Founded in 1970, a small theatre company in Sydney turned the arts scene on its head. Its promotional posters were as lively and progressive as its performances.
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In the late 1960s, after two decades of conservative government, Sydney was experiencing a countercultural shift. Australia was dealing with its participation in the Vietnam War, the early sparks of trade union unrest and general disillusionment with a lack of political and social change. The elitist and provincial attitudes of the Australian establishment created the perfect conditions for an alternative swell. A group of restless writers, performers and artists — many of whom would go on to become household names — agitated for change.
The influential and notorious OZ magazine was an integral part of this cultural shift. Started in 1963 by publisher Richard Walsh, writer Richard Neville and artist Martin Sharp — as students at the University of Sydney, University of NSW and the National Art School respectively — OZ pushed the boundaries of social commentary and taste. As Walsh noted in an article for The Australian, ‘Like lots of young people, we wanted to take the place by the scruff of the neck and change it.’ Australia’s conservative landscape meant that some of the university’s alumni decided that ‘swinging’ London offered the best hope for having their voices heard. As well as the OZ team, this exodus included Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) alumni, John Bell and Ken Horler.
Like many of their contemporaries, the international experience gained was pivotal and invaluable. On their return, Horler approached Bell about creating an alternative theatre company that would disrupt the traditional scene and showcase contemporary Australian playwrights, actors and directors. In 1970, they leased an old stable in Darlinghurst in inner-city Sydney. With their acting friends, Bell and Horler set about converting 10 Nimrod Street into a 150-seat venue. The Nimrod Theatre was born. The Nimrod set out to speak to — and about — modern Australia. Young, brash and fun, it produced plays that were fresh and relevant. It produced many ground-breaking Australian plays including David Williamson’s early works The Removalists and The Club; Nick Enright and Terence Clarke’s musical comedy The Venetian Twins; Thomas Keneally’s Bullie’s House; and Alma De Groen’s first play, The Sweatproof Boy. It brought a new set of writers, directors and actors to national attention, creating a wave which would form the future of Australian theatre.
The spontaneous and direct form of the graphics used in the Nimrod’s promotional posters, mirrored the energy of the writing and the themes they explored. The artists who worked with Nimrod shared a cultural world and moved in the same small Sydney circles.
Around that time, a number of artists’ collectives — including the Earthworks Poster Collective at Sydney University — were producing politicised artworks. These drew attention to the social injustices that were part of the lingering ‘White Australia’ immigration policy, as well as the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people and the burgeoning struggle for women’s liberation. These collectives embodied a visual movement that was springing up in print studios across Australia and whose posters were populating inner-city telegraph poles and walls. The Nimrod posters used similar vibrant techniques with deliberately unrefined illustration and typography, and the varied styles became a defining artistic feature of this emerging counterculture.
Nimrod’s wide-ranging poster styles came in ever-changing sizes. There were no guidelines to follow or a corporate identity to adhere to. This freedom gave the posters a freshness and life; it’s their rawness and spontaneity that connects them. Artistic director and actor John Bell said, ‘In our early days our programming was deliberately startling, so that people never knew what to expect of us next.’ The posters reflected this.
The Nimrod posters were mainly printed as simple – often black and white – offset-litho or screen-print. The Pop Art movement made screen-printing, a traditionally commercial medium, relevant as an artform. Screen-printing was an effective way to produce multiple inexpensive copies. For students and activists, it provided a means for immediate mass expression and created a modern visual language. Poster typography was either hand drawn or applied using lettering transfer systems like Letraset, sold in sheets at art shops and local newsagents. The simple methods used were dependent on the preference of the artist or designer involved.
A range of designers, printmakers and artists produced posters for Nimrod: Janet Dawson, Tony McGillick, Kevin Brooks, Sylvia Jansons, Sally Toone, Anny Evason and Brett Whiteley. Each of them bringing a unique style that added to the Nimrod’s eclectic approach. But the artist who produced what are now seen as Nimrod’s most iconic posters was OZ magazine art director Martin Sharp. Sharp had gone to the UK with Richard Neville and revived the magazine in London before leaving prior to the infamous obscenity court case. His Pop Art aesthetic went on to become one of the defining visual elements of the psychedelic era. His album cover for Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Mister Tambourine Man poster for Bob Dylan ended up on many late 1960s bedroom walls.
