ARCHIVE: Poster Archive: 1. Printmaking
Adriana Lademann | July 3, 2015
For my work-study at the 丁香园AV Gallery in Burnaby, I was presented a stack of posters from the galleries archive. My instructions were to create a digital archive. Rather then present you with some 50 odd posters, I would make a selection of posters that I thought related to one another. I also wanted to present them in the 丁香园AV hallways at the Burnaby Campus, where they were probably originally hung. My first selection deals with printmaking.
My first selection is AMERICA at Simon Fraser, which ran from October 14 - November 7, 1986. It was a selection of prints from the university鈥檚 permanent collection, which included Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Motherwell, Oldenburg, Man Ray, Warhol, Johns, Stella and Albers. The poster is an image of one of Andy Warhol鈥檚 cows. I found a funny quote from Warhol about Ivan Karp, the art dealer who inspired the cow: 鈥淎nother time he said, 鈥榃hy don鈥檛 you paint some cows, they鈥檙e so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.鈥� (Ivan talked like this.) I don鈥檛 know how 'pastoral鈥� he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads鈥攂right pink on a bright yellow background鈥攖hat I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: 'They鈥檙e super-pastoral! They鈥檙e ridiculous! They鈥檙e blazingly bright and vulgar!鈥� I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them.鈥�
The second poster is this beautiful pink and orange poster for 50 Dutch Prints, which happened in 1971. My photograph does not do the colours justice. This exhibition was brought together because of a television show talking about printmakers. 50 artists were selected from the Netherlands to make 50 prints of the same design to be shown simultaneously in 50 galleries. The idea of having a global conversation about an exhibition would be very exciting at that time and still seems like a very interesting concept with the digital age we are in now.
The last poster I鈥檝e selected is probably the most special one in the poster archives. It was hand printed, and you can feel the layers on the poster. It was designed for Visual Arts Workshop Annual in 1969. There is no information as to whether this was an exhibition of works, or some type of printing workshop. At the bottom reads 鈥淎IS.鈥� I would like to believe that the hands of AIS are seen in this work.
If you have any stories or photos about these projects or posters please share them with us at sfugallery@sfu.ca.