Axel Sutinen and Colin Little - from Yellow House to Tin Sheds
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| Draft mock up(?), offered at auction in January 2022. |
Two significant artist communities developed in Sydney during the 1970s. They were the Tin Sheds at the Fine Arts Workshop and Studio, University of Sydney, and the Yellow House at 57-59 Macleay Street, Potts Point. The first began in 1968-9 and developed under the direction of artists such as Bert Flugelman and Guy Warren, along with a coterie of talented students and community members (Kenyon 1995, Allam 2007), whilst the second was created in 1970 by artist Martin Sharp and filmmaker Albie Thoms (Thoms 2013). Referred to at the time as an "experimental art gallery", the Yellow House shared similarities with the Tin Sheds in that it was an alternate art space which rejected the traditional gallery and art school models and attempted to create a new environment in which artists - young and old - could engage collaboratively and exhibit their works.
Martin Sharp was a leading light of the Sixties counterculture, especially in regards to his work with OZ magazine in both Sydney and London between 1963 and 1973. An artist commune was one of the many cultural alternatives posited during this period of revolutionary thought and action in the West. Sharp had engaged in a small way in such a commune within the centre of London between 1966-8 when he lived at the Pheasantry. This multi-story apartment building on the King's Road, London, contained a group of young artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers and photographers - many Australian - working at their art and generally having a good time. Sharp was also increasingly inspired during the latter part of the Sixties by Vincent van Gogh's dream of an artist community which he attempted to create in a 2-storey building known as the Yellow House at Arles, France. Like the Dutch artist in the 1880s, Martin Sharp put his vision into practice upon returning to Australia at the beginning of 1970.
The two physical environments which emerged in Sydney were very different, and on opposite sides of town - the Yellow House was located in a 3-storey terrace building on the eastern edge of the city centre, amidst densely packed high-rise commercial and residential properties, whilst the Tin Sheds were just that - a series of hot, rather dilapidated sheds on the sprawling outskirts of the University of Sydney precinct, west of the city centre. The Yellow House was initially developed by Sharp and Thoms and involved their growing community of friends and acquaintances in a variety of multimedia forms of expression - from painting and performance through to music and film. The Tin Sheds was based around the lecturers and students enrolled at the University of Sydney art and architecture departments. Its most notable expression was in the area of printmaking and sculpture. The Yellow House closed its doors at the beginning of 1973; the Tin Sheds operated through to the 1980s. On the surface the two were separate and distinct - one academic, the other bohemian, but both somewhat anarchic, comprising professional and semi-professional practitioners working across a broad range of artistic endeavours. Yet there were connections. One of the most significant was Axel Sutinen and Colin Little's Yellow House silkscreened poster of 1972. Sutinen was a young visiting Finnish artist then resident in the Yellow House; Little was associated with the Tin Sheds. The poster at the head of this blog is a piece of ephemeral street art and a link between the two communities. Its origin is outlined below in the words of surviving artist and former resident of the Yellow House, Axel (Asko) Sutinen.
Origins of the poster
When I created it with Colin Little, I was 19 yrs old and it was my very first public street-poster in silkscreen. Colin had come to the Yellow House one day and suggested that we design and print a poster together for the the 3rd Chapter exhibition opening of the Yellow House at the beginning of 1972. I drew the outlines in black ink onto illustration board in my room at the Yellow House and asked some other artists for their opinion on it. Rina Cruickshank and Antoinette Starkiewicz were some of the artists that advised me on improving on it. I think that Rina actually drew the falling leaves on the right hand side. I saw it as a collective effort.
The idea came to me as a mythological Goddess being born out of the sea in front of a rising sun. Much like the Statue of Liberty by Frederic Bartholdi in New York (hence the reference to a ray-like crown), she was guiding the way to a new creative, prosperous and peaceful open culture. But my version [presented] her being born naked from the water (as the goddess Aphrodite who was born from the foam of the waves), and surrounded by UFOs and a floating Egyptian Great Pyramid. She is holding the trident of Neptune with a waving flag of victory in her right hand. So it was like a rebirth of a new culture into a more universal state of being. The exhibition's titles and names of the artists were half hidden texts in the cyclical waves. As usual it did not occur to me that it could be offensive in any way, though I did receive some judgement about it.
The black ink colour was printed using a red photosensitive emulsion stencil we had exposed [by] laying a sheet of positive film of the ink drawing placed on top of the photo emulsion sheet and then placed in the sun in the backyard of the Tin Shed studios, in City Road next to the Sydney University refectory building. The stencil was left exposed in the sun for a half a day to expose the red emulsion to make a negative image. That was then applied to a silkscreen after developing. All the other stencils for the other colours I hand cut with a surgical blade from a green stencil emulsion sheet and later applied to silkscreens.
Colin and I printed the poster in four colours at the Tin
Shed printing studio and while working on it we invented the name
"Earthworks Collective" together and came up with the eye in the
pyramid logo. We had thought of it as an idea of a democratic group of artists
that can do things i.e. design and print alternative cultural posters and
flyers together and with total freedom of expression outside the boundaries of
conventional media rules.
