Danny Boyle, Pages from the Sea, 2018. Sand drawing. WAR REQUIEM REFLECTIONS ON CONFLICT AND MEMORIALISATION DAVID CORBET

he four-year commemorative frenzy around ‘The Great War’ (branded David Stephens, weaving his way through government budget papers and as Anzac 100) came to an end in 2018, however government corporate reports, estimates that overall national expenditure (including T expenditure on all things Anzac continues apace, a small percentage of corporate donations) had topped $700 million by the close of 2018. This is which is allocated to arts and cultural initiatives. Some excellent exhibitions three and a half times more than all other countries combined, including the which deal—directly or obliquely—with these matters have been mounted USA, Britain, France and Germany. Just take that in for a moment. Of WWI’s during this time, and it seems like an appropriate moment to examine their eight million dead, 60,000 were Australians, or less than one percent. By contribution and value to our national cultural life. comparison Canada, which suffered many thousands more causalities, spent a The expenditure figures are revealing. According to articles in Overland1 total of around $31 million on its commemorations—about $465 per fatality, and Honest History,2 combined Federal, State and corporate spend on Anzac against our $11,290.3 The new Sir John Monash Centre in Villers-Bretonneux 100 stood at a conservative $586.4 million in May 2017, and Honest History’s (France)—one of ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ‘captain’s calls’, which

56 eyeline 91 promises an ‘immersive multimedia journey’—cost $100 million alone, more in Sydney, in conjunction with the APY Lands Art Centre Collective. These than a medium-sized new hospital. According to Australian writer Richard shows—along with several others—eschewed literal approaches to militarism Flanagan, the Australian government will spend over a billion dollars on in favour of nuanced and culturally diverse exhibition-making which explored war memorials between 2014 and 2028.4 It is unclear if Flanagan’s estimate complex metaphorical dimensions of memorialisation, conflict and defence of includes the half-billion dollars allocated for expansion of the Australian War country. In Istanbul, Concrete was presented in a vaulted, fifteenth century Memorial (AWM) in Canberra (aka ‘Brendan’s Bunker’) announced in late former cannon-ball casting factory, known as Tophane-i Amire Culture and 2018. These are large sums, and Flanagan is not the only writer to suggest that Arts Centre, now part of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. The exhibition, they are wildly disproportionate to Australia’s losses, and to the cultural and coinciding with the centenary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, featured historical concerns of most Australians. Journalist and historian Paul Daley has sixteen Australian and international artists,7 augmented in this iteration written widely and consistently5 on these matters for several years, including by several Turkish artists. It was substantially supported by Australia’s the historical failures to acknowledge the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) as part of the 2015 year of Islander (AATSI) servicemen and women (often described as ‘Black Diggers’) Australia in Turkey. According to MUMA’s online archive, in Australia’s conflicts, and the steadfast refusal of the AWM to countenance inclusion of the colonial Frontier Wars (or British settler wars of belligerent The exhibition explores the concrete, or the solid and its counter: occupation) in its exhibition and research remit, of which more below. change, the flow of time. As we prepare to mark the centenary of the Returning to Anzac 100 expenditures, the question arises as to how First World War, the exhibition considers the impact of time upon built much of this putative $600–$1000-plus million has or will be spent on and monumental form, reading between materiality and emotion, form arts and cultural projects. The