Title

Posters Empowering Community: A Historical Snapshot of SA Poster Artmaking.

Venues

Kerry Packer Civic Gallery. (15 May 2017 – 31 May 2017)

Date

(2017)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (VIC). Posters, Prints

Web address

https://www.unisa.edu.au/connect/hawke-centre/eve…

Abstract

This timely exhibition of historical poster art will represent many social issues relevant from the early 1970s through to the 1990s in South Australia for the 2017 History Festival.

The exhibition will feature significant posters with social and political commentary produced in this era and represent a historical snapshot of Community Media Association (Co-Media) and Community Arts Network (CAN) and other organisations behind this important movement of politically motivated poster making. In an era before digital social media, the poster was used as a political tool to actively communicate information and debate to a mass audience.

The screen printing genre was a legitimate method of producing art highlighting the community’s social conscience and the posters are now a historical record of those times and highly sought after collectable items. The collection of nearly 200 posters produced or printed by Co-Media, CAN and other organisations since the early 1970s, were bequeathed to The Graham F Smith Peace Foundation on the closure of CAN in 2006. As a not-for-profit, non-funded organisation, The Peace Foundation has been supporting artists for over 25 years to represent social, Indigenous or environmental issues through art. The sale of these posters will assist the Peace Foundation to continue this valuable support.

[Kerry Packer Civic Gallery media, 2017].

Last Updated

13 Aug 2025