Alison Alder is an artist working predominantly within screen-printing media, technology-based works and "constructed environments" to explore social issues in Australia, including Indigenous Australian communities, and other organisations. She co-founded the Megalo International Silkscreen Collective with a collective of activists including Colin Little, the founder of earthworks Poster Collective, in 1980.
Career and practices
Born in 1958, Alison Alder works within multiple disciplines for her works including screen-printing, animation and installations. Her works have been exhibited throughout Australia, The United States of America and Asia since 1982. Her work is in the possession of many public and private holdings throughout the world including the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art who hold 13 works. Alder is currently an Associate Professor at Australian National University in Canberra and the “Head of Printmedia and Drawing.” Alder received a Diploma of Arts from the Australian National University: School of Art and Design in Canberra in 1980. After graduating from ANU she completed a Graduate Diploma of Arts at Monash University, Victoria in 2002; she graduated from Monash University: Monash Art Design & Architecture, with a Masters of Fine Art in 2007. Alder's works centre around “empowering communities through the visualisation of common social aims.” Her works focus on research of these communities which include institutions like the Museum of Australian Democracy and Indigenous communities. In a 1982 interview conducted by Anne Morris in Alder's book with Julia Church – “True Bird Grit” – Alder mentions that she created political posters because she is a printmaker, who could produce works that were inexpensive to make and circulate, they were more accessible to a wide population of people during that time than television was.
Works
Alder has been exhibiting works in group exhibitions since 1982 and has held 16 solo exhibitions. Alder's works are held in collections through-out the world including but not limited to the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art, the National Gallery of Australia and the New York Public Library Print Collection.
Alder’s work “When they close a pit they kill a community” is one of the first works created for the KCC Women’s Auxiliary at Redback Graphix. Alder created a bright coloured poster that uses the technique of collage, including a woman figure wearing a yellow apron who holds a sign that states the title as well as “Support the K.C.C Women’s Auxiliary Community Action will Save our Jobs”. Many inspiring activists, feminist, and writers used Alder’s posters in protests and newspaper publications against the issue of unemployed women in the 80s.
Alder created Intervention in direct response to the in Indigenous Australian communities, especially in Tennant Creek. Intervention reflects the consequences of these interventions. One direct effect of these Government actions was “Income Management,” where over half of a welfare recipient’s payments were withheld, and payments could only be spent at registered outlets. This was one of the pieces of legislation that was enforced in the Tennant Creek community. Intervention documents Alder’s direct response and perspective of these Government actions. Intervention is a series of nine screen prints, currently held in the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art.
Alder's Carcass, consists of a series of screen prints of distorted and exaggerated carcasses, which draw from her experience of living in outback Australia. In 2010, Carcass won ‘The Alice Prize.’ Drawing from Sidney Nolan’s 1953 work, about Western Queensland droughts Alder created works that in her mind commented on governmental policies that were put into place throughout Australia’s history since being colonised and the inability to move “past a use and destroy mentality”.
Alder's work was exhibited in “,” in September 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The exhibition focused on artists with a career spanning over 10 years, and highlighted works containing themes of tradition, regional history, politics and historical references. Spanning multiple mediums, the exhibit explored notions of studio-based artistic labour, especially within craft-based mediums. At the time of this exhibition, Alder had been creating works for over two decades.
