catalogue - Sydney Olympic Park

WAR —A Playground Perspective
Curators’
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our amazing and tireless core team:
Exhibition managers: Georgie Payne-Loy and Elle van Uden
and
Editor Helen Sturgess
It is fantastic to have had the pleasure to work with such a dedicated team of specialists. This was an incredibly
demanding undertaking, and we’ve all been burning the candles at both ends to get it over the line.
Together as a team, we would all like to thank Tony Nesbitt and SOPA—especially Ayşe Sutunc and Virginia
Mapagu—for allowing us this opportunity, and UNSW Art & Design for its solid support, umbrella-ing the
show.
We would also like to acknowledge the help of:
Paul Lynton, technician / preparator at SOPA, for being so flexible and calm during install.
Student volunteers, from
UNSWA&D:
Nicole Hauser
and from Meadowbank
TAFE:
Carolyn Burton
Susanna Chen Chow
Erica Cordell
Lyndall Graham
Jennifer James
Virginia Lee
Jon Lawrence
Terri Lawrence
Airlie McConnell
Sarah McConnell
Maria Liza Policar
Helen Hukins
Lyndal Evatt
Lauren van Dort
Fran Williams
Abby Yip
Elizabeth De Silva
Hui Qun Xu (Tracy)
Leanne Crowley
—all of whom worked for
the idea because they are
committed to the arts longterm.
Richard Crampton and Dark Star Digital for meeting our tight catalogue deadline.
Ross Harley, Dean of UNSW Art & Design, and Virginia Mitchell, Discovery Centre Manager, Museum of
Applied Arts & Sciences for opening the show.
And last but not least, Vaughan W. O’Connor for his insightful discourse on the ideas circumnavigating the
show, as printed in this catalogue.
Allan Giddy
Curator Statements
This idea, originally conceived as an artist-run
show, which in turn sprung from an artwork, has
grown and morphed.
playful rather than sinister. With that said, most
of the works are quite direct and harbour deep
emotions, as befits such a serious subject.
Quickly realising that it was developing into
more than an artist-run exhibition, and bearing
in mind the newly opened exhibition space at
the Armory, I invited respected curator Nick
Vickers to come on board and balance the
original concept with his experience and artistic
contacts. To my delight he agreed, and we have
put together what we hope will be the most
high-profile artistic exhibition yet hosted at the
Armory. As the show grew in scale we took on
exhibition managers Georgie Payne-Loy and Elle
van Uden, and editor Helen Sturgess.
Forging a connection between play and war
within the context of artwork and its making
appears to me to be a current ‘zeitgeist’, leading
artists to revisit childhood within the context of
addressing the enormous reservations we have
about war. The proximity of bunker and gallery
to the new playground facility offer a perfect
counterpoint for an exhibition that has a lot in
common with the playground, yet an underlying
theme which is, of course, much more onerous.
My original aim was to test, via play, why so many
of us are finding a way around the gravitas of
war by putting on a metaphorical ‘onesie’ and
relearning how to relate to it—to look at the way
play is being explored as a way into dealing with
this weightiest of subjects.
My initial intention was to create a counterpoint
to the playground adjacent to the Armory—a
kind of a giant adults’ toy box, filled with war.
Many of the proposed works reference children
in war, but I expected the exhibition to be
Nick Vickers
My initial interest in this particular
exploration into the connection between the
war zone and the playground was sparked
by memories of the games that we played as
children. Growing up in an era of heightened
suburban expansion, our childhood games
revolved around hiding, seeking, chasing and
competing—unbeknownst to us as children,
the elements of war were embedded within
all of these seemingly childish exploits, and
we were fiercely territorial. In those newly
established housing estates, the forming
of gangs and the throwing of stones, the
making of catapults and the absorbing
attention to the 64-page comic war stories
that were exchanged on the steps of the
cinema before and after the Saturday
matinee formed significant points of interest.
The skies in the 1950s were less crowded
with passenger flights, and the occasional
sonic boom would become the talk of the
neighbourhood. The access to disused war
paraphernalia, helmets and Morse code
signalling devices were the touchstones to
an imagination that was often fuelled by
parental tales of WWII.
the embodiment of frustration with, indeed
from within, the refugee crisis in Australia.
A generation later and on the shores of Bondi
Beach, at the tail end of the Vietnam War, my
first real encounter with war was brought
sharply into focus by the plight of returning
veterans from that conflict. On that famous
Australian playground, my understanding
of the damage that armed conflict can yield
was brought into a sharp, confusing and
desperately inadequate context. Following
on from that same conflict but on the more
solitary shores of the Australian coastline,
another group of refugees were arriving in
a desperate bid for freedom. These were the
relatives of Dacchi Dang. In a similar context,
I am interested in the inclusion of one artist
from the Villawood Detention Centre, an
artist and political refugee who has been
affected by the fallout from a war of a more
sinister nature. Driven to produce artworks
from the dregs of his coffee cup, Alwy Fadhel
articulates imprisonment in works that are
A Playground Perspective offers the
opportunity for artists to seriously examine
an aspect of human nature that is deeply
embedded in our communal psyche—
territorialism. In 2015, when George Gittoes
was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, an artist
stood beside the great pacifists of our time.
