The design that underpins social and environmental justice is the Museum of UnRest’s bread and butter. During its first iteration as Paddington Printshop in the 70s and 80s, it designed posters with activists, community groups, and local bands – the likes of Sex Pistols and The Clash’s Joe Strummer. The space then morphed into London Print Studio over the 2000s and again, into today, it became the Museum of UnRest, where The Right to Protest is currently exhibiting in collaboration with Greatorex Street Gallery’s Pro Radix arts space.
Across its walls, bright and bold screen-prints read ‘Read, rebel, revolt!’, ‘No War with Iran’, and ‘You are charged with conspiring to work for peace’. Spanning decades of protest, the exhibition hosts a collection of works marking major social movements from anti-apartheid South Africa, to the trial of Soviet-Russian human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky, and opposition to the Iraq war. To find out more about the radical artwork on display, It’s Nice That spoke to co-curators Dave Bell, Clive Russell, and John Phillips to flesh out this body of work.
“There’s a precarious balancing act since design is rarely neutral nor should it be. There’s always a message, whether it’s against ocean floor dredging or for selling canned tuna,” says Dave, who was previously part of the team at KesselsKramer-run gallery KK Outlet. Each print withholds a story and is soaked in history. The Net is the world’s largest screenprint from Ocean Rebellion, the maritime counterpart of climate group Extinction Rebellion. The record-breaking print represents the 150 metre wide “jaws of a bottom trawling net and has a scale and presence that’s confronting”, says Dave, who sees it as an exhibition stand-out. Clive was part of the crew who created it – he’s a previous member of Extinction Rebellion and designed their recognisable graphic identity too. Through Clive, Dave was introduced to John Phillips – founder of Paddington Printshop in 1975 and has closely followed its journey to today’s Museum of UnRest.
