Michael Callaghan

Michael Callaghan
Image & Text 1967 - 2010
7 - 29 May

An exhibition tracing the career of one of Australia’s more politically focused artists. From 1977 to 1979 Callaghan was part of the Earthworks Poster Collective at Sydney University working alongside a group of talented artists who made a major contribution to Australian art at a time when mainstream painting and sculpture appeared moribund. In 1979, Callaghan founded Redback Graphix in Brisbane, and in 1980 moved it to Wollongong and in 1985 to Sydney. Redback developed an idiosyncratic style, using fluoro colours with bold black outlines. Throughout the 1980s and 90s the workshop undertook campaigns from a number of Commonwealth government departments. Callaghan is the co-creator of Condoman the Phantom-like figure who advocates the use of condoms for young Indigenous men, one of the
more successful anti-AIDS health campaigns in indigenous health. In recent years he has continued working with combining art and politics in digital prints and has also returned to making paintings and sculptures. His most recent body of work, created as the H. C. Coombs
Creative Arts Fellow for 2009 at the School of Art, ANU, is concerned with the war in Iraq. Focusing on the doublespeak of the ‘war on terror’ and in particular the issues it brings to bear on human rights. Michael Callaghan is the recipient of the ANU H C Coombs Creative Arts
Fellowship 2009 administered by the Research School of Humanities & the Arts in association with the ANU School of Art.

http://soa.anu.edu.au/exhibitions-and-events