George’s insistent preoccupation with peace
is a contradiction to the definition of a war
artist, yet here is one artist who seems to
have the uncanny ability of finding himself in
the wrong place at the right time, and his war
diaries are documents to the playgrounds of
the war zones of our recent history.
A Playground Perspective offers artists,
curators and the general public a snapshot
of war as we have come to know it, not from
Movietone News in the cinema, but as a result
of digital media that offers us WAR at the
touch of an on/off switch.
The Armory Gallery (Building 18) and the Powder Magazine (Building 20)
are heritage-listed buildings within the former Royal Australian Naval
Armament Depot, Newington. This site played a key role in the strategic
defence of Australia from prior to Federation through to the late 20th
century.
The Armory
The unique architectural style of Building 20, which dates from 1897, with
its three separate arched chambers contained within a solid masonry
structure, was based on a French design for gunpowder storage facilities
that had changed little since the 17th century. Building 18, adapted for
reuse as a contemporary art gallery in 2005, is the largest of the 120 or so
buildings on the site. It dates from just prior to World War II, the period
during which the precinct was alive around the clock with munitions
workers ensuring that the Royal Australian and U.S. Navies were kept
supplied for the War in the Pacific.
The 52-hectare precinct was given to the NSW State Government by the
Commonwealth in 1999. Renamed Newington Armory, it now forms a key
component of the 400-hectare parklands of Sydney Olympic Park. Since the
early 2000s, Sydney Olympic Park Authority has launched a number of arts
initiatives at the Armory, including a successful studio hire and residency
program that has hosted more than 150 artists from 15 countries.
Our programming model for exhibitions depends largely on effective
partnerships, and this is why we are so delighted to be working once more
with the team from ERIA, UNSW Art & Design. Our association with Allan
Giddy and his colleagues goes back almost a decade, and has borne fruit
in projects such as his Sonic Wells public art installation at Olympic Park
Station, which created a real-time audio link between Olympic Park and
Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games, and the Buffer Zone exhibition,
successfully presented at the Armory Gallery in 2011. Allan and his cocurator, Nick Vickers, have put together an ambitious exhibition that once
more truly engages with the unique opportunities offered by the Armory
precinct. The happy accident of a former military facility co-located with
Sydney’s most popular regional playground has inspired a completely
new approach to the question of war and the ways in which it remains
embedded within our collective consciousness.
On behalf of the Authority, I’d like to extend my thanks to Allan, Nick and
all of the artists who have given their energy and creativity to a project
which promises to be a significant milestone for the arts program at Sydney
Olympic Park.
Tony Nesbitt
Manager, Arts Programming
Sydney Olympic Park Authority
clockwise from top left:
Building 20, early 20th century
Building 18, c. 1938
Building 18
Building 20
Wargames—A
Speculative Index
Vaughan W. O’Connor is an artist and digital
holographer.
In order to map the work of artists exhibiting
within WAR—A Playground Perspective, I
want to offer contextual fragments, military
apocrypha, speculative vignettes and leaps of
the imagination in lieu of a more conventional
catalogue essay. I do not deign to speak for the
curators, Allan Giddy and Nick Vickers, or the
numerous and eloquent works of the artists.
Instead, I hope to offer an expanded context
within which to examine the relationship
between war and play explored by the project.
of real war. During a recent naval exercise off
the coast of California, an incident occurred
involving a battleship and a drone slated for
target practice. Shortly after it was launched,
the BMQ-74 drone ceased communications with
its operator, wheeled around and plunged itself
into the USS Chancellorsville. While the U.S. Navy
initially reported only minor damage, the drone
had targeted the ship’s Aegis Combat System,
disabling the craft and causing close to $30
million of damageii.
The First Blow of ‘Future-War’
The USS Chancellorsville incident is intriguing
within smart-war discourse. Was it the first blow
delivered by AI? An act of resistance by a drone?
The warlike expression of non-human agency?
As with most contemporary military sources,
the opacity of reporting of the event provides
fertile ground for speculation, conspiracy and
contradiction.
War games, like civilian games, are inherently
speculative; they pose imagined scenarios
in which actors pose as aggressor, invader,
ambushed and/or defender. Military thinking
is also inherently speculative: planning for
fictional enemies in order to “seize possession of
a possible future”i.
For me, the wargame-gone-wrong is more
interesting than any demonstration of military
exactitude and posturing; especially as
wargames assume to prepare for the chaos
Seeing Through Walls
Eyal Weizman speaks of the reimagining of
urban architecture; where walls lose their depth
and become paper-thin, as in videogames. It
becomes not only possible to see through
walls, but to kill through themiii. A combination
of the NATO 7.62mm round, thermal images
and ultrawideband radar, the result is “… a
ghostlike (or computer-game-like) military
fantasy world of boundless fluidity, in which
the space of the city becomes as navigable as
an ocean”iv.
