Lip (magazine)

Lip, A Feminist Arts Journal, or just Lip, was an Australian interdisciplinary feminist art journal, published between 1976 and 1984. It was the first of its kind in Australia.

The magazine was founded by Suzanne Spunner, who had been involved in the organising of the International Women's Film Festival in 1975.

The magazine was self-published by a feminist collective during the era of the women's liberation movement, and its content included a very wide range of feminist positions and interdisciplinary art forms, in addition to work that connected the local scene to a more international network. The magazine was based in Carlton, Victoria.

The Lip collective also organised art shows, curated critical essays, and additionally published the Earthworks Poster Collective, The Women’s Theatre Group and The Women’s Film Group.

In 2013 Vivian Ziherl published an anthology of Lip articles.

The lip collective was established in the late 1960 by Suzanne Spooner, the founder of the lip collective feminist arts journal (eyeondesign.org ), she founded the magazine while living in Australia. This kind of magazine was the first to appear of its kind at the time, meaning it had a great impact within Australia in the 70s.

This means it was crucial for the women in the collective to build a community and inspire social change and take the lead in attempting to push new social norms, such as women, having more rights, the right over their own bodies and the choices they make While also accepting the LGBTQ plus community into society and taking a step forward to remove any stigma around being yourself.

The modern-day LIP magazine was founded by Suzanne Spunner who had been involved in the organising of the international women’s film festival in 1975 (eyeondesign.org ) and has been creating activist design and print since then. The name liberation in PRINT has been used since the 1970s, LIP magazine was a group of strangers that came from four different continents, including activist, writers, graphic designers, sociologists, publishers, and artists. All of these people being women or people who are non-binary, and all came from different backgrounds and different ages.

The collective mid work from digital archives and academic texts scan journals, magazines, and newspapers articulately finding stories about labour love, hierarchies, friendships, conflict, losses, and the daily lives of women(futuress.org ).

Their work is both political and poetic, giving a voice to stories and situations which may have previously been unheard. In their design, they covered topics such as women’s rights and the acceptance of the LGBTQ plus community.

LIP started out as a feminist arts journal in Australia between 1976 and 1984 (eyeondesign.org) and has developed over its time to become a new magazine which covered for continents of the world.

The lip collective has shown their design and artwork at exhibitions, spreading the word with their meaningful design and artwork. Their design and artwork have been created by activists, pushing new narratives into society attempting to create a space where women are equal and have freedom, as well as the LGBTQ plus community being able to express themselves freely without hesitation. The artwork has a clear indication that the people who are making it had complete freedom all their choices and their artistic techniques.

The lip collective supported one another in their work by listening to each other’s progress and bringing each other’s ideas and perspectives to the table to share feedback and New, books, films, documentaries, and TV shows together ideas for the magazine, they would do this every Wednesday for six weeks.

Liberation in print collective’s findings were collected in a zine, an exhibition and now can be read in futuress’s feminist findings vertical. (futuress.org). The L.i.P. Collectives names are Zenobia Ahmed, Yanchi Huang, Sophia Yuet See, Silva Baum, Phoebe Eustance, Pauline Piguet, Noemi Parisi, Nina Paim, Naïma Ben Ayed, Mujgan Abdulzade, Mio Kojima, Maya Ober, Mariachiara De Leo, Madeleine Morley, Loraine Furter, Klaudia Mazur, Floriane Misslin, Fanny Maurel, Eugénie Zuccarelli, Elham Namvar, Delphine Bedel, Corin Gisel, Clara Amante, Carolyn Kerchof, Barbora Demovičová, and Amy Gowen.

Each lip member designed their own story for the Zine using type faces and fonts created by women type designers, and in a riso print friendly colour, which explains the block colouring within the work. The individuality created fluctuation and expanding of the work while also creating uniformity within their design as they consistently worked as a team to create the pages of their magazine.(www.tique.art )