A night at the museum

Access all areas!

Last night I went to the opening launch of the AC/DC: Australia's Family Jewels exhibition at the WA Museum. I managed to score two VIP tix for the event, and I'm so glad I did because they had an awesome tribute band playing beforehand as well as a bagpipe player leading everyone into the exhibition. Members of Bon Scott's family were there as well as people from Alberts Music (AC/DC's original recording label).

A photo wall where you could post a note. I wrote: Angus Young, my high-school crush ♥

The exhibit had personal photos, handwritten lyrics, letters to Bon's wife Irene, gig posters and Angus' school uniform. They even had a huge screen at the back playing loud music and concert footage from Donnigton. Plus there were smaller screens playing interviews with the band from the early days. For an AC/DC nut like me (see this post) it was rock'n'roll heaven!

Gig posters, clothing, original Dirty Deeds album artwork and backstage passes.

I was reading a few of Bon's letters and what really struck me was that even in the very early days of AC/DC he was aiming for the top. There was no doubt in his mind that AC/DC were going to make it big one day.

Anyway, it was an awesome exhibition and you could tell so much effort was made to design it. I went to so many school excursions to the museum as a kid, and I never would have expected them to come up with something so entertaining like this. After seeing this one, I would love for the WA Museum to show more pop culture exhibitions!

Thunder!

 
Today is Angus Young's birthday. Yep, the devilish schoolkid turns 56 (!)

I was so totally nutso about AC/DC when I was in high school. I listened to them constantly, even listening to grainy bootlegs of live recordings. Hanging out with people, I would tell them obscure facts about the band, regaling how they had to cross the Nullarbor to travel to gigs (though I was often met with glassy-eyed stares). Classes at school were an opportunity to practice drawing the AC/DC logo in the margins of my school paper. And whenever there was a project at school where you had some freedom in choosing the topic, well, I didn't even have to think about what to base the project on.

It was about this time that I discovered the Art of Modern Rock book, profiling the work of gig poster artists. I was hooked. One day in Art class, we were given the project of designing a movie poster, and naturally I chose the feature film Let There Be Rock. When deciding on how to create the poster, I chose the somewhat ambitious task of doing an A2 size eleven colour process screen print.

Looking back on these posters, it kinda makes me want to try my hand at silk screening again. Although the final result was pretty basic and unrefined with quite a few mistakes, I really like the raw and textural feel of the screen print. No two posters are alike, and it feels a bit more special that I screened all the colour separations myself, rather than just clicking the print button.

And just a note for those of you who live in WA, the Western Australian Museum will be holding an exhibition called AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels running from 16 April to 7 August 2011. Can't wait!