Remote Control
The slippage between games and warfare took
a particular turn in 2014, with the combination
of the X-Box controller and the bomb disposal
robot. The transition was celebrated by
the U.S. military as a victory of engineering
pragmatism—why design an esoteric system
when there is already one in existence that
most 18-to 25-year-old men are familiar
with? Speculatively, where a familiarity with
civilian practices of play condition the citizen
for future-war, the implications seem darker;
yet the conditions of USAF’s drone operators
in air-conditioned cubicles in the Nevada
desert seem eerily close to images of the
contemporary workplace.
Fictional Interfaces
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s lavish film Cleopatra
(1963) presents a strange vision of military
imaging circa 318 B.C.v, as filtered through
Hollywood. Particularly intriguing is the
destruction of Marc Antony’s fleet via a trap
set by Octavia at the film’s end. As the ambush
progresses, Octavia’s admirals meticulously
burn model ships of the flotilla in ‘realtime’
as the battle rages. Cleopatra adapts the
meticulous plotting-tables and models of
German high-command war-rooms familiar to
audiences, reimagined as an odd convergence
of the boardgame, Hollywood spectacle and
ancient history. The postwar inflection is
fascinating, imaging the conflicts of antiquity
through the lens of WWII aesthetics and
technologies.
ENDGAME
In thinking through the relations between
the playground and battlefield, an instructive
conclusion might be found by considering
children’s wargames. For children, acting out
good and evil in the sandpit assists in bridging
the gap between raw impulses and cultural
structuresvi. Perhaps in WAR—A Playground
Perspective, practice works in a similar manner:
embodying and dramatising conflict through
practice. These practitioners move through the
traces of conflict in order to compare ‘smartwar’ discourse to its cultural legacies and
material realities.
Adey, P., Whitehead, M. and Williams, A.J. (2012). Introduction:
Air-target: Distance, Reach and the Politics of Verticality. Theory,
Culture & Society, 28: 173-187.
ii
Kroker, A. and Kroker, M. (2015). Surveillance Never Sleeps.
[online] Available at: www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=745.
iii
Weizman, E. (2007). Walking Through Walls. [online] Available
at: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0507/weizman/en.
iv
ibid
v
Smith, G. (2015). The Pyschoeconomy War Room Table
[Theory]. Creative Applications Network. [online] Available
at: http://www.creativeapplications.net/theory/thepsychoeconomy-war-room-table-theory/.
vi
Bush, V. (2001). Adult Books: NONFICTION. Booklist, Chicago:
Booklist Publications, Vol 97, Issue 9/10: 886.
i
Artists
Abdullah M.I. Syed
The Soft Target photo-performances began in 2011
as an investigation of my position as a young, South
Asian Muslim male living in diaspora. Living in
America during 9/11, I experienced the subsequent
rise in racial and religious profiling. Stemming from
such personal experiences, Soft Target is an ongoing
journey in which I am the traveller, the observer,
and the one who is being observed, both from the
ground and from above. In this work, I photographed
myself standing on a makeshift archery target
which, when placed on the floor, references not only
a land target, but also an orientalist rug, a prayer
mat or a mandala, and signifies the many concepts
it represents: aim, sport, game, ritual, surrender,
surveillance or threat.
Soft Target: Doris’s Crack ‘Shibboleth’
in Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
(2011); from the Soft Target series (2011–
ongoing)
UV Inkjet Print + DIASEC; 83 x 127 cm
photograph taken by Li Wenmin; from
the collection of Saadia Durham
I fold the target up to take it to popular tourist spots
and sites of human achievement or failure around
the world. Since 9/11, such sites and structures have
been marked as ‘soft targets’—a term denoting
people, things or civilian sites which present
relatively easy targets for an enemy during a war—
and are under constant surveillance. Although
images of the sites are familiar iconography in
popular global art and advertising, their rise and fall
in the discourse of global conflicts, war, terrorism,
capitalism, cultural identity, and specifically Islamic
identity present decay. For me as a performer, this
decay implies a particular aesthetic sensibility
imbued with mortality, melancholy and nostalgia.
In each image the performer’s (my) body is under
the gaze of ‘others’, and sometimes that of the
‘third eye’ of the surveillance camera. It stands on
the target, relating to both the Western ‘superhero’,
and Eastern (here Islamic) body posture in the
performance of piety. Rendered a silhouette, the
body is vulnerable to assault—visual, verbal, physical.
When the silhouette is understood to be a rear view,
a perspective is created from the pictorial to the
physical space of the gallery. The onlooker to stand
on the target, to contemplate and participate in the
performer’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability.
Furthermore, the silhouette masks the performer’s
identity, implies exclusion from the world, and
poetically pushes the narrative to a global discourse,
an endless war of ideas, ideologies and beliefs.
Adam Norton
Below the streets of towns and cities across the
world are the forgotten spaces of past military
conflicts—detritus of old wars, or of periods of
fear and threat such as the Cold War. Exploring
the margins of a city, one can come across
overgrown and heavily reinforced doorways
leading to some subterranean world of unknown
design and use.
Bunker Entrance (South Head) is a copy of a WWII
bunker entrance that must have once formed
part of Sydney Harbour’s defence network.