answer—again consulting the Overland and and memory.8 Honest History analyses discussed above—appears to be the $4.7 million allocated to the Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund, administered by This subtle exhibition gently interrogated the very notion of the federal Ministry of the Arts, the mission of which has been ‘to support memorialisation through the eyes of diverse artists, and the ways in which the development, production, presentation, exhibition or performance of on the one hand monuments express ‘a desire for commemoration, truth, arts and culture projects that interpret, explore and contribute to the Anzac honour and justice’ and on the other may ‘function to consolidate political story and the Anzac legacy’.6 Generously assuming additional expenditures power and national identity’.9 Given the recent ‘statue wars’ and other forms on war-related cultural offerings by State and Territory Governments, the of wrangling over national symbols (see below), this exhibition was prescient Australia Council, Universities and independent funding bodies, the result in its anticipation of current debates, and of more recent works on such might be a figure of $7 million arts funding nationwide, around 1% of overall themes by participating artists such as Tom Nicholson, Nicholas Mangan and spending, including $90,000 for a tapestry at the Monash Centre in France. Jamie North. The dimly-lit, soaring exhibition space provided a dramatic, This lamentable statistic might be no surprise to many, but it is nevertheless a almost ecclesiastical setting which seemed to enhance the poignancy of the stark indicator of the lowly status accorded to the nation’s cultural life by the works, and invited quiet contemplation, however this quietude meant that it politicians who allocate the funds. Only some of this 1% of funds has or will be struggled to gain attention—particularly among Turkish audiences—against spent on the visual arts, and this would include commissions for stonemasons the diverse offerings of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Istanbul Biennale. and makers of memorials, as well as contemporary artists such as Alex Seton, Concrete may be little-remembered in the subsequent surge of WW1-related Ben Quilty and Tony Albert, all of whom have completed commissioned works. projects, however it set a high ‘non-jingoistic’ benchmark for some notable Most state and national museums have produced WWI-themed exhibitions of exhibitions of similar integrity staged in Australia and elsewhere. This writer one kind or another, often drawn from existing collections, and my intention in has not had the opportunity to visit all of these, so the ensuing remarks are in this article is to contextualise them in relation to equivalent offerings in other some cases based on critical appraisal by others. In 2015 the National Gallery countries, as well as in relation to wider issues of memorialisation, cultural of Victoria (NGV) presented Following the Flag, and the Art Gallery of New memory and national mythology. South Wales (AGNSW) presented Mad through the Darkness, and in 2016/17 The I ‘bookend’ this discussion with two exhibitions. An early harbinger was National Gallery of Australia (NGA) Canberra presented Artists of the Great War. the travelling show Concrete, developed by Monash University Museum of Art critic John McDonald was of the opinion that these and other collection- Art (MUMA) and curated by Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow, which was staged in based shows were somewhat unimaginative offerings in comparison with two Melbourne in 2014 and then in Istanbul (concurrent with the opening of exhibitions in New Zealand—The Great War Exhibition at Wellington’s Dominion the Istanbul Biennale) in 2015. The other was titled Weapons for the Soldier, Museum, and Gallipoli: the scale of our war at Te Papa Tongerewa, also in the New curated by Carrie Kibbler and presented in 2018-19 at Hazelhurst Arts Centre Zealand capital. The same writer was more enthusiastic about a 2017 exhibition

