The University of Wollongong library has officially launched its Satire to Sex: Oz Magazine 1963-1973 exhibition in its Panizzi room. Co-founder of the Australian Oz magazine Richard Walsh launched the exhibition – a celebration of the iconic counter-culture publication.
Oz magazine was created by Walsh, Richard Neville, and Martin Sharp to challenge the status quo of the traditional publications of the time.
The exhibition comes after the library acquired the rights to the full archive of issues of the London and Australian Oz magazines. The library has digitised the collection and made it free for all to view and download.
“It’s now over 50 years old, it’s a historical document, a historical record of the ’60s of the times and so it’s deserving of digitisation,” Manager of Repository Services Michael Organ said.
“This now allows people around the world students, whoever to actually go and have a look at OZ look at the issues raised and get a feel for what the ’60s were all about.”
The exhibition highlights the celebrated art and graphic style Oz and Martin Sharp. Guests at the launch also had the chance to take a tour through Sharp’s original Yellow House Art Gallery thanks to virtual reality technology Unreal 4 and Oculus Rift.
“The Yellow House project is just beginning it’s our hope that this is going to become a virtual gallery so that students will be able to demonstrate their own works in it as well as being a historical curation of the Yellow House,” Dr Chris Moore said.
“It’s amazing. Perhaps everybody soon will be relating to the past with these new futuristic devices,” London Oz co-editor Jim Anderson said.
The exhibition runs until 15 January, 2016.
height=”600″ />