The work, made out of acrylic paint on canvas
stretched over a wooden frame, is a kind of
3D ‘trompe l’oeil’ of the steel and concrete
entranceway, complete with all the dirt and rust
it has accumulated over time. It sits like a strange
fortified portal to abandoned bunkers of history,
a sealed-off entry point into battles of a different
age and time.
Bunker Entrance (South Head) (2009)
acrylic on canvas, wooden frame
188 (h) x 162 x 330 cm
Installed in the exhibition War—A Playground
Perspective, the direct physical connection
established between the work and the reinforced
concrete bunkers of The Armory mirrors the
historical overlap of military purpose between
the site on which the work is based and that in
which it is seen. It is quite possible that when
both the Armory and the South Head bunker
were still in military use, personnel and materials
moved backwards and forwards between the
two spaces; showing the work in this exhibition
further reinforces this connection. At first glance,
Bunker Entrance (South Head) appears to be part
of the fabric of the building, as the shuttered
‘concrete’ disappears into the floor, adding
another layer of complexity to the original uses
of the exhibition space. However, on closer
inspection, the flimsy and playful nature of its
construction belies the utter seriousness of the
original object’s use. Although the work is a piece
of artifice, it prompts the viewer to wonder what
might have gone on ‘down there’ during the time
of the bunker’s commissioned use.
Alasdair Macintyre
Paternal (2014)
polyester resin, polymer clay, acrylic paint, wood, fabric
52 x 45 x 45 cm
represented by Sullivan & Strumpf Gallery
Allan Giddy
I asked eight children why we (Australia) were aerial
bombing in Iraq.
Each reply, transcribed into Morse code, was looped
and played through one of a collection of PA speakers
mounted onto the exteriors of Buildings 18 and 20.
Thanks to:
Ava, age 11
Giselle, age 2
Ollen, age 7
Mio, age 3
Jamilla, age 5
Mo, age 12
Ollie, age 15
Jena, age 11
untitled (2014–2016), installation
media players, PA speakers, amplifiers, wire
dimensions variable
Alwy Fadhel
My work Anti-War Is Not Peace was inspired
by Mother Teresa, who said “I was once
asked why I don’t participate in anti-war
demonstrations. I said that I will never do
that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace
rally, I’ll be there”.
Anti-War Is Not Peace (2016)
coffee on paper
40 x 23 cm
My paintings are with instant coffee
powder that has been diluted in water
and then put to the page. I was taught this
technique in an Australian immigration
detention centre by Saad Tlaa, an Iraqi
Refugee who had some knowledge of art
and who liked to paint in his free time.
Upon entering detention, he had no access
to paints so he reached for whatever was
at hand, in this case finding an alternative
use for instant coffee. He then taught the
technique to me and I become its chief
exponent. The recourse to food as an
artistic medium speaks to the ingenuity
of detainees who have limited access to
adequate materials and tools.
My works evoke the psychological
hardships that people in immigration
detention commonly face, including
homesickness, anxiety, depression, and
the trauma of witnessing other people
commit acts of self-harm or suicide, plus
life experiences, and also spiritual journey.
The prolonged lengths of time spent
waiting upon the outcome of their cases,
in a state of virtual incarceration, and
under constant fear for the safety of family
members left behind exacts an awful toll
on the mental health of asylum seekers.
This is noted by mental health workers,
who decry the exceedingly high rates
of chronic depression, Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder and other psychological
illnesses found amongst asylum seekers in
detention. They include the mental health
expert and 2010 Australian of the Year,
Professor Patrick McGorry, who described
detention centres as ‘factories for mental
illness’.
Atanas Djonov
Traffic is a site-specific single-channel video
installation. The work consists of a video
projection of random people filmed while
waiting at pedestrian traffic lights. Facing the
projection are military ammunition boxes
arranged to represent the Australian Senate
Chamber.
The documented-unawares video vignettes
capture brief moments of people waiting, inert,
accompanied by the monotonous sound of the
traffic lights.
Tricolour LEDs illuminate and gradually colourchange the inner spaces of the ammunition
boxes; these subtle changes of colour contrast
with metronomous visual edits.
Traffic (2016)
military ammunition boxes, LEDs, electronics, digital video projection, sound
dimensions variable
Dr. Bonita Ely
The installation Interior Decoration (2013–15)
explores the domestic implications and
intergenerational effects of untreated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) incurred during
war and often overlooked in narratives of
national identity and military history. In Australia
this includes war veterans and their families,
Indigenous Australians after colonial invasion,
and refugee migrants, such as those self-harming
in detention on Manus Island and Nauru.
Supported by research into my father’s WWII
military service, my work explores the lived
intimacies of childhood trauma experienced in
the Soldier Settlement community in Robinvale
on the Murray River, where I grew up.
