May 68: Street Posters From Paris

These posters comprise some of the most brilliant graphic works ever to have been associated with a movement for social and political change. Produced anonymously by art students and striking workers, the posters were distributed for free, their bold graphic messages appearing on the barricades, carried in demonstrations and plastered on walls across France.

The exhibition will be on view from 1 May to 1 June 2008 and will include 46 posters drawn from the collection of the American writer and curator, Johan Kugelberg. On New Year's Eve 1967 the French president, Charles de Gaulle, broadcast his annual message to the French public. 'I greet the year 1968 with serenity...It is impossible to see how France today could be paralysed by crisis as she has been in the past.' Just six months later he was fighting for his political life. Anger and frustration over poverty, unemployment and de Gaulle's conservative rule gave rise to a mass movement for social change. An unprecedented wave of wild-cat strikes, walkouts and demonstrations by students, followed by a general strike, paralysed the French capital.

On 16 May students and faculty spontaneously took over the Ecole des Beaux Arts to form the Atelier Populaire (Popular Workshop), producing hundreds of silkscreen posters in an extraordinary outpouring of political graphic art. In a statement, the Atelier Populaire declared the posters 'weapons in the service of the struggle...an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centres of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories'. Created using bold colours on white backgrounds, these posters combine imagery with slogans to provocative effect: A green tank sits beneath the slogan 'Light wages – Heavy Tanks'; de Gaulle appears with a Hitler moustache; and a beautifully stylised flock of sheep is accompanied by the phrase 'return to normal'.

The exhibition is organised by Johan Kugelberg in collaboration with Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward, and Jeff Boardman, Creative Director of Freewheelin'. It is supported by Converse.

Johan Kugelberg, says: "This selection of posters conjures up a radical past and will hopefully inspire a reaction against complacency. The ideas behind this uprising, and its spontaneous and rebellious outpouring in graphic art, should be utilised by us all."

Ralph Rugoff, says: "The Hayward opened in 1968, an extraordinary year which saw student uprisings across the globe, political assassination in the US and campaigning for equal rights for women and black people. This exhibition will show a new generation the important role art played in 1960s political activism, and how this legacy lives in the work of artists and graphic designers today." To complement this exhibition, Magnum Photos will present a projection of photographs by Bruno Barbey, whose record of the Paris riots produced some of the most iconic images from that year.

Of that time, Bruno Barbey, says: 'The emergency was to communicate, to talk to each other, to question everything. It was the rebellion of a whole generation against what society had in principle prepared for it, a rebellion against everything that came from above. Slogans covered the walls: "It is forbidden to forbid", "Beneath the cobble stones, the beach", "Enjoy with no hindrances" ... It was the rebellion of the youth of one of the richest countries in the world.'

May 68 is part of All Power to the Imagination! 1968 and Its Legacies, a season of events across London. The programme marks the creative resistance of a remarkable year, while placing its lessons in the context of our own times. From April to June this major season explores 1968 culture, politics and thought and their legacy manifestations in cinema, visual art, literature, music and activism. -- www.southbankcentre.co.uk