In 1979, Jean-Michel Basquiat was beginning his career as an artist in New York City. He and his friend, the artist Jennifer Stein, collaborated to create postcards, which they gave away and sold for $1.

Postcards are wonderful snapshots. They serve to communicate to others what’s going on in your life at any given time. They can be kitschy, sincere, funny, brief or detailed. They can also be accessible and transferable works of art.

Basquiat’s and Stein’s assembled postcards featured elements of collage. Torn pieces from newspapers, candy wrappers and photos commonly make appearances amongst photocopied ink splats and coloured scribbles.

After seeing Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines, use collage, text and image to create your own postcard to take home or donate to the postcard exchange where you can swap your postcard with another.

Developed by Minna Gilligan.

Minna Gilligan works primarily with painting, drawing and collage. Her works are playgrounds of colour, often inhabited by lone protagonists trapped in states of longing, sadness or exhalation. Minna Gilligan has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) at The University of Melbourne. She has held solo exhibitions at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Castlemaine Art Museum, Daine Singer, Melbourne Art Fair, Spring 1883, West Space, TCB Art Inc, Rear View and Dudspace (Melbourne). Gilligan has published three books: Time After Time (Hardie Grant Australia/ Rizzoli New York, 2015), Poems, Prayers and Promises (commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, 2015), and So Far (Bywater Bros, Canada, 2016).