'Safe Places', exhibtion poster (2003)

 

Nine Years of DesignWorks Time: an exhibition of exhibition posters

9 - 19 October 2008 in the Hirschfeld Gallery

Over a nine year partnership, DesignWorks and City Gallery Wellington worked together on some 80 Michael Hirschfeld Gallery exhibitions, involving more than 214 artists. The last exhibion in the old Hirschfeld Gallery space was given to DesignWorks to celebrate all those who hadbeen involved, before the space closed as part of the City Gallery development project, during which the new purpose-built Hirschfeld Gallery was created. DesignWorks have sponsored the Gallery since 1999, and Nine Years of DesignWorks Time not only paid tribute to the many artists, curators and others who have been associated with the Gallery, but also to the work of DesignWork’s talented designers.

To many young designers, ‘in your own time’ is a phrase all too familiar when it comes to pro bono creative work. Often the brief must be completed outside of regular work hours, squeezed around fee–paying jobs, and the ‘client’ relationship is built around transactions of time and talk, rather than commercial exchange. In response to the Hirschfeld Gallery’s monthly exhibition turn-around and a diverse range of artists and designers to profile, the constant demand for innovative design was met with equally consistent inventiveness. Taking a bold creative approach, frequently generating custom typography or illustrations for individual jobs, the designers  produced graphic responses which played off the artists’ work in a range of singular interpretations. Often this process of creative interchange has been a stimulating and productive one for both artist and designer.

This exhibition brings together works from 1999 to the present day, covering the span of DesignWorks’ affiliation with the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, and invoking a myriad of relationships through the years. These posters have been chosen by the designers currently working at DesignWorks, in conversation with others who have moved on. Each poster represents not only a record of an artist’s show in this gallery, but the time and conversations that went into the exhibition’s graphic identity, its presence on the street, the website and spaces beyond the gallery walls.

Posters have a long history within advertising media, as channels for propaganda and promotion. The poster format as we know it dates back to colour lithography’s enabling of mass production, and has been used in publicising everything from bicycles to bullfights. In 1884, the world’s first poster exhibition took place in Paris, shortly followed by solo exhibitions of poster artists. The fame of individual artists grew as posters were displayed widely, and fans started taking them down to keep for themselves soon after they were hung.

Many artists have responded to the form’s potential, among the best known historically including Toulouse Lautrec. More recent examples include American graphic artists Milton Glaser (known as the creator of the ‘I Love New York’ logo, his Bob Dylan poster, and the ‘DC bullet’ logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005), and Stanley ‘Mouse’ Miller, designer of the rock band Grateful Dead’s album cover art. Closer to home, street posters have particular popularity in Wellington, a city of pedestrians and street performance. Described as the ‘street’s designer wallpaper’, local posters take part in a competitive visual environment. Their limited lifespan briefly vitalises a constantly changing urban environment, before they are brushed over by the paste of next week’s round of posters.

While admirers often recognise their work, commercial poster designers don’t usually have their names represented on the front of a poster. Rather it seems the fate of the designer to work primarily in the background, advancing the visibility of others. This exhibition of exhibition posters aimed to foreground the designers’ work, and the creative products of a nine year relationship.

Abby Cunnane
Michael Hirschfeld Gallery Curator