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The title of Chris Howlett’s exhibition comes from the characterisation of ‘Propaganda’ posters as Weapons on the Wall. The exhibition charts a complex trajectory from the relative simplicity of this idea to a situation in which the tactics of propaganda have become so deeply imbedded within the fabric of our culture, that it becomes virtually indistinguishable from media reporting, advertising, cinema or reality television. Howlett draws a relationship between art in the service of propaganda and art as a form of resistance to such political control, asking, ‘Is Art still a viable form of protest, or has it become just another cog that greases the wheels of the propaganda industry?’1
Entering The Farm art space, the viewer is immediately immersed in diatribe—hand-drawn imagery and text on cardboard, videos, digital prints and painted appropriations of magazine covers fill the walls, floor and ceiling. Beer bottles (the debris of the opening night), toy soldiers, books, magazines and various cardboard structures (including a tank) litter the scene. Television monitors feature news reports from the ‘ground zero’ of September 11, the cartoon violence of the Simpsons, episodes of M*A*S*H, and computer games that attempt to mimic military conflict ‘realistically’.
The hand-drawn placards are made in imitation of ones observed at protests or in the media, and range from the humorous (the only Bush that I trust is my own) to the encyclopaedic (as in the A-Z of American Oppression). Interspersed throughout these is hate propaganda, anti-Semitic and pro-segregationist material, rendered in similar style and also sourced from documentary images. The installation also features large watercolour paintings based on TIME, Art in America and Vogue magazine covers (with modified/superimposed headlines)