive example is great graffiti art in both freehand and stencil form becoming more prolific around Melbourne some of it actually endorsed by one inner city council.