Lisa Jacomos reflects on her curatorship of Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down, an exhibition hosted at Melbourne’s George Paton Gallery from 7 to 16 August 2019. Lisa co-curated the exhibition with Cathryn Ross following the pair’s trip to New York City where they aspired to ‘uncover art that spoke for the people’. After gathering materials such as ‘zines, posters and ephemera’, the curators decided to place material from New York side-by-side with material by Melbourne artists. The resulting exhibition highlighted commonalities and differences in art-based activism in both cities, including unexpected findings such as the use of humour in Melbourne’s visual culture – a trait that was not typically employed found among the New York activist art.