The latest Eureka moment in the Little Darwin den was the arrival of this 1982 British publication covering Australian artists , the cover showing Koalas against a background of an apparent coal fired power station , in which well known Top End poster artist, Aboriginal advisor and activist , journalist and euthanasia campaigner, Chips Mackinolty , is mentioned along with one of his early posters.
Land rights poster on left includes Yirrkala woman demonstrating one of 200 string figures she knows ; other an early Mackinolty and Jan Mackay work.
Produced by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the book contains a section dealing with posters in which it mentions Mackinolty and his involvement with the radical Earthworks Poster Collective of 1972-l979 , which operated from the Sydney University Art Workshop known as the Tin Sheds. From it " a seemingly never ending stream of leftist , feminist , politically astute , technically high quality , eclectic and aesthetically powerful posters" were produced to plaster buildings throughout the city.
In 1977 the collective launched a major poster exhibition called Walls Sometime Speak which toured widely and , readers are told , catapulted "political posters " into national prominence. Some of Mackinolty's posters were against the Vietnam War .
He later moved to Townsville, North Queensland, where he became a community arts officer ; then onto the Northern Territory where his journalistic, poster and other skills were utilised in many worthy causes , including the Northern Land Council and production of Aboriginal posters printed by Redback Graphics . At one stage he spent time in Italy and seemed to drop from radar until he held an exhibition, Not Dead Yet . He has clearly not cashed in his chips as he was recently spotted strolling about Darwin .
