Unsettled

The redback is a tiny native Australian spider with a dangerous bite that thrives in urban areas. Redback Graphix was a pioneering Australian screenprinting collective working from 1979 until 1994. The thrill of seeing a Redback Graphix screen-print posted on a city wall was to feel the sting of a little dissenting venom puncture the badly clotted veins of compliant mainstream discourse. Question: If the unemployed are dole bludgers, what the fuck are the idle rich? Answer: [an image of] a chimpanzee sipping Puerto Rican rum under a parasol. Their rushed and raw images attacked a docile culture of conformity, and helped inspire the birth of Inkahoots. Creative political expression has been one of our aims ever since.

Quiet and loud. Tender and monstrous.

Rosalie Gascoigne collected weathered junk and transformed it into a revelatory expression of the spirit of place.

Within easy reach of our city-based studio is an incredible diversity of natural landscapes. A lot of time is spent here in the living geometry and disorder of these intensely visual experiences. Vast beaches; densely layered tropical rainforests; ragged mountain ranges, gorges and waterfalls; empty red arid expanses; the world’s largest sand islands, with crashing surf and still freshwater lakes. The spirit of these places, as well as their aesthetics, will always have a deep impact.

Art is mysterious and physical. It’s made and experienced in the material conditions of history. But the best stuff somehow transcends these strictures by confronting them. Berger was probably the most useful thing we took from Art College.

Most of Freud’s ideas about psychosexual development have’t aged well. But the idea that sexuality is both our weakness and strength is a paradox that defines many of our most intimate and elusive motivations.

No matter where you’re at, Dylan’s got it covered. Whether you’ve “been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,” or you’re feeling “like a slave in orbit beaten till he’s tamed,” Dylan can turn a phrase that will hunt you down and haunt you. However great the song writing though, it’s his transcendent performances that deliver boundless creative possibilities. If even a shadow of the exuberance, exasperation and beauty of Dylan’s voice could be translated as graphic design then we could be satisfied with our work.

The Saints were ‘Stranded’ in this town that was their home. Grant McLennan from the Go-Betweens sang “we found this town in a coma.” Into the 1970’s when other Australian cities were finally loosening up, Brisbane was locked down in a stifling cultural malaise. The long-ruling conservative government was a corrupt and violent vortex of regression. Today the city can be open, edgy, epic and intimate all at once. The late afternoon sunlight is magical, and the scale and pace of the town is as easy as you want it. The music is as irrepressible as ever, and the arts community is vibrant and unpredictable. Of course there’s plenty of new problems (and those that linger), but it’s easy to forget there was a time when to leave this city was actually to escape. Now the dredged, muddy river that winds through its heart – some days, when the light is right – almost looks blue.

Teaching in parable, paradox and metaphor, Jesus Christ had one of histories most influential creative imaginations. And while a powerful minority use him to wage war on the poor, he was conversely one of the greatest humanitarian socialists.

One of the greatest reactionary victories has been to make Marx seem irrelevant or poisonous. Millions of ordinary people believe Marx’s ideas are hostile to our best interests – even as his legacy continues to temper our exploitation. Citing extraneous examples of murderous totalitarian autocrats like Stalin and Mao, the ideology of individualism is played against the ideal of collectivism, as if real individuality was opposed to real community. If you’re a designer, check out Marx’s writing on alienation and commodity fetishism... if you sleep well that night, just read it again closer in the morning. The revolutionary potential of the contemporary working class can be disputed, but the idea that humans have the ability to radically change their world for the better is about as inspiring as you can get.