The art of iconic NZ record label Flying Nun features in a new exhibition

More Goodies from Flying Nun (Maclean 1984).

My old mate recently found a bundle of music posters in the garage, rolled-up and long-forgotten. When he posted photographs of some of them to a Facebook group, the response was as if he'd unearthed a cache of valuable lost works of art. Which, in a very real sense, he had.

Old mate and I went to school together in Christchurch and our gang had its first experiences with live music together 40 years ago, not really grasping our good fortune in coming of age when we did. The posters all came from 1981, with particular musical memories attached: Toy Love, The Gordons, The Androidss. Most of the posters themselves had a story: who designed them, who printed them, when and where, fragments of provenance. Memories were summoned and advice was exchanged on framing and preservation.

For various reasons, 1981 was quite a year in New Zealand – but for the purposes of this story, it was the year that word went around that Roger, the friendly, slightly distracted guy who managed The Record Factory in Colombo St, was starting a record label. Roger was, of course, Roger Shepherd and the record label was Flying Nun.

The story of the label's founding and subsequent global cult status has been frequently told, not least by Roger himself. But there's another story, one connected to the city's identity as an arts town, to previous generations of artisan printers and, ultimately, to a bohemian fringe that has always been part of its character. From that ferment rose the art of Flying Nun.

Did we understand all this at the time? Of course not. The artists were simply among us; dancing, drinking and getting into trouble in the city's busy early-80s live music scene. It was an easy scene to enter – frequent the record shops, go to the gigs, find out where all the parties are – and the students of Canterbury School of Fine Arts turned up like everyone else did.

John Halvorsen, the bass player in The Gordons, was an art student who had a visual identity lined up for his band before they played a gig. His primal, monochromatic imagery joined up with the scarcely-believable slabs of sound that slammed into us when we sneaked into the pub to see them play. They said that this wasn't just a band, it was a cultural idea.

Newtones (Robin Neate 1981).

There was the enterprising, anarchic Stuart Page, who was persuaded by his mentor Larence Shustak to ditch painting for photography, seized on screen-printing as a way to "paint your photographs" and did so all over town. The painter Robin Neate established an early palette, making beautiful posters for Tony Peake, the city's kindly arbiter of musical cool, who ran the record store upstairs from where he worked at the University Bookshop. Even older heads like Rudolf Boelee got in the action, with a simple screen-printed sleeve in several variations, for Mainly Spaniards' single That's What Friends Are For.

It was art with a job to do, for this week's gig or this month's record and screen-printing, the most hand-made way of reproducing art, was inexpensive and vibrant. The city that had birthed the Caxton, Raven and Nag's Head presses again made a virtue of DIY printing.

The Chills, The Lost EP (Maclean 1985).

There was also Lesley Maclean, the strange, talented girl from my high school, whose work for a young Flying Nun did so much to define the label on a national level. Although most of the colourful, fluid work she made for the label (including the sleeve of the Tuatara compilation and the label mascot, "Fuzzy") was photomechanically reproduced – a still-stunning 1985 new-releases poster is an exception – it carried through the energy of the screen-print technique.

Lesley Maclean, Look Blue Go Purple 'Bewitched' 1985.

And there was Ronnie van Hout, whose work who we mostly experienced in that most ethereal of forms, the gig poster. With Christchurch in the throes of a "poster war" where the bill you stuck one night might be covered by dawn, it could be particularly ephemeral. Sadly, there was no one there to say: "This is the most notable Pākehā artist of his generation, keep the posters and give them to your mum to look after."

Pin Group and friends (Ronnie van Hout 1981)

But I still have Ronnie's work on the infamous black-on-black sleeve for Flying Nun's first release, the Pin Group's Ambivalence; the vivid, Warholian variations on a kiwifruit motif for the band's follow-up, Coat; the slabs of colour wrapped around 25 Cents' cult single, The Witch. Those sleeves, still vibrant 40 years on, are as much why German collectors now fork over thousands of dollars as the records inside are. Every one, the squeegee dragged across it just-so, is different.

The Gordons (John Halvorsen 1981)

Flying Nun's art story is much broader than this, of course. It's actually full of musicians who could draw, painters who could play and the particular energy of just doing it yourself. But there's a reason the Christchurch City Art Gallery's new exhibition Hellzapoppin'! The Art of Flying Nun focuses on the gallery's home town. It's where something started.

Hellzapoppin'! The Art of Flying Nun opens at Christchurch City Art Gallery on August 21. It is accompanied by a book of the same name – the gallery has also published a limited edition with a screen-printed dust jacket by Ronnie van Hout and matching van Hout posters in four variations.