When Sharp arrived back in Sydney in 1970 his work was in demand. When his association with Nimrod began in 1973, it gave the theatre arguably more than it gave him. Sharp’s alternative sensibilities created posters that became synonymous with Nimrod and all it stood for. As with many of the artists associated with the theatre, he also designed some of the stage sets and costumes. His graphic style was unique and made the Nimrod recognisable. His iconic image of Roy Rene’s famously irreverent 1930s vaudeville character, the larrikin Mo McCackie — for the 1978 play Young Mo —became Nimrod’s unofficial logo. Martin Sharp explained the process in an interview with the National Portrait Gallery, ‘I was asked to do a poster by Richard Wherrett for a Nimrod Theatre production of Portrait of Young Mo something, something, a very, very long title. And it was so much in the title you couldn’t even fit it on the poster, so I decided just do a picture of Mo and title it Nimrod, and it spoke for itself.’ In 1982, Nimrod began selling Sharp’s posters in screen-printed editions of 1000 to raise funds for the theatre. They are now highly sought after. Sharp saw his role as ‘…trying to tidy up and sort things out, and I think art is just about tidying up, really. And to tidy up you’ve got to make a mess, you know?’
In 1973, as the Nimrod’s success grew, the company embarked on a shrewd campaign, involving Rupert Murdoch and Gough Whitlam amongst others, to fund a new home. It worked. The company created a larger, purpose-built theatre on a former tomato sauce factory site in Surry Hills, which they moved into in June 1974, ‘still rough enough to encourage the revolution, but comfortable enough not to frighten the bourgeoisie’, as critic Jeremy Eccles put it. Now known as the Belvoir Street Theatre, the new space had venues upstairs and downstairs, the lower level being home to more experimental theatre. At this time, the Nimrod was thriving. It was the beginning of a five-year golden period of home-grown, socially informed performance, and arresting poster art.
By 1979 it seemed some of Nimrod’s freshness and energy was starting to wane. The established theatre company in Sydney, The Old Tote, had dissolved. The Nimrod believed it was best positioned to take its place and become the city’s main theatre company. The New South Wales Government had other ideas, however, and financed the creation of the Sydney Theatre Company. Nimrod’s John Bell, Ken Horler and Richard Wherrett applied to be its first artistic director. Wherrett got the job. This period also saw Horler ousted from the company he had started. Some of the magic on stage was also beginning to fade. Meanwhile, the burgeoning Sydney Theatre Company went from strength to strength.
In 1984, The Nimrod sold its Surry Hills theatre and moved to the larger Seymour Centre Theatre, connected to the University of Sydney. Despite staging more ambitious productions of the classics, revenue declined. The move back to the university where it had all started proved to be the end — the Nimrod Theatre folded in 1988. Like many of the alternative artistic collectives that sprung up in the late-1960s and early-1970s, the issues that prompted their existence had evolved and changed. The once-radical student founders were now the established artists who controlled contemporary Australian theatre.
Across its 18 years of existence, Nimrod produced more than 100 new Australian plays. The original venue in Nimrod Street is now called The Stables and is home to the equally progressive Griffin Theatre Company who also produce new Australian plays and give greater exposure to Indigenous playwrights and stories. The Griffin is currently in the process of securing the funding to renovate the space, little changed since the Nimrod days.
Nimrod poster art is now being discovered by a new generation of artists and designers looking to embrace printmaking and utilise the power of socially relevant graphics. Exhibitions, like the 2019 National Art School’s ‘Paper Tigers: Posters From Sydney’s Long 70s’ showcase this unique period, and the art that defined it. The Nimrod posters are a key part of a recognisable 1970s and 1980s aesthetic, and an important part of the Library’s collections. Today, art and graphics students in Australia and beyond are reconnecting with traditional craft and discovering the simple immediacy of printmaking. This is supporting the rebirth of small-scale counterculture zines and street art. The Nimrod posters serve as a timely reminder of the powerful role art can play in speaking to, and for, a generation.
Published in ‘Openbook’, the magazine of the State Library of New South Wales.
1. Quote attributed to theatre critic Jeremy Eccles from Cathie Clelland's Visualising Nimrod: A study of the Nimrod Theatre Company posters with reference to their theatrical and cultural context, p.59 —
Neil Armfield, ‘Patrick White: A Centenary Tribute’ in Meanjin Quarterly, Vol.71, No.2, 2012
Glenn Barkley, Katie Dyer, Multiplicity: prints and multiples from the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art and The University of Wollongong, 2006
Cathie Clelland, Visualising Nimrod: A study of the Nimrod Theatre Company posters with reference to their theatrical and cultural context, a thesis submitted as partial requirement for the degree of Master of Arts of the Australian National University, 1997
Julian Meyrick, See How It Runs: Nimrod and the New Wave, Currency Press, 2002
‘Famous faces and quiet achievers’ on The University of Sydney website
‘Ken Horler: Man of theatre, civil libertarian and barrister’ in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2018
‘Richard Neville, Richard Walsh and the Story of Oz’ in The Australian, 2006