“PTSD typically leads to emotional numbing
(and hence to relationship problems), recurrent
nightmares, substance abuse (traditionally
alcoholism) and, most frighteningly, delusional
outbursts of violence.” (Goldstein, 2001)
Interior Decoration (2013–15), interdisciplinary
installation (detail)
mixed media
dimensions variable
These behaviours are inflicted upon family
members as generation after generation are
exposed to the effects of war, to be passed on
directly through epigenetic transfer, and our
country’s continued engagement in war—Korea,
Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan …
Images of watchtowers in Israel and the Sinai
Desert surround the installation; combined
with a watchtower constructed from a double
bed and child’s cot mattress, they suggest the
hyper-vigilance enacted by suffers of PTSD. A
model of a Vickers machine gun made out of
bobby pins and my mother’s Singer sewing
machine domesticates the military and militarises
the domestic. My parents’ bedroom furniture
is turned inside-out to assemble a child-sized
trench; a labyrinth to hide in, polished on the
inside and exposing the rough, raw wood on
the outside. An adult-sized cradle references
the rusting amphibious landing vehicles I
encountered in Papua New Guinea, where my
father’s battalion was stationed.
This artwork expands my investigations of
socio-political dysfunction to include the
exponential impacts of PTSD, arguably a factor
in the conflicted familial relations evidenced in
Australia’s high incidence of domestic violence.
Daachi Dang
For this body of work I created the avatar of the
explorer Captain van Dang in order to challenge
and question the use of the English naval costume
as a symbol of authority and power in society.
The act of having a member of the Vietnamese
diaspora wear this uniform places the work in the
context of an anti-colonial stance, and issues a
challenge to the positions of power that do not
only apply to Australia’s colonial history but also
to the broader British Empire. This work employs
a number of symbols or icons used to reference
the relationship between Vietnamese ‘boat
people’ and Australian history from the past to
the present. The work has strived to correct the
representation of members of the Vietnamese
diaspora as victims. The avatar of Captain van
Dang challenges and questions the social and
political geographic borders within the dominant
historical representations. He is dressed in the
costume of an English naval officer and occupies
the liminal space of the Australian beach as a selfstyled agent of change.
Captain van Dang, explorer (after Gritten) (2014)
from the Captain van Dang series (2012–14)
digital print
920 x 610 mm
eX de Medici
Eutelsat has turned you off (AK47) (2014)
ink, watercolour and gouache on paper
114 x 264 cm
represented by Sullivan & Strumpf Gallery
George Gittoes
The only regular item of clothing worn by the Polisario were these
great army coats. Misha’s father was home on a very rare visit
to their tent in the refugee camp. Misha has eight brothers and
sisters who all wanted time with their father. However their mother
demanded more time alone with her husband. He had less than 24
hours’ leave.
They had not seen him for three years. I assumed he was making
love with their Mum in the tent.
A sandstorm was blowing in and all the tents were flapping and
shaking. Unable to see her father, Misha tiptoed into the tent and
took his coat. Then she proceeded to swagger around in the same
manner as her father. All the kids loved it. Her mimicking then
turned from the serious to the comical.
It became a child’s send up of men, war and the plight of their
families.
excerpt from my notes alongside my
drawing The Great Coat, 11 Feb 1994
The Great Coat (Polisario Refugee Camp, 11/02/1994) (1994)
lead pencil on paper
42 x 62 cm
Günter Hojdyssek
AND FROM THE BROKEN SEAL
LEAPED A FLAME-COLOURED STEED.
HIS RIDER BRANDISHED OVER HIS HEAD
AN ENORMOUS SWORD.
HE WAS WAR.
PEACE FLED FROM THE WORLD
BEFORE HIS FURIOUS GALLOP;
HUMANITY WAS GOING TO BE EXTERMINATED.
(an adaptation of prose taken from Vicente
Blasco Ibáñez (1916), Los cuatro jinetes
del Apocalipsis (The Four Horseman of the
Apocalypse), cited in David Munro (1987), The
Four Horsemen: The Flames of War in the Third
World, NY: Lyle Stuart.)
Endgame (2016), installation (detail)
dimensions variable
mixed media
Halin and Jasper Nieuwenhuyse
A collaboration with my son Jasper,
then 12 years old, this work is a kind
of maternal revenge, a response
to my unease over his fascination
with weapons. ‘Bang, bang!’ was a
backyard game enacted gleefully
and almost daily by Jasper and
the neighbourhood children with
weapons made from plastic guns
augmented with found objects and
sticky tape.
I grew up with four brothers
who took equal delight in both
metaphorical and actual killing, and
real guns were a prominent feature
of my childhood. As my bothers
grew up, hunting replaced their
games.
Silencer (2005) / Pacifier (2005) / Sweetie (2005–16)
homemade copies of guns and plastic toy guns with mixed media
including mohair, jelly babies, film canister, rubber baby’s soother
dimensions variable
Despite, or maybe because of my
familiarity with boys and their
love of weapons, I found myself
in a dilemma as a mother. On the
one hand I wanted to encourage
my son’s creativity as he scoured
rubbish bins and wood piles for
objects that might become part of a
trigger or magazine mechanism, and
reconfigured them into his weapons
with growing sophistication; I
was also pleased that he was
providing an activity for all the
other neighbourhood children that
didn’t involve sitting on the couch
watching a screen. But like most
mothers, I was quietly disapproving
of, and disturbed by the fascination,
hours spent, and dedication to the
crafting of guns, and to the game
itself. At the height of Jasper’s
enjoyment in the game there must
have been at least 20 homemade
weapons hung on the wall of his
hideout.
