A fresh look through the Windows of TASS

Above: 3 original TASS posters plus new artworks by Patrick Jones and Mark Godwin

To coincide with the Russian New Year, Kino Teatr are featuring an exhibition of original, stencil cut and hand-painted Soviet posters. These were used to promote State information to the Russian public during the Second World War and throughout the 1950s. Baker Mamonova Gallery has invited contemporary British and Russian artists with an interest in these powerful and striking graphics to produce a piece of work in response using the same stencil techniques. These will be displayed alongside the original TASS posters. Erica Smith looks through the Kino-Teatr windows to review the Windows of Tass.

TASS was the Soviet News Agency and the original posters in this exhibition were designed during World War 2 to raise morale on the home front as the Nazis advanced towards Moscow, Leningrad and the Volga. After WW2, TASS posters became a running commentary on the affairs of the day, dealing with public information subjects such as: education, exploring the North, an anti-alcoholism campaign, support for women in management etc.

Since they were first created in June 1941, TASS posters have had immense communicative value and visual impact thanks to the skills of the painters and poets who produced them. The posters continue the tradition of the avant garde artists and designers of 1917–1922 such as Rodchenko and Mayakovsky, who turned a pre-revolutionary popular format of ‘lubok’ into a sharp and powerful art form. Later TASS posters used stencils, inks and images cut in squares to be hand coloured and reprinted, with the text pasted onto the final design.

The current exhibition is an attempt to break the boundaries by inviting contemporary artists to produce artworks inspired by the original TASS posters. The artists include Patrick Jones, Mark Godwin, Ed Williams, Danny Mooney, Jonathan Parkin, Russell Baker, David Henderson and Anya Tchepets.

The show runs from Wednesday 13 January to Friday 4 March 2016 at
Baker Mamonova Gallery, 43–49 Norman Road, St Leonards-on-Sea  TN38 0EQ
For opening times and more information, visit www.bakermamonova.co.uk

Also in: Visual Arts