Art Was Their Weapon: The History of the Perth Workers' Art Guild

Description

The politics, art and culture of Perth's Workers Art Guild are detailed in this comprehensive history, as well as the personal and professional lives of some of the movement's key figures. The Workers' Art Guild was a left-leaning political force and influential cultural movement of the 1930s and 1940s in Perth. Police and intelligence arms kept close tabs on the Guild and its members, jailing some and intimidating many others prior to and during the period of the banning of the Communist Party in Australia. The book covers the personal and professional lives of key figures such as writer Katharine Susannah Prichard and theatre maverick Keith George, while charting the influence of the Communist Party on Western Australian artists.

Dylan Hyde was born in the United States and raised in Perth before emigrating to Melbourne in his late teenage years where he currently lives with his wife and two children. He has an ongoing interest in historical research and writing, specifically in the areas of art and political history. His published works to date have been an article on the Workers' Art Guild in Papers in Labour History (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, No 18, March 1997) and a short piece in The Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia (UWA Press, 2009). Dylan previously worked in film and television production.