Helen M Sturgess
In recent years there have been babies born into our seas, Australian seas.
Babies whose first breath was probably their last, whose mothers never had a
chance to name them, or to speak the name they’d already chosen. In my mind
these babies are ours, we have failed in our duty of care to them.
first and last (Mare Nostrum) (2015)
single mattress, cot mattress, cord, 2x video projections
approx. 1.5 x 2 m
Ian Howard
The rubbing of the Hawker Siddeley XV-6A Kestrel 64-18263 was undertaken in 1975 at Silver Hill,
Maryland, a U. S. state adjacent to Washington D.C.
The aircraft was one of six used by the United States Air Force (USAF) and NASA within the vertical
or short take off and landing (V/STOL) development program that resulted in the AV-8B Harrier,
flown by the United States Marines Corps (USMC) from 1975. The AV-8B continues in service today,
operating from aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and on land from forward operations
bases. The AV-8B has been deployed by the USMC in various combat missions including:
Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Iraq, 1990-91
Operation Southern Watch, skies of Iraq, 1992-2003
Operation Allied Force, Yugoslavia, 1999
Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan, 2001
Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq, 2003
Operation Odyssey Dawn, UN no-fly zone over Libya, 2011
Operation Inherent Resolve, variously against Islamic State militants, 2014
The USMC AV-8Bs are to be progressively replaced by the F-35B Lightning, a process anticipated to
take until 2025.
http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19740943000
Rubbing of XV-6A Kestrel 64-18263 (1975-2016)
paper with pigmented wax crayon
370 (h) x 1357 cm
represented by Watters Gallery
Jamil Yamani and Simon Rippingale
The deregulation of international finance continues,
yet in contrast to this global liberty, the movement
of people is increasingly restricted. The territorial
state is used to justify both increasing domestic
surveillance and the building of ever higher fences.
Immigration has long been a global issue, as evident
in the current mass exodus from civil war-torn Syria.
Throughout such disruption people still live, survive
and are born—some into homes, while others are
born displaced. Adiing Majok Juach is one of the
latter; in this short animated film which charts her
story, we learn about the tragic loss of her father and
her subsequent journey from Kenya to Australia.
Flight From Kakuma (2016)
short animated film, 4 minutes 30 seconds
John Aslanidis
Sonic Network No. 14 is an extension of an ongoing series of works
in which I use a set of mathematical intervals to compose paintings.
These intervals are relative to a symmetrical grid on each of the
canvases. The drawing that I use as a reference point is akin to an
algorithm or ‘musical score’ which allows me to improvise. I have
explored this musical correlation further in Sonic Network No. 14 by
collaborating with the Berlin-based sound artist Brian May. May uses a
software synthesis program that measures the frequency of colour in
the electromagnetic spectrum. He measures the colours in the work
and divides the frequencies until an audio spectrum is reached and
there are 8 octaves. The vibrations created by the kinetic resonance of
the sound and visual components occupies a sensory dimension that
exists between sound and vision. The intention is to create imagery
which has no starting or finishing point, capturing a fragment of
infinity.
Sonic Network no. 14 (2014)
oil and acrylic on canvas
305 x 488 cm
represented by Gallery 9
Louisa Dawson
This work is a large inflatable cannon or military
decoy, made from Oxford Nylon, which inflates
and deflates intermittently. The cyclical action
gives life to the sculpture as it sags and slumps
when deflating, and fills out when inflating. The
title, which has two meanings, suggests the
inflation action in the blowing up with air and
also the blowing up when a bomb gets fired from
a cannon.
Blow up (2016)
Oxford Nylon fabric, blower
4x3x2m
There is a long history of inflatable military
decoys, notably since WWI. Decoys have been
used throughout the history of warfare, from
Macbeth, in which Birnam Wood did, despite the
apparent impossibility of such an event, come to
Dunsinane (as branches for troops’ camouflage),
and Native Americans’ use of their traditional
head-gear, deceptively propped up with stakes
on the ridges of hills, to Boeing’s creation, during
WWII, of a whole fake suburb to disguise the roof
of their factory near Seattle.
Decoys have, then, always been used to create
confusion over the location and amount
of military hardware that one or the other
combatant has placed on a site, often one that
would not be used for the battlefield proper; in
fact, they were designed to allow the decoyer to
choose that field. Nowadays, more sophisticated
military decoys use heat and sonar to make them
unidentifiable to satellites and drones. One can
almost imagine a war that cannot start, as both
sides are constantly deceived, and everyone
becomes paralysed by fear.
This work identifies with, and acknowledges,
the deceptive game of war, or rather the ‘fog
of war’ with its many uncertainties; but as an
inflatable, it can also be regarded as a playground
toy similar to a jumping castle. Due to its
mechanical inflation and deflation, the work has
no permanent state; this pretty much describes
the state of the world, perpetually engaged in a
fluctuating number of wars, even though they are
not all as large and all-encompassing as the two
World Wars.
