We Will Work With You: Wellington Media Collective 1978-1998

Description

We Will Work With You: Wellington Media Collective 1978-1998 tells the story of a group of young Kiwi designers and political activists committed to broadly defined left-wing principles and politics. They never wavered from the mission statement written in 1979: 'We will work with you, not for you.' It is this principle of collective action that unfurls down the wall of the gallery. It also unfurls through the pages of this book, in more than 250 examples of WMC's posters, as well as screen-prints produced with artists and musicians. The social history of the Collective - also a history of extraordinary energy and resilience - is covered in an essay by Mary Ellen O'Connor; Polly Cantlon has written a comprehensive account of the Collective's design history and its political and theoretical underpinnings. Includes contributions by Jean Clarkson on Sydney's Tin Sheds, by the Black Panther Party's Emory Douglas, and by Flor de Lis Lopez Hernandez and Xavier Meade on Cuban and Mexican 'visual companeros', locate WMC in an international context.

Ian Wedde is the recipient of national book awards for his fiction, poetry, and art books. He is the editor of the award-winning Ralph Hotere: Black Light and the author of Bill Culbert, The Catastrophe, The Commonplace Odes, Dick Seddon's Great Dive, and Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty.