Art is a Weapon takes you back to an Australia gripped by the Cold War. Amid propaganda for and against communism, artists turned to an image familiar to most Australians; the Southern Cross flag of the Eureka Stockade.
Maurice Carter (1920-1965) was a printmaker active in Melbourne and in socialist politics. He was a friend of Noel Counihan, who encouraged him to create his own linocuts. Five of these were published in 1949 as Our Street and concerned life in South Melbourne.
Portrait of Noel Counihan, 1976. Photographer: Julie Millowick. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
Noel Counihan (1913-1986) is the most prominent and well-known of the artists in the portfolio. Active in the Social Realist movement and the Communist Party of Australia, Counihan took part in demonstrations organised by the CPA in 1933, after the Victorian government passed laws banning gatherings it deemed subversive. Unemployed people were arrested for holding meetings of various support groups. Counihan was arrested after addressing a large crowd from a locked cage atop a truck. Counihan worked as a cartoonist, notably for the Bulletin, and experimented with painting later in his career. He was a prominent linocut artist and the museum holds a collection of his work in this field.
Ernie Macfarlane (1929-) was born to Australian parents in the United States and came to Australia in 1932. After studying science at the University of Melbourne he studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria school and became involved with the Melbourne Popular Art Group, although unlike many of the group and contributors to the Eureka portfolio, he was not a member of the Communist Party. The blacksmith linocut is his only published artwork.
Peter Miller (1921-1998) was born in Sheffield, England. He was a member of the Communist Party and a friend to Noel Counihan. Like other artists in the MPAG, he had studied at the National Gallery of Victoria’s art school.
Ailsa O’Connor (1921-1980) joined the Communist Party in 1944. In 1953 she was the Victorian delegate to the World Congress of Women in Copenhagen, a trip which also took her to Eastern Europe. That same year, she was a founding member of the Union of Australian Women. Her artistic career covered painting, sculpture and screenprinting.
Pat O’Connor (1924-) joined the Eureka Youth League and the Communist Party for their social activities, and took art classes through the EYL with Noel Counihan. The License Hunt, produced in a single sitting, was her only piece of art produced that was published or printed. Pat married the brother of Vic O’Connor, who was also very prominent in social realist art movements in Melbourne during the 1950s and 1960s.
Ray Wenban (1893-1991) was a World War I veteran, and afterwards primarily a painter and illustrator. His best-known works were paintings with a Three Musketeers theme. He also did illustrative and design work for Sanitarium Health Foods. (source: Dave Wenban)
Mary Zuvella (1928-) daughter of Yugoslav migrants, was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and the Eureka Youth League when the Eureka portfolio was produced. She studied art at the National Gallery School in Melbourne and later taught art at RMIT. She had several studios in Melbourne and was a prominent artist in the Melbourne community, usually depicting urban women in daily life. She was primarily known as Mary Hammond, her married name. Her work is currently held by, among others, the Australian War Memorial, the State Library of Victoria and Artbank.