Mark Booth
28.300–90° is a freestanding sculpture
made from camouflaged uPVC pipe.
Elements combine to create infinite knots
which, although non-objective, reference
the organic. These modular components
reflect the free-form process of assembly.
An adaptive woodland camouflage design
on the surface of the sculpture uses pattern
to challenge the perception of the form by
making it appear to shape-shift.
Camouflage, a natural phenomenon, can
be adopted to disguise man-made forms
and blend them into their immediate
localities. It transforms the artificial into
the organic, and disintegrates structure.
This effect, combined with the natural light
and tones of its surroundings, obfuscate
28.300–90° and render it undetectable in
some settings. Its sinuous format, colour
scheme and markings obliquely reference
nature, but the choice of synthetic vinyl
and its method of application render the
work completely artificial. This process
removes the camouflage from its normal
context, highlighting the juxtaposition
of imitation and the organic, and
accentuating the sculpture by disguising
it, paradoxically, in a conspicuous and
territorial manner.
Scale is important. The use of industrialsized pipe raises issues of proportion
in relation to perception. The size and
presence of 28.300–90° diminish when the
work is placed in an expansive context (an
external environment), and conversely,
increases when introduced into a confined
(internal) space. Recognition of its mass is
influenced by the volume that surrounds it.
28.300-90° (2016)
uPVC pipe, vinyl wrap, polyurethane, plastic
120 (h) x 225 x 180 cm
Martin Sims
Glancing Blows (2015)
form plywood, rope, cardboard, puppet (Mr Punch by Chris Van der
Craats)
dimensions variable
Ass’s Jawbone (2012)
coloured neon light
325 x 182 x 10 cm
Dr. Nigel Helyer a.k.a. Dr. Sonique
My approach to the sonic domain has always been informed by
a sculptor’s perspective: emphasising the experiential nature of
sounds, linking them to the dynamic, material events that produce
them, and situating them within the environments that contain
and propagate them.
Transformer would appear to disqualify itself from the definition
of ‘sound sculpture’ by virtue of its apparent muteness. The
principal function of the work, however, is to manifest an aura: a
low-energy electro-magnetic field, drawn from the atmosphere
by the primitive antennae, which then flows through the coils
that encircle the embalmed larvae. These crude technical devices
resonate in an infinitesimal manner, and thus in its own way the
work sings.
One of our principal oversights is to demand that nature exist only
by virtue of our sense organs. Like infants we carelessly assume
that events which we cannot perceive do not exist; what the ear
fails to hear is therefore mute. Perhaps these are sound sculptures
which are simply inaudible!
Transformer (2008)
aluminium, steel, copper, glass, acrylic, honey, larvae
5x units @ 3500mm (h) x 750mm (diam), footprint variable
Prudence Murphy
My work examines the details of our quotidian
existence, interrogating and contextualising fleeting
moments of our ritual and play. Boys with guns is a
photographic series depicting spontaneous weapon
play in children. The photographs were shot in Rhyl,
a coastal town in North Wales, and various settings
around Australia—I chose the locations, cast local
boys, allowed them to improvise their own games,
and closely followed them for several hours watching
their play unfold. These photographs of children at
play aim to find moments poised between impulse
and behaviour, and depict something of the mystery
of children’s imaginings that may resonate with and
elucidate our adult experience.
Rhyl #1 (2011)
from the series Boys with guns
archival pigment print
80 x 110 cm
Rachel Levine
When invited to show in this exhibition, I
immediately knew what the locus of my
artwork would be. Although that was clear,
it was with trepidation that I traversed the
traumatic events in which the lives of the
people I love the most were threatened.
‘‫( ’ןיעִ רג‬Seeds) (2016)
artist’s own cupboard, sesame seeds, salt dough, cleaning wipes,
lamp
160 (h) x 80 x 50 cm
At the time I’m referring to, those lives
had seen only a few years; both of my
grandmothers were children when their
families fled Iraq and sought refuge.
This was a country where generations
of my ancestors had lived, but in my
grandmothers’ time society in Iraq was
coming to a divide. People of Jewish
descent were finding it increasingly hard
to live there, as their lives were being taken
in pogroms, and laws were being instated
that forbade their employment and
dispossessed them of land.
Both families’ escapes from their birth
country in the early 1940s meant the
abandonment of their possessions,
finances, birth certificates … their
identities. What I know of war and what
I feel of war, I know and feel through
time spent with them, listening to
their reflections. I am humbled by their
histories, the way they have lived their lives
following great trauma.
I dedicate this work to them; to their
incredible resilience, to the ethos by
which they have lived, to their labour, to
the opportunities they have been able
to provide for their families. The work
is meant not as a reflection on their
hardships, but rather a celebration of their
personalities.
This installation followed a performance on
the streets of Mumbai, India in 2012.
My work focuses on the space between the
body and architecture. Where does one end
and the other begin? What is prosthetic
architecture, and how does it affect the city?
The drone phenomenon calls into question
its umbilical links to the city and the body.
