Big Fag Press

Backgammon games night at SYDNEY to raise funds for the Fagette Duplicator

Backgammon Saloon
8pm TUES 3rd June ‘08
Sydney, 302 Cleveland Street, Sth West Surry Hills

The backgammon Saloon is a super fun night with lots of backgammon, consuming a whole bunch of alcohol (or turkish tee if you dont want to drink) and an outlandish performance. We’ve made a whole lot of screenprinted backgammon boards, a rules of play instruction sheet and also made backgammon pieces by spray painting beer caps for the evening.

There will be backgammon sets and tshirts for sale on the evening to raise money for the Fagette Duplicator!

For more information see below for a description of the Fagette Duplicator. Also be sure to check out the SYDNEY website http://www.officialsydney.com and the Fagette Duplicator site http://www.fagette.net

The Fagette Duplicator: Little sister of The Big Fag, and the bastard child of social media!

The Fagette is a ’stencil press’ that prints a unique and beautiful quality. Stencil presses are best known to most of us through the old Gestetner machines that once sat in the offices of our schools before the photocopier came along. These machines are still used in many schools and churches however the technology has dramatically improved. Stencil presses are now digital, multi-colour, high definition, and incredibly fast, making them ideal for just-in-time, fast, and easy printed matter. From book-making to printing zines, posters and flyers, The Fagette Duplicator will deliver again and again and again – and again.
The Fagette IS social media involving arts-anti-heroes, metropolitan activists, underground writers, urban researchers, garage rockers and self-publishers of all walks.

The home of The Fagette is Little Fish Gallery at 22 Enmore Rd. Come by and have a look!

Big Brochure Launch a Big Success

The launch of our big brochure was a big success! We sold out of our “first printing” brochures, with a list of orders for the second printing. They are now available so contact us if you would like to buy one (they are ten dollars each, and feature a bonus B1 sized collectable poster -see images above and below).

Meanwhile, the brochure is online page by page as images here. Click on each page to advance forward.

Launching the BIG FAG PRESS BROCHURE as BIG POSTER

BIG FAG PRESS presents the launch of its special edition, collectable, snazzy, BIG FAG PRESS BROCHURE as BIG POSTER

To be opened by Glenn Barkley, curator at the MCA and one of the most prominent collectors of zine, posters and art ephemera.

BIG FAG PRESS is a collectively owned, ethically operated, non-profit community printing press. No other such organisation has existed in Sydney for many years. Whilst much publicity and communication activity for community groups and artists has shifted its focus to an online environment, there is clearly still a need for physical, enduring documents which are, importantly, artworks in themselves.

The gala event will launch a BIG FAG PRESS brochure that folds out to a massive A1+ poster, showing what the press is capable of. A collection of the press’ output to-date will also be on exhibition.

The launch will also be the chance for the collective to introduce its latest development, THE ACQUISITION OF A RISO MACHINE!, (to be called Fagette – Little sister of the Big Fag!) therefore expanding the facilities of the press and giving an extra needed push to Sydney’s independent media.

This project was assisted by a grant from Arts NSW, an agency of the New South Wales Government, through a program administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)

Claude Moller Presents Street Art Workers

On January 28th, 2008, Claude Moller came and gave a talk at Sydney, an event co-presented by Big Fag Press.

Claude is an artist from San Francisco, and he spoke about the
Street Art Workers (SAW) ) and their Land and Globalization poster campaign. His presentation involved a provocative discussion about how we might judge “quality” in poster aesthetics. We also debated the effectiveness of art as activism (and vice versa).

A founding member of SAW, Claude presented the DIY entrepreneurial strategies employed by the group, and showed slides documenting their large scale international poster project.

More about SAW:

Established in the U.S. in 2001, SAW is a global network of artists who use graphic art to support social change. SAW makes and distributes posters internationally to publicize the work of local grassroots activism. The group relies on street art to take back cities and towns from the businessmen, cops, and politicians who
define public space for their own benefit. Since 2001, SAW projects have talked about prisons, the mass media, and utopian ideas for the future.

SAW’s latest campaign, Land and Globalization, looks at how corporate globalization has affected our world, how it has impacted the land, and how people are fighting back. This series includes 25 posters representing artists from 10 different countries and over 20 different cities. These posters illustrate specific struggles in countries like Brazil and the United States, and they also tackle international issues around poverty and gentrification. Along with a strong critique of imperialism, the posters show how communities throughout the world are resisting corporate power for a more just and sustainable world.

Claude’s work has been featured in numerous magazines and books, including Stencil Pirates, The Interventionists and Peace Signs.

Inspiring self-printed invoice for the Knust Print Collective

I’ve just been trawling through my Euro treasure to find info on places i visited that are near where the Paris Riots (or “2005 French urban riots”) are happening, and i found this inspiring invoice (64KB) for the Knust printing collective in Nimegan, The Netherlands.
I say we should come up with something just as snazzy!
x>mickie

First beer label design posted here to spur ye all on!

A draft of my first design is here! (40KB)
…hopefully it will spur you all on to get designing!
x>mickie

UPDATE:
and here is one by The Toecutter! (56 KB)

BEER LABEL Template now online!

The following links will give beer-swilling Big Fags the tools for designing their own beer labels.
They will be printed in blue and red! There will be 42 labels on the plate …so get designing you Big Fag!

JPEG template here (25 KB)
JPEG template with notes here (36 KB)

Download the Photoshop file here (1847 KB)
or the Photoshop file with notes here (2201 KB)