An independent gallery in Rome has put on a show looking at the alternative press movement, which campaigned for sexual, racial and economic equality and freedom between 1966 and 1977, and has invited some leading contemporary practitioners to create new work in response to this movement.
COLLI Independent Art Gallery in Rome – a space dedicated to printed matter, bookworks, editions and multiples – is displaying original materials from European and American alternative presses in its exhibition YES YES YES. On show alongside publications such as Black Panther, The East Village Other and publications from Dutch movement Provo, will be original posters from eight contemporary designers and artists who have taken inspiration from the alternative press between 1966 and 1977.
The designers and artists involved form an impressive roll-call, with Dallas, Dexter Sinister, Experimental Jetset, Will Holder, Pauline Kerleroux and Adéla Svobodová, Prill Vieceli Cremers, Studio Hato and Batia Suter all contributing posters. In order to stay true to the original alternative presses, all posters have been produced in conjunction with localised printers. Experimental Jetset are also creating a Provo-inspired magazine for the show.
The research leading up to the exhibition was used as a chance to collate writings from people with first-hand experience of working in these radical, alternative presses of the Sixties and Seventies, such as David Goines (San Francisco Express Time), Steven Heller (Screw, The New York Free Press) and John Wilcock (Village Voice, Underground Press Syndicate). If this sounds up your street but you’re not able to just pop over to Rome to catch the show right now, images of the original alternative press publications will be featured alongside these texts in a five-hundred-page catalogue designed by Italian design studio Dallas – which ought to keep even the most avid alternative press fan busy for a little while.
