Arrivederci Italia: the Cozzolino family embarking for Australia at Port of Trieste. Bidding us farewell are my auntie and uncle, 1961
From 1975 to 1978 I was the public face of the illustration and design cooperative All Australian Graffiti. That’s one of our folio cases I am holding. The case was designed by my partner Con Aslanis and constructed by Robert Reid. Photography: Tim Handfield, 1976
In 1980, after thousands of hours of research over a 7 year period, I published Symbols of Australia, a book that records and explores Australia’s national identity through trademarks. Fysh Rutherford helped me edit and write the book. Cover illustration by Geoff Cook. You can order the book here.
I love Australian tea-towels so much that I had a suit made from them. In fact, two. One is now in the RMIT Design Archive. Photography: Mike Rutherford, 1991
I SPENT THE FIRST 12 YEARS OF MY LIFE growing up in Italy until my Dad decided to emigrate to Australia.
In 1961, with my family, I arrived in Melbourne to a new beginning. Almost from day one I’ve been in love with Australia.
In 2001, after an eclectic career as a graphic designer I decided I needed a sea change and a chance to pursue my passion for making art. In 2003 I exhibited Flush: 1990-2003 a series of high resolution scans of found objects. In that year I also won the Leica/CCP Documentary Photography Award with the series Arcadia del Sud.
In 2005 I exhibited Sub-Urban Shadow-Plays a series of photomedia tableaux portraits I constructed with my sitters. Around this time I also started making short videos based on simple music boxes and animated toys.
The flatbed scanner has always fascinated me as a recording tool. Some years ago I started using the scanner in the same way one uses a view camera, upright, and sitting my subjects about 50 cm to 120 cm away. I found the results Scams are intriguing and in 2007 I began a series of portraits using the scanner. This is work in progress.
My interest in photography goes back to the mid 1960s when, as a teenager, I first started taking snaps with my Dad's Voigtländer 35 mm viewfinder camera. The archive of pictures I took in those times and later has been a rich source of material for research. I used it, among other things, to complete an MFA on the relationship between photography, autobiography and archives.
In 2019 I exhibited Moments, a series of paintings in mixed media on X-ray film at Tacit Galleries. Even though I have been painting for a while, and I have sold work privately, this was the first time I exhibited paintings. I am now working towards my next exhibition.
After I trained as a graphic designer in 1971, I found my first job in Sydney. I missed my friends so I returned to Melbourne where I started a freelance studio with my best mate and Greek èmigrè, Con Aslanis. We were two "wogs" looking for an identity. We called the studio "All Australian Graphics".
Inherent in the studio's name was the tongue-in-cheek proposition: can migrants create design content that is All Australian, and, in turn, what is Australian design anyway? In the Australia of the early 1970s these were rather oddball (if not philosophical) questions that not many designers were asking. As migrants we needed to ask them to help define ourselves. Commercially it differentiated our studio from all the others in Melbourne at the time and helped us get interesting work.
I spent 1974 travelling overland to London. An eye-opener for a budding designer.
In 1975, back in Australia, we renamed our studio "All Australian Graffiti" (AAG) and added more partners. Among the thousands of illustrations we produced for our publishing and advertising clients we also created the irreverent Kevin Pappas Tear Out Postcard Book (Penguin, 1977). With the help of Penguin's publicity machine our book made it to national television, radio, print and the bestsellers list for 1977.
When AAG disbanded in 1978, I took a sabbatical from freelancing to complete the research for Symbols of Australia (Penguin, 1980), the first book to trace the history of Australian trademarks. "Symbols" has become a valuable reference book and has sold over 45,000 copies. You can buy a copy here.
In my role as a sessional teacher of design at tertiary level (I first started teaching part time in 1973) I became conscious early on that the rich Australian commercial art/design heritage was being ignored by design educators. It has been a hobby horse of mine to encourage research into this field. I believe that we need to train young designers to not only make eloquent marks but to speak eloquently about their mark-making. Critical awareness of tradition helps to build this eloquence. I am encouraged by the progress I have seen in recent times. mc 2019
NB: the links in this article connect to my still active historical website mimmocozzolino.com.au
SELECTED Exhibitions
2023
• Zodiac–Ancient Myths, Modern Twists, Wolfhound Galleries, Melbourne (group)
2022
• Scintilla, Tacit Galleries, Melbourne (group)
2022
• 21AD, fortyfive downstairs, Melbourne (group)
2019
• Moments, Tacit Galleries, Melbourne (solo)
2012
• After I die: archives, autobiography, photography, Postgraduate Gallery Monash University, (solo)
2011
• The changing face of Victoria, Dome Galleries, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (solo)
2010
• The Tententen Show, Brunswick Arts Space, Melbourne
2009
• I’m Here! – Stencil and Street Inspired Art, Ochre Gallery, Melbourne
2008
• Triangle Project: Taebak Discourse, Taebak, Korea
• Celebrating RAMSAR, Conference 2008, Gyeongnam ArtMuseum, Korea
2005
• Sub-Urban Shadow-Plays, Walker Street Gallery, Dandenong (solo)
2005
• We’re a Weird Mob, Post Master Gallery at Australia Post, Melbourne
2004
• Vivid, fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
• Design: Asian Pacific Design Exchange Exhibition, Design Center Gallery, Osaka
2003
• Arcadia del Sud, Bungay Art House, Melbourne (solo)
• Arcadia del Sud, Leica/CCP Documentary Photography Award, First Prize
• Flush: 1990-2003, Band Hall Gallery, Kyneton (solo)
1992
• The Lie of the Land, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
1987
• Just Wot!?, an Exhibition of Visual Poetry, Artists Space Gallery, Melbourne
1983
• Fotografics from Italy, Seal Club, Melbourne (solo)
1981
• See/Hear: an Exhibition of Concrete Poetry, 27 Niagara Lane Gallery, Melbourne