Two new exhibitions are celebrating art from the 1970s in Canberra. The National Gallery of Australia is presenting Enjoy this trip: The Art of Music Posters and the National Library of Australia shares 1975: Living in the Seventies a showcase of the transformative music, art, fashion, literature and film of the era.
Enjoy this trip is comprised of Australian and International music posters from the NGA collection made between 1960 and the 1980s, which convey the groovy, creative and experimental spirit of the times. The gallery invites you to “Journey back to the Summer of Love and be transported to a time when the music was funky, the art was kaleidoscopic and psychedelia was in full swing.”
On view now and over the summer Enjoy this trip will summon nostalgia, but more than a feeling it will also deftly convey the times through art, graphic design, music, colour and typography. As Victor Moscoso, known for his psychedelic posters, says “The musicians were turning up their amplifiers to the point where they were blowing out your eardrums. I did the equivalent with the eyeballs.”
Just down the road at the National Library, 1975 pays homage to the life, culture and changes of what is now 50 years past. The NLA has collated a range of ephemera and cultural material from the era to illustrate and take you back.
It wasn’t all good times. As the NLA describes “the long-running Vietnam War finally ended, while revolutions and conflicts erupted elsewhere in Africa and Asia. Governments across the world struggled with rapidly rising energy prices, unemployment and economic stagnation. The women’s liberation movement challenged many long-held assumptions about the roles of women in society. In Australia, the Whitlam government implemented major social reforms but also found itself mired in a series of political controversies, culminating in its dismissal on 11 November 1975.”
Guy Hansen, Director of Exhibitions, has penned a great essay offering more detail and insight into the era and exhibition. As he says by 1975 Australia was a nation that had begun to tell its own stories, “The cultural cringe which had defined our attitude to the world in the 1950s and 1960s was beginning to fade. Australia was now a much prouder and more assertive nation. Skyhooks captured this new cultural confidence with their second hit album for 1975: Ego Is Not a Dirty Word. Like the band, Australia had begun to embrace its own distinct style and celebrate its place in the sun.” You can read more from Hansen here.