Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970–2019

Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970-2019 provides an in-depth look at an unseen history of CalArts and graphic design practice in Southern California. The exhibition, series of conversations and new publication reveal CalArts’ role in the history of contemporary graphic design, while also reflecting on inclusion and representation in the design field.

Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970-2019, features over 300 student and faculty-designed posters from the remarkable — and long unavailable to the public — CalArts Poster Archive. This comprehensive retrospective surveys the history of graphic designers producing experimental work for the numerous artists, musicians, performers, dancers, and thinkers that have visited the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) since its founding in 1970.  

Featuring the work of important figures in Southern California graphic design from the last half century, including influential CalArts alumni and faculty such as Ed Fella, April Greiman, Denise Gonzales Crisp, Geoff McFetridge, Silas Munro, Brian Roettinger, Andrea Tinnes, Tim Belonax, Barbar Glauber, Zak Kyes, and others, the exhibition provides a critical look at a largely unseen history of  contemporary graphic design practice. 

The exhibition, along with a newly conceived publication and a series of conversations reveal CalArts’ role in the history of contemporary design,while offering a critical engagement with questions of race and representation in the design field. While we at REDCAT prepare to reopen, virtual exhibition walkthroughs and streaming conversations provide an in-depth look at the exhibition and the archive’s relationship to contemporary graphic design.

A series of collaborations organized by Black CalArts alumni and show co-organizers, Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton and Silas Munro with students, designers and artists critically engage the archive through new writings, speculative posters and conversations. These will be collected in a publication serving as a critical companion to the new book, Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1980-2019. Munro and Arceneaux-Sutton’s texts function as interventions in the exhibition, reflecting on issues of inclusion, omission, equity, and race in the archive, design practice and education. 

A series of virtual public programs and salons start with “Unseen in the Archives: Inclusion and Omission in Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970-2019” a conversation between exhibition curator and CalArts graphic design faculty Michael Worthington, Arceneaux-Sutton, Munro, and REDCAT Exhibitions Manager Carmen Amengual on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020