War Fair: A case for Peace

Places
Accession Number ARTV00885
Collection type Art
Measurement Overall: 83.2 x 38.2 cm
Object type Poster
Physical description screenprint on paper
Maker Unknown
[S.L : S.N., N.D.]
Place made Australia: New South Wales, Sydney
Date made 1970
Conflict Vietnam, 1962-1975
Copyright

Item copyright: Copyright unknown

Description

This poster promotes a film festival organised in the days leading up to the first Vietnam Moratorium protest on 8 May 1970. In the days surrounding each of the Moratorium marches, events such as film screenings, art shows, and public talks were presented.

The Vietnam Moratorium Campaigns were a result of a conference held in Canberra in November 1969 to plan a series of protests based on the American Moratorium model. There were three Moratorium campaigns in Australia in 1970 and 1971. The Moratorium was the first truly mass movement of the protest against the Vietnam War. Until 1969 the protest had been uncoordinated in a national sense and rallies had been reasonably small in size, whereas the Moratorium mobilised the support of hundreds of thousands. It also succeeded in gaining more publicity in its first six months than had been achieved by the protest movement between 1965 and 1969. The aims of the first campaign were the immediate withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam and repeal of the National Service Act. The Moratorium stated that all actions taken by its members and supporters should be of a non-violent nature and this philosophy was extended throughout Australia through various state committees and others.

The poster features deconstructed images of both a fighter jet (possibly an F100 Super Sabre) and a human. Where the jet is deconstructed into its key components, the human is divided into different cuts of meat, resembling that of cuts of meat in a butcher and hence dehumanising them. The accompanying text advertises films and music at the Mandala Theatre, in Sydney, as a contribution to the May 1970 Moratorium. The Moratorium symbol appears in the lower right.

Related information