John Akomfrah, African Soldier, 2018. Composite image courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery. Images reproduced with the kind permission of the Estate of Lieutenant Colonel G C Hill and IWM.

eyeline 91 57 at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) in Adelaide, titled Sappers and formative to post-1788 Australia, and they invoke cultural ties to Mother Shrapnel: Contemporary Art and the Art of the Trenches. This exhibition, curated Country, Empire and the ANZUS alliance which endure. However, these factors by Lisa Slade, juxtaposed the work of several contemporary artists—among alone do not answer the nagging question as to why successive Australian them Tjanpi Desert Weavers with Fiona Hall, Tony Albert, Richard Lewer and governments think it appropriate to lavish such huge sums of taxpayer money Sera Waters—with artefacts created by Tasmanian-born WW1 Sapper Keith Pearl, on something which might be called, with suitable vagueness, ‘The Spirit drawn from the AWM collection. Pearl fashioned his objects (such as clock faces, of Anzac’. None of it remotely passes any sort of Australian ‘Pub Test’, yet model aeroplanes, vases) from battlefield junk, and his repurposing of this deadly they persist, and on the whole we, the taxpayers, do not really protest this detritus into whimsical domestic objects provided an underlying metaphor for profligacy in pursuit of a specious, militarised national identity. The largely- the exhibition as a whole. Anecdotally it seems that such oblique approaches unspoken flipside of this Anzac largesse is a widespread official reluctance to the depiction of conflict provide a ‘way in’ for viewers who may have limited to engage with the actualities and aftermath of colonisation, or with much interest in literal representations of war and its participants, whether in grand oil older narratives. In such conditions, the preservation of cultural knowledge paintings or faded photographs. assumes great importance, and one way in which such knowledge may be Other curatorial approaches have involved groups of contemporary artists kept alive is through representation. As alluded to above, the memorialisation travelling to historical battlefield sites and making new work—predominantly of prominent AATSI historical figures remains a contentious issue, and Paul painting—in response to their encounters. One of these was titled Salient: Daley has noted Contemporary Artists on the Western Front, developed in 2018 by the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) in Armidale, New South Wales … the militarisation of Australian culture and history at the expense of (NSW), travelling to the recently revamped Anzac Memorial in Sydney and on other national foundation narratives, including Indigenous continental to Moree, Muswellbrook and NSW’s Northern Rivers (Tweed Regional Gallery) civilisation and frontier wars, which the memorial [AWM, Canberra] through 2019. A 2015 project, mounted at the National Trust’s S.H. Ervin refuses to acknowledge in its exhibits.10 Gallery in Sydney and titled Your Friend the Enemy, focussed on Gallipoli, to which a different group of painters travelled, accompanied by filmmakers Despite this apparent intransigence there has been incremental progress and historians. The AWM in Canberra has of course mounted a succession of in the acknowledgement of the Black Diggers who served alongside British exhibitions on WW1 among other conflicts, and commissioned significant and Allied forces during the twentieth century World Wars and more recent projects by artists such as Alex Seton and Ben Quilty, the latter of which gave conflicts. In Sydney, the City of Sydney Council oversees a public art project rise to a popular and widely-toured exhibition, After Afghanistan, featuring called Eora Journey,11 and in 2014 commissioned artist Tony Albert to portraits of participants, largely painted back in Australia following Quilty’s create a permanent memorial titled YININMADYEMI Thou didst let fall ‘to 2011 ‘tour of duty’ as an official war artist. Seton’s As of Today (2011-14), acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who served consisting of 42 folded and halyard-tied flags carved in pink-tinged white in the nation’s military’. marble, is a work of considerable, understated power. One could go on indefinitely listing works and exhibitions, and there is The artwork is composed of four standing bullets and three fallen shells. no doubt that Australia’s involvement in the conflicts of 2014-18, and in The bullet is a universal signifier for conflict. The arrangement of the subsequent Euro-American wars in Asia and the Middle-East, is a subject that bullets, with some standing and some fallen, represents those who fascinates artists and writers. These traumatic events have undoubtedly been survived and those who were sacrificed.12

clockwise from left: Poppies: Weeping Window, 2016. St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney. Photograph Michael Bowles © Getty Images; Poppies: Wave, 2017. CWGC Plymouth Naval Memorial, Plymouth. Photograph Matt Keeble/Getty Images; Poppies: Wave, 2017. Barge Pier, Shoeburyness, Southend-On-Sea. Photograph Ian Gavan/Getty Images.

58 eyeline 91 Abdul Abdullah, We can work it out (left) and We can make it work (right), 2018. Oil on linen, each 150x120cm. Courtesy the artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore.

