2016 Letty Katts Award Winner. Street Life by Dr John Willsteed: Music Posters.
Channel: statelibraryqld
Date: 09/09/2020

Street Life presented by Dr John Willsteed: Posters and their role in the Brisbane music scene 1975-1995

Date: Friday 15 September, 2017
Time: 6pm–8pm
Where: SLQ Auditorium 2, level 2, State Library of Queensland

They stared out from lounge-room walls, and fridges; from telegraph poles and shop windows. They were devised in daylight and the dark, on photocopiers and kitchen tables, and printed by hand for free or by some inky guy for money. Posters were essential to having a good time in Brisbane through the 70s and 80s. They started word of mouth, and they amplified it – sending the word about these bands across the river, up and down the streets of this sleepy town; catching the eye just as the bands caught the ear and the heart. But after this primary job was done, people held onto them – evidence of a life lived, the wallpapers of memory.

Street Life explores various entwined legacies of these posters, in a presentation curated and performed by Dr John Willsteed from Queensland University of Technology and Winner, 2016 Letty Katts Award, State Library Queensland.

The Letty Katts Award is supported by an endowment to the Queensland Library Foundation by Dr Stanton Mellick and Professor Jill Mellick.

More information on the Letty Katts Award can be found online at: https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/get-involved/fellowships-awards-residencies/queensland-memory-awards.