Exhibition shines light on historic propaganda posters

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING new exhibition at the Golden Dragon Museum presented in partnership with La Trobe University showcases 19 Chinese propaganda posters from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The posters were drawn from La Trobe’s Emeritus Professor Stewart Fraser’s (1929–2001) collection, who founded the university’s School of Education and acquired the detailed works during visits to China from the 1970s onwards.

Politically driven in nature, they appear to promote views on issues such as civic duty, public health, community life and unity.

The exhibition’s curator, Dr Jacqui Shelton, said that along with museum collections manager Megan Hall, the pair wanted to highlight some of the pieces they felt could speak to, or be relatable or interesting for the Chinese diasporic community that visits Bendigo.

“Through my research (I) was able to pull out a few different thematics that were in the collection,” she said.

“We’ve loosely grouped this around New Year Nianhua posters, which was a folk tradition of posters that would happen during Lunar New Year, often expressing young babies with symbology for good luck and affluence and promises for the New Year.

“We also have a group of posters that are loosely referred to as the Huxian Peasant Painters.

“They’re beautiful because they draw on a lot of Western art tropes or formalist compositional ideas that you might see in more Renaissance paintings, but (are designed) to communicate this idea of the community being hard workers and farmers but still enjoying life.

“Finally, we’ve got a few posters near the entrance to the (main) gallery that feature lions and lion dancing, which we thought was a beautiful pairing to have here with all the ceremonial dragons and lions.”

Changing Times: Posters From the Stuart E Fraser Collection runs until 17 August at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bridge Street.