There is a sprinkling of other obscurely-located sculptures and memorial tender, defensive underbelly of Australia’s colonial misdeeds, exploring plaques dedicated to AATSI servicemen around the country,13 however there colonial iconography and archives, and re-narrating and re-framing them with are few memorials which specifically reference the Frontier Wars, and even a decolonial gaze.22 fewer which depict AATSI resistance fighters. We should not forget, however, Even if an official, national memorial to the Australian Frontier Wars were to that 2018 was the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the powerful join the few others that exist, they would be no match for the hundreds of statues The Aboriginal Memorial (1987-88), comprising two hundred hollow-log of colonial governors, explorers and monarchs which, alongside such figures as bone coffins created by Ramingining artists (Northern Territory), working William Shakespeare, populate Australian cities and parks. So far as I am aware with Bundjalung curator Djon Mundine.14 Mundine has organised numerous no-one has any objection to Shakespeare, rather it is colonial figures which significant exhibitions since, inspiring many other curators. In 2015 the have more lately come under scrutiny, and even physical attack. The so-called Art Gallery of New South Wales opened an exhibition titled When Silence ‘statue wars’ are of course not unique to Australia, as evidenced by, for example, Falls, in which Vernon Ah Kee’s Brutalities and Lynchings series (2015) was controversies around Confederate statues in the United States, and statues of featured, alongside several Australian and international artists responding to the colonial entrepreneur Cecil John Rhodes on South African and British ‘the inherent violence of often unacknowledged events—massacres, ethnic University campuses, which gave rise to the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement.23 cleansing, cultural displacement, political force’.15 The heat of these exchanges reinforces the importance of representation and In early 2016 the exhibition With Secrecy and Despatch opened near Sydney, authorship in public art, and as a general principle it can be argued that historical featuring works by several Australian and Canadian First Nations artists.16 This statues erected by colonial powers only become a problem when contemporary moving exhibition took place on the bicentenary of the little-known Appin representations are thwarted. American journalist Steve Coll has observed that in Massacre of 17 April 1816, in which men, women and children of the local New Delhi, where unwanted colonial statues have been re-sited in the run-down Dharawal people were slaughtered by troops acting on the orders of colonial Coronation Park, their faces ‘chipped by errant cricket balls’, rather than erasing Governor Lachlan Macquarie. its colonial origins the city ‘had collected painful symbols of it and then allowed In 2018 the National Gallery of Victoria mounted two major exhibitions, their potency to dissolve’.24 Colony (2018) and Frontier Wars (2018).17 Also in 2018, NERAM in Armidale, ‘Allowing their potency to dissolve’ assumes that old narratives are being NSW, mounted Myall Creek and Beyond in commemoration of the Myall Creek supplemented—if not supplanted—by new ones, and Richard Flanagan suggests massacre near Bingara, NSW in 1838.18 Aboriginal artist Judy Watson was one that this is precisely what is not happening in his home country, of the participants in this exhibition, and she has a long history of work in this space. Among many other projects, Watson made a film in 2016, titled And yet, in recent years, that story has grown increasingly threadbare the names of places, a research-based mapping of Aboriginal and Torres Strait as the poverty of its original conception has been revealed as too thin to Islander massacre sites across the country which has been expanded to an hold, as the warp and weft of our national myths have under strain torn online presence through the website of the same name,19 allowing members apart, only to be covered up with rougher patches crudely stitched into the of the public to contribute new knowledge to a history of colonial era growing holes: war memorials, Captain Cook statues. It was, as they say, a massacres. Many other first nations artists20 have engaged artistically with bad day when the first blackfella discovered Captain Cook.25 similar events, for example in the 2018 exhibition The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania’s Black War at the NGA Canberra, which featured works by Returning to the 1914-18 commemorations, it is difficult to think of a Julie Gough, Ricky Maynard, Gordon Bennett and Marlene Gibson, alongside single public memorial or installation in Australia which has seized the public colonial era paintings by settler artists such as Benjamin Duterrau and Thomas imagination to any significant degree, and it is interesting to consider what other Bock.21 A small number of non-Indigenous artists have dared to probe the countries have achieved in this regard. In Britain, an independent (of government)

