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When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow pp 155–179Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Mambo Clothing and Australian Nobrow

Wearable Art for a Global Audience

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Abstract

Chapter 8, Christopher McAuliffe’s “Mambo Clothing and Australian Nobrow: Wearable Art for a Global Audience,” shows that nobrow is much more than just a pulp-magazine, literary, or filmmaking phenomenon. To make the point, it takes on a burning question: what happens when art culture comes to the beach party? For the answer we go to the Australian surfwear company Mambo. Mambo was part fart joke, part political philosophy, and part shrewd business strategy. While informed by high art and sophisticated philosophical and political theory, it played the lowbrow card, reveling in iconoclasm and toilet humor on the way to clothing the Australian Olympic team and ultimately to the art museum.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cornwall, 1990, p. 1.

  2. 2.

    National Gallery of Victoria, 2014. For an exhibition summary and illustrations of key works, see www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/mambo/.

  3. 3.

    National Gallery of Victoria, 2014.

  4. 4.

    License! Global, 2015.

  5. 5.

    License! Global, 2015; following quote Swirski, 2005, p. 51.

  6. 6.

    Cornwall, 1990, p. 1.

  7. 7.

    Mambo Graphics, 1994.

  8. 8.

    License! Global, 2015.

  9. 9.

    Nunn, 1993.

  10. 10.

    Swirski, 2005, p. 10.

  11. 11.

    Warhaft, 2014, p. 185.

  12. 12.

    Lewis, 1976, p. 188.

  13. 13.

    Abrams, 1959; Power, 1996, p. 12.

  14. 14.

    Howell, 1989, p. 17.

  15. 15.

    Numerous examples can be viewed using the online catalogue of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA); searching by name of design collective: http://www.nga.gov.au/CollectionSearch/Default.cfm.

  16. 16.

    See NGA collection: http://www.nga.gov.au/CollectionSearch/Default.cfm; see also Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, collection: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=365371.

  17. 17.

    University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney, 2015, p. 7.

  18. 18.

    Thorne, 1976, p. 270.

  19. 19.

    O’Neil, 1996.

  20. 20.

    Collins, 1997.

  21. 21.

    Pawle, 1991.

  22. 22.

    O’Neil, 1996.

  23. 23.

    See http://www.mambo-world.com/forgive-them-father/.

  24. 24.

    Chesterfield-Evans, 1987, p. 12.

  25. 25.

    Adams, 1988, p. 1.

  26. 26.

    Poyner, 2002, following quote ibid.

  27. 27.

    Chesterfield-Evans, 1987, p. 12.

  28. 28.

    MacInnes, 1961, p. 148; on Mambo’s style see Poyner, 2002.

  29. 29.

    Cited in Frith and Horne, 1987, p. 177.

  30. 30.

    Niesche, 2014, p. 7.

  31. 31.

    Pawle, 1991, following quote ibid.

  32. 32.

    Poyner, 2002.

  33. 33.

    Arnold, 1997, p. 46.

  34. 34.

    Berry, 2012, pp. 87–89.

  35. 35.

    Traill-Nash, 2014, following quote ibid.

  36. 36.

    Hyland, 2015.

  37. 37.

    Berry, 2012, p. 94.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art & Design, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Chris McAuliffe

Authors
  1. Chris McAuliffe
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Correspondence to Chris McAuliffe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sun Yat-Sen University , HONG KONG, Hong Kong

    Peter Swirski

  2. University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

    Tero Eljas Vanhanen

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McAuliffe, C. (2017). Mambo Clothing and Australian Nobrow. In: Swirski, P., Vanhanen, T. (eds) When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95168-0_8

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