Catalogue Number
NMLH.2023.93
Object Name
Poster
Title
Escapism is not freedom
Place
Bristol
People
Mark Stewart
Events
Post-punk movement
Date
1972-1982
Description
The Poster Collective was a collective formed in 1971 at the Slade School of Art,  a group formed to initially produce posters in response to the miners strike and on the wars in both Vietnam and Ireland. It was formed on the basis of developing a coherent visual style, which addressed the political issues of the time. This included the armed struggles against colonialism in Africa, the struggle of women for equal rights and the continuing struggle against racism. The collective was active in the 70's and 80's, producing posters on a wide range of issues, including for educational purposes. The group was not-for-profit and used a variety of hand-printing techniques to create their posters. Large black and white landscape poster on newspaper material. This poster was produced by pop-punk group 'The Pop Group', for their vinyl album release of ' For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder.' They produced four double sided posters (different posters on each side). The band are a
rock/post-punk group; their music was radical and political, and the band also performed at rallies, benefits, and protests. The poster shows lots of different text in different font. The largest text is on the left hand side and reads "Escapism is not freedom." The main two images on the poster are photographs; one of the pop group ABBA sat in a car, with the writing "ABBA" above them, and the other is of the band, The Beatles (photo is four men smiling). Underneath the image of the beatles it says "Sudden death from sheer terror is not unknown...where a man discovers an evil fetish in his house." The eyes of the ABBA members are scribbled out. Other images on the poster include an image of a newspaper cutting titled "Manson jail-break plotted, say FBI", an image of a poster with policeman on it with the text "nuclear state, police state" and an image of a page from a book. Some of the other phrases on the poster read "Escapism is not freedom, only you can be your own
liberator", "There are no spectators", "There is no neutral", "Voyeurs of the Armageddon", "No one will ever be forgiven", "We are all accessories to murder", and other phrases and sentences about oppression and revolution. There is a box with some handwritten text which reads "But once the music has stopped and your eyes are free to watch, there is nothing to hear but the low moan of another bad dead dying corpse, and the cackle of the artist as an exploiter." This poster is in a fragile condition as all of the sides are frayed.
