The Silkscreen Movement

Fuelled by a curious mix of psychedelia and punk rock, The roots of the silkscreen movement were laid down in Austin Texas, in the '80s The thriving local flyer and poster makers had borrowed from who had come before them, and were beginning to create something new, original and vibrant, with a strong, independent music scene.

The realisation that that a scene, a squeegee, and a few cans of ink would allow an enterprising person to create top-quality posters in small runs, an entire generation of arts/entrepreneurs was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.

The start od poster explosion was in the '50s when rock & roll itself exploded onto the scene and the first poster was silkscreened.

Silkscreen was one of the standard poster-printing processes of the day, employed by mostly for commerical signage.

Most print campagians were local promotions, concerts and local events.

Silkscreen printing and letterpress reigned hand in hand as the predominant forms of rock concert production.

Mid 60's technonlogy and economics converged to the point where rock posters started being printed in large runs on offset printing press.

By the late '70s silkscreen rock posters had all vanished from the scene, replaced by cheaper form of print. Xerography which provided instant printing.

Jason Austin - "Composition provides the form for my combining ideas, feelings and thoughts. I think of it as an alchemical process (alchemy as the connection between the physical and spiritual world, an experimentation within the realm of chaos, to find out what I can make of the elements at hand)."

From this I have started a Placement at Jealous Gallery and Print Studio, where I have been learning how to screen print to an industry level of standard, so far the studio has been extremely helpful by showing me new areas of print such as gold leaf and varnish