Art can’t solve the ethics or morality of its
function, but can ‘scratch the itch’. Joseph
Beuys saw the city as a wounded body, and
the artist’s task as attempting to heal the
wounds, or at least to signpost them—hence
the poetry of his installation 7000 Oaks (1982)
and its ongoing effect on the city of Kassel,
the former armoury of Nazi Germany.
The Drone Stripped Bare … references
Duchamp in its search for a formula for the
riddle of the drone. These simultaneously
enacted drawings containing the
navigational data, mathematics and
geometry of the drone’s purpose, constitute a
‘Drone Dreaming’.
Richard Goodwin
Leading up to the original performance of
Drone Dorje in Mumbai—the closest I could
get to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where
drones are operational—my drone, built by
slum dwellers, was rebirthed within another
cultural and philosophical context.
Small bronze replicas of the drone aircraft
held in my left hand, and its radar dish and
eye camera in my right, are intended as
analogous to the ‘dorje’ and ‘ghanta’ used in
Hindu and Buddhist rituals; together they
symbolise the transformation of the drone.
Body and mind are held in separate hands,
but enlightenment can come only through
their union, the balance of body and mind, of
wisdom and compassion.
In offering my drone to this ceremony and
its ancient symbolisms a transformation is
attempted, its reconciliation finalised by the
drone’s cremation on the street.
Drone Dorje + The Drone Stripped Bare of all its Brides
(2012), installation
drawings: cotton rag paper and charcoal
10 x 2 m each
drone: timber, cotton rag paper, charcoal
8 x 5 m in 3 sections
represented by Australian Galleries
Shaun Gladwell
In 2009 I was commissioned as an Australian official war artist by the
Australian War Memorial, and was stationed in Afghanistan in October.
I was the first Australian artist to use electronic media to depict the
everyday in the lives of Australian troops. Coupled with my fascination
with video and choreography, Double Field/Viewfinder (Tarin Kowt) creates
a dialogue in motion between two Australian soldiers. In some ways it
pays homage to the hours of military training, whilst at the same time
encapsulating the fragility of life in a war zone.
Double Field/Viewfinder (Tarin Kowt) (2010)
still images from dual-channel synchronised HD video, 16:9, stereo, colour
18 minutes 39 seconds
courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery
Thiru
Thiru is not my real name. I am a
Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, and I was
held for many years in Australia’s
immigration detention system.
These paintings of the 2009 Sri
Lankan civil war were made in
Villawood Immigration Detention
Centre.
Untitled Village Under Fire (2014)
acrylic on canvas
50 x 60 cm
Tony Albert
In 2011 I made history as the first
Aboriginal person to be selected as
an official war artist by the Australian
War Memorial. I was deployed to the
North West Mobile Force (NORFORCE), a
noncombatant infantry battalion located
in Northern Australia. Responsible for
patrolling and protecting Australia’s
most vulnerable border, the NORFORCE
regiment comprises 60 percent
Indigenous servicemen and women,
recruited from communities across the Top
End of Australia, the Torres Strait Islands
and beyond.
‘I knew our canoes would not stand that’ (2014)
from the Green Skin series
acrylic on canvas
152.5 x 122 cm
represented by Sullivan & Strumpf Gallery
With the support of our communities,
NORFORCE personnel take leave from our
cultural responsibilities and adopt the
name ‘Green Skin’, a highly revered title
that supersedes our familial skin names.
In my Green Skins paintings I superimpose
delicate silhouettes of soldiers, text,
numbers and shapes over vintage
war comics depicting white soldiers
humiliating and objectifying Aboriginal
men and women.
At the core of my work is a kind of
reconciliation with these racist objects’
very existence. Yes, they are painful
reiterations of a violent and oppressive
history, but we also cannot hide or destroy
them because they are an important
societal record that should not be
forgotten.
Rather than rejecting or reinforcing these
dehumanising paradigms I reconstruct the
narrative, writing Indigenous servicemen
and women back into history. Through the
process of literally overwriting these racist
representations, I present an altruistic
perspective that, like much of my work,
stresses positivity in the face of adversity.
Wendy Sharpe
In 1999–2000 I was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial to
go to East Timor as an Australian official war artist. This was the first
commission of a woman since World War Two. I made over 500 works
on paper about the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET)
peacekeepers and the East Timorese themselves.
On returning to Australia I produced major paintings. All my work was
shown at the Australian War Memorial in 2000 in a major exhibition called
New Beginnings.
Subsequently, for nine years, I was the only artist member of the Council
of the Australian War Memorial.
The large gouache depicts East Timorese people holding illuminated
green light sticks as they stand among the ruins of their town during a
midnight mass at Christmas.
I made drawings and small gouaches of this experience while I was there,
and found myself compelled to keep working on this theme for many
months after my return to Australia.
Christmas Eve Concert Suai (2000)
from work commissioned as Australian official war artist to East Timor, 1999–2000
soft ground and aquatint (etching)
25 x 29 cm
represented by King Street Gallery on William
WAR team
co-curators:
Allan Giddy
Nick Vickers
exhibition co-managers:
Elle van Uden
Georgie Payne-Loy
editor:
Helen Sturgess