An international virtual symposium

Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

2 November 2021 via zoom

Convenors: Can Yalcinkaya and Justine Lloyd

Supported by Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University &

Macquarie University Art Gallery

The symposium will be held virtually, in partnership with the exhibition ‘Panels that Transform’ hosted by Macquarie University Art Gallery. See below for information about this exhibition.

Queries about the symposium can be directed to Justine Lloyd: Justine.Lloyd@mq.edu.au

The afternoon panel will be preceded by keynote speaker, Bonney Djuric, artist, historian, adjunct lecturer NIEA, UNSW and co-founder of Parragirls Female Factory Precinct Memory Project.

Panel Two: 'Media, Arts & Activism': what can the Old Left offer today's creatives?

Have you ever shared a meme with a political message? If so, you’ve put yourself in the well-travelled intersection of visual culture and communications. It’s an eye-catching tradition the political left has been experimenting with since the very beginnings of when bad stuff happened and people joined together do something about it.

For over 200 years, Australian progressives have led the way with new adaptations in political communication, with artists as key figures in aesthetic innovation and avant-garde cultural movements.

This panel is intended to offer something to artists and activists who are curious about radical art objects and learning about the successful creativity-infused strategies from the previous eras of progressive politics.

Join us for a visually stimulating journey through the hits of the Australian labour movement’s creativity.

Speakers & Topics

Neale Towart:

Neale will introduce us to objects and images from the Sydney Trades Hall union collections, highlighting examples of union campaigns, logos, slogans and artworks. Unions have long realised the importance of instantly relatable visuals and short punchy slogans in getting their messages across to members, potential members and the general public. Banners “advertising” union skills and solidarity and badges for campaigns will be part of his “show and tell” of objects from Australia, the US and the UK that Trades Hall has in its collection. They highlight issues such as equal pay, union labour and the union logo, why join, and health and safety, all issues that remain.

Iain McIntyre:

Agitate, Educate, Organise - The cartoons and graphic art of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909-1945

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) are a syndicalist union whose impact on labour movement culture has long been acknowledged. While the union's role in producing and popularising satirical and militant music in the US is well known, many of its other ground breaking efforts in the field of working class counterculture are less so. This talk will focus on the role of cartoons, published in newspapers and as stickers and posters, in helping the IWW to 'Agitate, Educate, Organise' from the early 1900s through to the 1940s. It will discuss the union's early history and its use of graphic art in the US and Australia to bolster working class pride, promote revolutionary unionism, and satirise its opponents and detractors. Characters such as Mr Block and the work of artists such as Ernest Riebe, CE Setzer, Joe Hill, Syd Nicholls and 'Dust' Wallin will be highlighted.

Lisa Milner:

For many years, the creative activity of political and social protest movements has built a rich legacy for contemporary Australian activist-artists. My talk will introduce the work of the post-war ‘front’ organisations of the Communist Party of Australia, the artistic work of trade union groups, and the music, visual arts, writing and theatre production that have come out of local protest and social movements. It focuses on the ways that left cultural activists used existing social, physical and cultural spaces.

Ian Milliss:

By the mid 1970s the trade union movement nationwide employed less than a handful of journalists and their internal media was in serious disrepair. But in the early 80s a generation of politicised artists and an unlikely Australia Council initiative, the Art and Working Life program, generated a renaissance in trade journalism and media-based campaigning. I will talk about the program and the foundation of Union Media Services and later union-based publishing enterprises that generated a union funded media and art scene that was eventually the equivalent of the mass media in production values and at least partially capable of maintaining trade union values in the face of constant mainstream media attack.

Bios:

Neale Towart has been Librarian for what is now Unions NSW since 1995, and fell into the role of the keeper of the collection at Sydney Trades Hall from about 2003. The collection has developed from a largely trade union banner one to a large collection of approx. 4000 union badges, 2000 posters, pamphlets and photos, plus more banners since then. Being a Librarian by “calling” he just likes to find out about stuff.

Iain McIntyre is a Melbourne-based author, musician, and community radio broadcaster who has written and edited a variety of books about activism, history and music. Recent publications include Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Sci-Fi, 1950-1984 (PM Press, 2021), Environmental Blockades (Routledge, 2021) and On The Fly: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941 (PM Press, 2018). He is a member of the commonslibrary.org team and regularly contributes articles about social movement history to the website.

Lisa Milner is a labour historian whose research interests circulate around the intersections of cultural activism and politics, and include radical and workers’ theatre in Anglophone nations, representations of workers and unions on screen, and labour history. Her work has been published widely in Australia, UK and the USA, including in Labour History, Contemporary British History, American Communist History, Australasian Drama Studies, and New Theatre Quarterly. She is the Vice-President of Interventions Publishing.

Ian Milliss is a Sydney based artist, writer and activist who began working with trade unions as a resident activist in the green ban movement. He was later one of the founders of the Artworkers Union and of Union Media Services Pty Ltd. He ended his twenty years of working with unions as a National Research Officer for the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union, now part of the United Workers Union (UWU). His current major activity is the Kandos School of Cultural Adaption (KSCA), a group of artists, farmers and others engaged in radical agriculture and land use experiments.

Alex Ettling (host) is a social history researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. For over twenty years he's participated at the periphery of the creative arts, alongside activity that has moved between the interrelated fields of activism, communications and labour history. In recent years he has been involved in the left-wing publishing project Interventions, re-established the art studio tradition at Melbourne Trades Hall, and has over a decade of experience promoting not-for-profit queer dance parties. He is currently developing an oral history program at Melbourne's Living Museum.

Information about the linked exhibition at the Macquarie University Art Gallery:

Title: Panels that Transform

Curators: Can Yalcinkaya and Justine Lloyd

Exhibition dates: TBC (Subject to NSW Public Health recommendations, check here for updates)

Exhibition Brief:

Comics and Graphic Novels with activist agendas are often creative non-fiction texts which aim to inform and educate the public on issues of social justice in engaging and entertaining ways. The exhibition “Panels that Transform” will feature old and new original works by three Australian artists/activists – Sam Wallman, Safdar Ahmed and Nicky Minus, who are internationally recognised through their graphic narratives on issues that demand our attention such as the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers, gender equality, climate justice and the trade union movement. Having been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, SBS, ABC, Overland, the Lifted Brow, as well as in limited edition zines, brochures and pamphlets, their works capture the vibrancy and vitality of activist causes and invite their readers to take part in positive societal transformation.

Brief biographies of artists

Sam Wallman

Sam Wallman is a cartoonist, comics-journalist and union organiser based in Melbourne, Australia. His work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, the ABC and SBS. He has exhibited work at Dark Mofo, the Sydney Opera House, the National Gallery of Victoria and Italy's Internazionale Journalism Festival. He is currently developing large-scale murals and banners for the trade union movement, alongside his first book-length comic, forthcoming from Scribe Publications.

Safdar Ahmed

Safdar Ahmed is a Sydney-based artist and academic in the field of Islamic studies. He is the author of Reform and Modernity in Islam and the graphic memoir The Good Son. His drawings and comics have appeared in such publications as The Guardian, Overland, Meanjin and The Lifted Brow. Ahmed is a founding member of the community art organisation Refugee Art Project, for which he conducts regular art workshops with asylum seekers and refugees in Western Sydney. In 2015 Safdar won a Walkley Award in the Artwork category for his documentary webcomic, Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre.

Nicky Minus

Nicky Minus is currently a recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts grant for their debut graphic novel Capitalism Makes Me Sick, which is forthcoming from Brow Books. They are active within the union movement collaborating on graphics, banners and workshops to support workers.