My goal for this project is to create an artificial space where a community of people can come together to create a unified voice. This artificial space mimics a wall found in the sort of DIY music venue typically seen in larger cities. Over the years, various bands and artists plaster whatever they want onto such walls, creating a unique history for the space. My inspiration mainly draws from street artists, punk culture, and indie culture. The music created by these communities serves as a voice for its members. Concert posters represent a microcosm of this voice, as do street art and political flyers. As time goes on, the values and ideas that the various artistic movements hold changes, as mainstream culture begins to absorb or reject these ideas, making these underground movements ever shifting and changing. While places like this exist in larger cities, less populous areas often lack these sorts of communities. Yet, with the rise of the Internet, and our increasingly interconnected lives, these communities that before typically only existed in centers of culture, can now have members all across the globe.
For this project, I found hundreds of posters made by members of indie communities from around the world and from the last half-century. Artistic and cultural movements are ever expanding and evolving, which I show by using both old and new posters, as well as including some of my own. My work featured on the wall touches on the current state of these movements and how I relate to them. Some of the ideas seen in both the found posters and my own designs conflict, as past movements meet the new ones, creating a unique dialogue between the different movements featured.
-Gabe Craig
Gabriel Craig, Communal Consciousness, Wall Installation, 2020