Earthworks and Beyond

Abstract

During the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s posters played a significant role in promoting protests about the Vietnam war, the role of women, anti-nuclear power, gay and lesbian issues, Aboriginal land rights and environmental issues within Australian communities. The Earthworks Poster Collective was at the forefront of this dissent from mainstream culture and is considered highly influential for its legacy of iconic imagery as well as the paradigm approach that the collective offered for future socially concerned graphic design practices. This paper will examine the communal ethos of the Earthworks Poster Collective and will identify how this model was adapted by future Brisbane based groups, the Queensland Centre for Film and Drama Screen-printing workshop, Black Banana Poster Collective and Inkahoots to reflect changing social, political and economic circumstances. In particular the paper will examine how the Inkahoots group has managed to sustain a socially concerned practice within the environment of commercialisation and consumerism that is prevalent in contemporary graphic design.