Thesis abstract:

«p»The Earthworks Poster Collective operated between 1972-1979 out of disused tin sheds behind the University of Sydney School of Architecture. «/p» «p»Throughout this period, a small group of artists and activists came together to live, create, produce and disseminate screen printed posters that promoted the rights of Indigenous people, women, gays and lesbians, the unemployed and workers, alongside making posters to promotes cultural events and workshops around the University and Sydney. «/p» «p»The Earthworks posters are documents of a period of great moral, political and social upheaval. «/p» «p»The production of posters for social and political causes helped galvanise a generation and mobilise them to social action. Taking their cues largely from Walter Benjamin’s ‘«em»Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction«/em»’, activists refrained from merely adopting political content, instead, they worked to transform the fundamental infrastructures at play, taking their work out of galleries and institutions and onto the streets of Sydney in the 1970s. «/p» «p»Looking at the complete Earthworks Poster Collective «em»oeuvre«/em» as it exists in the archive, this thesis will focus on the materiality of the posters as an embodiment of ‘the political becoming personal’ in Sydney, Australia between 1972-1979. «/p» «p»The thesis will chart the ontology of the posters in the wider context of the Archive, analysing how the intended political, social and cultural function of the posters became inherently distorted and neutralised by their institutionalisation as objects in museums and galleries, outside of their intended purpose on the street.«/p» «p» «/p»