Revisioning Australia’s War Art: Four Painters as Citizens of the ‘Global South’

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Author: Gough, Paul (2018)

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Abstract

This essay discusses the recent artistic depictions of contemporary war by four artist-academics based in Australia. The families of all four have served in some of the twentieth century’s major conflicts and, more recently, each has been commissioned in Australia or the UK to serve as war artists. Collaboratively and individually they produce artwork (placed in national collections) and then, as academics, have come to reflect deeply on the heritage of conflict and war by interrogating contemporary art’s representations of war, conflict and terror. This essay reflects on their collaborations and suggests how Australia’s war-aware, even war-like heritage, might now be re-interpreted not simply as a struggle to safeguard our shores, but as part of a complex, deeply connected global discourse where painters must re-cast themselves as citizens of the ‘global South’.

Publication details

Status:

Published

Refereed:

Yes

Title:

Revisioning Australia’s War Art: Four Painters as Citizens of the ‘Global South’

Publisher:

MDPI

Volume:

Page Range:

pp. 1-12

Creators:

Gough, Paul

Contributors:

Contribution

Name

UNSPECIFIED

Green, Charles

UNSPECIFIED

Brown, Lyndell

UNSPECIFIED

Cattapan, Jon

UNSPECIFIED

DOI:

10.3390/h7020037

Official URL:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/7/2/37

Subjects:

Art

Additional Information:

As part of a three-year Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant, 2017-2019, ‘World Pictures: pathfinding across a century of wars, 1917-2017’ (ARC DP170101912, $296,000) which brought together four artists with experience in working with the military and as war artists, Gough was co-author of ‘Revisioning Australia’s war art: four painters as citizens of the ‘global South’, Humanities: Special Issue ‘Pictures and Conflicts since 1945’, 2018, ISSN 2076-0787. The project aimed to redefine war art in artistic and scholarly research. Its premise was that public understandings of war are significantly shaped by war art and images of war and aimed to investigate the artistic potential of scholars’ methodologies –timelines and the atlas form – to revise the Australian understanding of the century-long and global aftermath of war from WW1 into the present. Through presentations, papers and exhibitions of new art the project investigated how international 21st century artists explored recent wars to produce a systematic, art historical account of international 21st century war art.

Journal or Publication Title:

Humanities: Special Issue ‘Pictures and Conflicts since 1945’

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