Music ephemera a rare glimpse into Tasmania's underground culture

Australia Broadcast Center

5 hours ago

Music posters and handbills spanning 30 years of live performance in Hobart have been donated to Libraries Tasmania.
They offer a rare glimpse into underground music culture in Tasmania from the 1990s onwards, focusing on when bands largely relied on street advertising rather than the internet to promote shows.
Acting heritage librarian Alex Tassell said memorabilia, such as music posters, band T-shirts and DIY music releases, was "really valuable" because it was ephemeral and often not kept for preservation purposes.
Musician and library worker Julian Teakle donated the posters.
He said they held huge sentimental value, but public access to documentation of Hobart's underground music scene was important.
Mr Teakle can recall looking for expired local music advertisements when doing poster runs, starting in the 1990s, for his own bands and gigs he had organised.
As he put posters up, he would take down expired local music posters for keeping.
"I put a lot of hard work into this gig."
He accumulated more than 150 items, some gathered on the streets of Hobart and others given to him by friends.
Mr Teakle shared the advertisements on social media, on his page Goulburn Street Archive, but after decades of collecting, he questioned what to do with the physical posters and handbills.
The items are now rare because they were not made to last.
"I didn't want it to stay in my garage and get gradually damaged … I didn't want the silverfish to get them," Mr Teakle said.
To ensure free access for current and future generations, he donated the collection to Libraries Tasmania.
He said preservation of the posters was important to understanding street culture and life in Hobart.
His donation to the library is now called the Teakle Poster Collection.
"History isn't all about the big things, it's about what people were doing on a day-to-day basis." Mr Teakle said
"All that is represented by some of these gigs is the poster, there's no other documentation.
It is more than music documented on the posters and handbills Mr Teakle collected.
Many of the venues where performances took place have ceased to exist.
Venues such as Round Midnight, the Doghouse, which later became the Goulburn Hotel, and the Brisbane Hotel appear in the collection.
Mr Tassel, who played in bands in Hobart, can remember sticky floors, stale beer and local characters in venues.
He said people could respond quite emotionally to seeing library collection items that evoked memories.
"I know so many people who were around this sort of music, who are really excited to see this sort of stuff," Mr Tassel said.
The collection also preserves the work of local artists.
Illustrations by internationally successful Tasmanian cartoonist Simon Hanselmann are on several posters.
In 2022, his cartoon series Megg, Mogg and Owl had its animated debut on streaming service Hulu, featuring the voice of actor Macauley Culkin.
Hanselmann's early designs are reminiscent of his current style.
Not all posters and handbills in the collection feature the work of known artists; many are made with creative use of a photocopier and marker pens.
"There's great variety," Mr Tassell said.
"It's really the DIY thing of people [making] their own posters."
The musicians and artists who created the posters and handbills now held by Libraries Tasmania likely never imagined they would be enclosed in archival-grade sleeves and made available for public access decades later.
The memorabilia is part of a growing collection of cultural ephemera kept by the library.
Band T-shirts, restaurant menus and stage show posters can also be found.
Mr Tassell was particularly interested in donations that documented Tasmania's underground music scene.
"I'm always happy to look and chat about things people may have and if there's a place for it in our collection," Mr Tassell said.
Mr Teakle continues to find posters and handbills stashed away at home that he is donating to Libraries Tasmania.
"There's a huge sentimental value, I look at these posters and they're pivotal moments of my life," Mr Teakle said.
"But I know that as this is a public collection, I can access them at any time."