MAIL ART EXHIBTION 

THEME :   FOOD FOR THOUGHT

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7 - 28 September 2024

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Now showing at Studio 40

 

The History and Context of Mail Art

 

It was in the late 1950s that standard letters and postcards, through a surge of creativity and in the spirit of anti-institutionalism, grew into what we now know as ‘mail art’. Consisting of postcards, envelopes, rubber stamps, stickers, collage, and other paper ephemera, mail art in fact only has one common characteristic: that it be circulated through the postal service.

 

Although its origins can be traced back to the Dadaists and Italian Futurists, New York artist Ray Johnson is considered by many as the founder of contemporary mail art. In the 1950s, he began sending out small-scale collages he called “moticos,” some of which included simple instructions for the recipient. The mail was often meant to be sent back, or forwarded to another person, creating effective chains of artistic correspondence.

 

Mail art proved to be successful in countering existing institutions and galleries. Artists began corresponding with each other, disseminating their art, and creating notoriety through this unconventional method. Thus, due to its explicitly populist and anti-commercial tenants, mail art found a place within the countercultural art movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

With this communal artistic concept and approach, circles of artists started to form worldwide.

 

Members created gender-bending alter egos and responded to other members’ prompts with artwork that often incorporated wordplay and visual puns.

 

In the 1960s avant-garde artists created postal ephemera such as sheets of postage stamps, rubber stamps, all combined with collage into Mail art, as a democratic response to the often elitist art world, an attempt to dismantle the hierarchical system of museums and galleries. It was a populist form of art, allowing participation simply by writing a letter, sending a postcard, or responding to an open call for submissions. The distinctly democratic, altruistic and inclusive qualities of mail art keep the form alive, even in our digital age.