We did many colour variations of the poster including
with UV-inks... Maybe about a hundred or so copies. It was the very first of
many posters that "the Earthworks Collective" produced. After that
the number of artists started to increase. Later on I designed and printed with
Colin many other posters as also did Colin, Sam Bienstock and Tim Burns, among
other artists. In the early 80s when I returned from my travels in Europe, I
sadly heard that Colin had passed away after spending time studying printing-techniques in Japan. He had developed leukemia from breathing in the deadly printing ink fumes for many years.
Colin Little (1952-1982) has been cited as the founder of the Earthworks Poster Collective in 1971 (Butler 2002; Mackinolty 2012). He produced a significant group of posters between 1972 and his death just over a decade later, often collaborating with artists and assisting in the silkscreen printing process. For example, in 1976 he worked with Yellow House founder Martin Sharp on a poster for the Australian film Jeremy and Teapot. Little was a master printmaker amongst the young group of Tin Shed artists.
The Yellow House poster and its variants
You might ask why is my scribble on the side of the poster? I was in and out of the Yellow House often and had two environments going as well as helping the new younger artists keep it running. Albie Thoms was very positive about their involvement. Martin had gone back to London a bit disillusioned about the anger between some of the older residents mentioned in Albie’s book [My Generation, 2013]. I was offered - but rejected - the title “manager” and was happy just being a contributing artist. One day Axel showed me a poster full of information and asked me if I would like to be included and add some text. I said I would think of some words to add and as there was not much space available I just wrote on the side thinking that the poster designers would somehow fit it in with their design, perhaps on the side of the pyramid or somewhere. I was quite amused when I later saw the finished result, as they had printed it just as I had written it - on the side. Sometimes the borders and my script are cropped off the poster and sometimes not. As an aside I might mention that years later in 2005 at the wake for Linda Thoms in Balmoral Bathers Pavilion, Albie said he had met Linda at the Yellow House and Martin in his eulogy said he did not know that, but that thankfully “some good came out of it.”
Another of the Yellow House artist gets dual mention on the poster - Jewellion's Celestial Circus - both within the body of the artwork, and on the lower edge almost as an afterthought. As noted in Axel Sutinen's outline on the origin and production of the Yellow House poster, there were a number of variants produced during the silkscreening process. Some are listed below.
An interesting Facebook discussion took place on 11 December 2015 around the origin of the name Earthworks, stimulated by a question from Dr. Joe Davis. An answer was provided by Axel Sutinen, who was there at the time of its creation. Roger Foley also added to the discussion.
Joe Davis: Any memories of why the name "Earthworks" was chosen?
Michael Organ: We would have to ask Axel Sutinen that, as Colin Little died in the early 1980s.
Axel Sutinen: Earthworks Collective was chosen because it had allusions to an holistic planetary awareness, ancient monumental structures like the Great Pyramid & Stonehenge, and in modern art works like The Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson that was made in 1970.
Roger Foley-Fogg: And incidentally and synchronously it was at about that time - the 60s and 70s - that the younger generation became aware of the planet, the Earth, being one living system, a feeling and realisation which drove the whole Counter Culture .. Probably inspired by India and Vasudeva Kutumbakam and the zeitgeist, the gestalt of the times - because the times were changing.
Axel Sutinen: Also there was at the Tin Sheds a strong alternative-architectural awareness. Next door was "Autonomous House", designed with sustainable technology to be completely "Off the grid".
And soon the Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973 came about, so a strong "Grass Roots" movement was being born at the time. I then became part of The White Company performance troupe, started by John Allen (head of the Australian Union of University students) to promote the Festival and a lot of the posters involved with all that were produced at the Tin Sheds. Many artists designed, photographed, hand cut stencils & then printing in the workshop. And Colin Little did most of the printing. Many all-nighter printing sessions went on...
P.s. Roger - who is Vasudeva Kutumbakam?
Roger Foley-Fogg: It is a Hindi phrase and means "the world is one" .. I think a lot of 60s inspiration came from India and her colourful Gods and from Ghandi who banned big corporations like Coca Cola from operating there. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (From "vasudhā", the earth; "ēva" = indeed is; and "kutumbakam", family;) is a Sanskrit phrase which means "the world is one family".
Axel Sutinen: Okay! and Gandhi´s philosophy of non-violent revolution... :-) The architects Col James & Bill Lucas were most likely involved with the autonomous house project, as they were later with the Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973.
Roger Foley: Bill pops up in this movie as well as others you will know:
Allam, Lorena, The Hothouse: art and politics at the Tin Sheds, ABC Radio, 2007,
Butler, Roger, Political Clout: Australian Posters, Eye magazine, 12(46), 2002.
Kenyon, Therese, Under a Hot Tin Roof: art, passion and politics at the Tin Sheds workshop, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1995, 152p.
Mackinolty, Chips, This is not a history ..... but something along the lines of some uncomfortable memories of the Earthworks Poster Collective, Volume 1: MCA Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2012, 100-103.
Thoms, Albie, My Generation, Sydney, 2013.
Compiled by Michael Organ, Axel Sutinen and Roger Foley
Last updated: 25 January 2022
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