South Bank was yet to become South Bank. It was still South Brisbane.

Brisbane still had the sweeping heritage-listed Roma Street Station and the misguided Brisbane Transit Centre (1986) was yet to be built over the Roma Street Station.

It was the time of the real birth of Brisbane as a New World City, but no-one knew it at the time.

Suddenly artist-run galleries in Roma Street, George Street, Little Roma Street, Charlotte and Elizabeth streets were where Brisbane’s young, creative and restless began a Friday night.

What happened in George Street

It became home to Brisbane’s performance art world; where sculptors, musicians, poster-printers, clothes designers, fledgling 3-D artists and where street artists would bring 1980s New York street artists to meet Brisbane street artists.

Those artist-run spaces spawned artists with big ideas. It was similar to punk in its ‘do-it-yourself attitude’, but different people (with exceptions), with different ways of delivering the product.

Some created huge images that were projected onto city buildings, bought advertising spaces on public roads, created photocopy artworks, wrote art newsletters, held art forums, lectures and talks, protested the impact of World Expo 88 on local art.

Weird and wonderful music was created. Some became small legends; some grew to become big legends. Most flared brightly, briefly and burned out.

Performances were videotaped, lost and found. Posters were kept and stored. Film clips made.

And then in 1986 the George Street buildings were demolished. By the mid-1990s, Charlotte Street changed. The times changed again.

Today’s George Street art is static. Sombre. Heavy. Down near Roma Street is now a dead zone.

Daniel Templeman’s sculpture, Confluence (2004), outside the new magistrates building and Fiona Foley’s sculpture Witness to Silence (2004), cry for attention. Lettering on Fiona’s showing 94 indigenous massacres is already wearing away. The modern architecture is George Street is its most striking art form. But some should go.

The influences

Ephemeral Traces curator Peter Anderson talks about a famous piece of graffiti scrawled in 1982 on billboards surrounding a large construction site that became Queensland’s Cultural Centre.

“95% of artists leave Brisbane. Why don’t you?” it read in big, black letters.

“While this figure was not statistically accurate, it often seemed that way,” he said.

“The graffiti was a fleeting gesture, but one that left its traces in the archive.”

Ephemeral Traces focuses on five of Brisbane’s first artist-run initiatives and the artists; One Flat (1982), A-Room (1984), THAT Space (1985) and John Mills Himself (1986). Others then followed.

There were a hundred influences. In 1975 Brisbane’s first Institute of Modern Art opened, radio station 4ZZZ began transmitting and Griffith University had its first students.

By 1976, The Saints had recorded I’m Stranded – last weekend 40 years ago – and there was an exhibition called Brisbane Painters Today at the new Institute of Modern Art.

In 1977, 400 people – mainly students – were arrested at a single street march protest about civil liberties in Brisbane.

Artist Matt Mawson – part of the emerging Zip Collective – captured the time in a police-blue poster (1979) called “Keep in Step”, in a widely-copied poster style that pushed the image of punk, pop and new exhibitionism that was taken up by 4ZZZ.

Screen print artist and musician John Willsteed’s band and gig posters were already the musical Facebook of their time.

By 1980 automatic teller machines were introduced, the first personal computers were introduced, more students were arrested and buildings were demolished (1981-1982, 1986) and Madonna, The Saints and The Clash had shaken the world by appealing to different parts of the body.

And by 1982 big new art museums were built at South Brisbane, while on the other side of the river Brisbane was dancing to artists (Tim Gruchy) with ironing boards strapped to their backs in tiny little galleries.

Brisbane’s artist-run spaces were underway.

The impact

University of Queensland’s digital curator Sebastian Moody said the biggest impact of the Ephemeral Traces exhibition was on young artists.

“The really strong reaction is from young cultural practitioners today getting to see a part of Brisbane’s history that might have known existed, but they did not know anything about,” Mr Moody said.

“So that has been amazing for them to put themselves in a cultural lineage,” he said.

Young artists Naomi Blacklock and Annie Macindoe are part of 2016’s Clutch Collective artists group, now exhibiting at Brisbane’s BoxCopy artist-run space on Petrie Terrace.

Mainly, they exhibit their new artworks inside a truck which is driven to the location because it is cheaper, faster and more immediate than exhibiting in a gallery. Social media lets their fans know where they will exhibit. It is the 2016 version of 1986’s flyers, posters and leaflets.

Their exhibition at BoxCopy allows their artwork to be the catalyst for the next ARI, which will then act as the catalyst for the next artwork at the gallery.

“It is like this ongoing conversation with the space, with us and other ARI’s and how we work around the space together.”

Both young artists went to the opening of ephemeral spaces.

“It was really special, just to know that we are developing along this long history in Brisbane,” the pair said.

“And a lot of the same issues for having spaces that we have now – funding cuts – and it was just the terrible funding cuts to BoxCopy,” Naomi said.

“It was just like history repeating itself.”