Cut Copy is a State Library exhibition of gig posters from Brisbane between 1977 and 1987. Besides being a decade apart, these dates are significant for the city’s artistic culture – in 1977 punk bands like Brisbane's own Saints inspired a wave of DIY music around the world, and 1987 being the end of Joh Bjelke-Peterson’s reign as Queensland premier. Joh’s presence looms over the exhibition – one gig poster describes a gig happening “behind the banana curtain”, another “behind the peanut curtain”.
Like the samizdat literature artists in the communist world were circulating at the time, the gig posters on display are crudely home-made on photocopiers and silk screens, and cloak their subversive messages in band names and satirical images.
As artist Gary Warner is quoted as saying, "there was political as well as creative intent… the posters were contributing to the subcultural resistance against an anachronistically oppressive police state normativity."
The hardcore music nerd might find a few things of interest here. Brisbane’s bards the Go-Betweens feature mostly low on the bill, including a few times supporting several of their future members in Zero. The 31st and The End are listed together for a couple of shows, until members of the two bands relocate to Sydney and return on another poster as Died Pretty. Intriguing venue names like The Curry Shop and 279 Club mix with curiousities like Razar playing the Lang Park Rugby League Club.
But it would also definitely be possible to come into this exhibition knowing nothing about the bands (most of whom have not been very well preserved by history) and still get something out of it. The interesting usage of cheap and primitive materials; the anything goes mentality of making ephemeral art that is likely to end up in the bin a week after you create it; and the influence of avant garde art movements (dada, futurism and french new wave cinema are all referenced) on this basic artform in a cultural backwater town.
There’s something very inspiring about the DIY spirit of it all. Bands were formed, venues found, posters hand printed and then presumably hand pasted up around a famously conservative and repressive city. These posters’ existence is testament to the resilient creativity that will germinate in the cracks of even the greyest concrete.
Mixed with that inspiration though is a bit of longing, maybe even jealousy, for a time when going to a gig at Indooroopilly RSL, or for that matter coming across a brightly coloured poster in the streets, could potentially change your life.
In Joh Bjelke-Peterson’s Queensland, DIY culture was a radical act – a message to all that we don’t have to settle for the norm or run off to somewhere better – we can shape our own reality.
Today, as we are bombarded by the stimulus overload of handheld devices, ubiquitous advertising and the endless production of home-made culture, it sometimes seems the most radical act is to not add to the overwhelming labyrinth of content and give everyone a break.
That might be going a bit far, but it’s nice to look at these posters and reflect on what makes valuable art. It’s not necessarily commercial or critical success (which few of these bands or artists ever got), or technical brilliance (which is not quite how you would describe most of these posters). It is factors like how your art speaks to power and gives voice to the injustices of the world. Whether it can bring individuals into a community and give them the ability to achieve things they couldn’t have on their own. Whether your art sparks a light in others to create something of value themselves.
As the era represented in this exhibition came to an end, Brisbane and Queensland were changing. In 1987 Joh Bjelke-Peterson was dumped as leader by the Nationals and the Fitzgerald Enquiry into corruption began. Two years later; Labor was elected, former government ministers were in prison, and the punks who had spent the last decade lampooning the hypocrisy of conservative politicians were vindicated. A few years after that, bands like Custard and Regurgitator were taking the irreverent, independent spirit of Brisbane music into the mainstream. Four decades after a group of enthusiastic misfits stayed up all night screen printing posters for a gig they knew was likely to be shut down by the cops; the fruits of their labour are still up on a wall to inspire another generation. While they cut and copied these bits of paper, they were creating something much more.
- Andy Paine.