eyeline 91 59 organisation, overseen by a board of trustees, was formed in 2012 specifically to territories. Another hugely popular project was Pages of the Sea, directed by develop contemporary art commissions, jointly funded by the government and British filmmaker Danny Boyle in 2018, in which giant sand portraits of WWI the National Lottery fund. Under the title of 14-18-NOW: WWI Centenary Art servicemen and women were created on 22 British beaches, to be obliterated Commissions, this body worked with the Imperial War Museums and numerous by ocean tides. Peter Jackson’s remarkable 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old, other heritage and cultural organisations large and small. A total of 420 artists, painstakingly restored and colourised from archive footage, was yet another musicians, filmmakers, designers and performers were commissioned across 125 commission under this program. These and the many other outstanding projects projects and 220 locations, engaging 35 million people in the process. One of the instigated by 14-18-NOW, largely avoided the deadening hand of government- most popular and iconic projects, by artist Paula Cummins and designer Tom Piper, committee-approved memorial projects. They amply demonstrate the value of was popularly known as ‘the Tower of London Poppies’ but actually titled Blood an independent organisation, staffed by professional curators and producers Swept Lands and Seas of Red (2014-), in which 888,246 red ceramic poppies of considerable cultural and gender diversity, empowered to make decisions (symbolising the British fatality count) were fashioned, seeming to spill from a at arms-length from interfering politicians, delivering genuinely popular and window in the Tower and fill the surrounding moat. Most of the poppies went to engaging public art, at a fraction of Australia’s overall spend. The UK’s many art the individuals who had pledged their financial support, however the project was and historical museums had their own extensive programs, with The Imperial so popular that 14-18-NOW acquired two sections (Weeping Willow and Wave) War Museums (IWM, of which there are several) of course leading the way. which continued to tour to numerous locations until December 2018.26 This Not strictly associated with WW1, but critically applauded nonetheless, was was one of numerous commissions which included South African artist William the 2017 exhibition at IWM London—The Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11. Also Kentridge’s multimedia performance work The Head and The Load staged at widely acclaimed was Tate Britain’s Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One, the Tate Modern in July 2018 (and travelling since), which tells the story of the featuring post-war work on themes of conflict by British, French and German hitherto-unsung African porters and carriers who literally carried the load during artists. WWI. Mimesis: African Soldier, a multi-screen installation by British Ghanaian Despite its myopia about the Frontier Wars, the AWM has in other ways artist John Akomfrah, also referenced these porters (of whom 45,000 died from been reasonably proactive in engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists Kenya alone), as well as African soldiers from British, French and Dutch colonial under its former Head of Art Ryan Johnston. Johnston contributed an essay to

clockwise from top left: Danie Mellor, Natura Pacifica (balan mulgal), 2018. Chromogenic print on metallic photographic paper. Edition of 3 + 2 A/P: 2/3, 90cm diameter. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Danie Mellor, The Mouth of the River, 2018. Chromogenic print on metallic photographic paper. Edition of 3 + 2 A/P: 2/3, 125cm diameter. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Brook Andrew, Nation’s Party, 2016. Photo-lithographs with collaged elements and hand-colouring, each 56x76cm (sheets). Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels.

60 eyeline 91 clockwise from top: Richard Lewer, It’s true drawing saved me, 2018. Graphite on paper and boxing bag, 152x315cm and 100x50cm; Tony Albert and Vincent Namatjira, Australia’s Most Wanted Armed with a Paintbrush, 2018. Archival pigment print on paper, found patches, fabric, 100x100cm. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore; Frank Young, Anwar Young, Unrupa Rhonda Dick, Kulata Tjuta – Wati kulunypa tjukurpa (Many spears – Young fella story), 2017. Digital print, 37 kulata (spears) – punu (wood), malu pulyku (kangaroo tendon) and kiti (natural plant-based resin), dimensions variable. Courtesy the artists. the catalogue for Hazelhurst Arts Centre’s Weapons for the Soldier, alluded to cultural maintenance project that shares the skills of spear making across above, and he provides a good account of the AWM’s outreach to senior artists generations’,28 which now includes over 100 Anangu men across the APY of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and subsequent Lands. A related project, featuring 550 spears, was featured at AGSA’s Tarnanthi commissioning of the major collaborative painting Kulatangku angakanyini festival in 2017 to great acclaim, in that case suspended above a group of piti manta munu Tjukurpa (Country and Culture will be protected by spears) (2017). (water carriers) made by APY women, and evoking the atomic bomb testing in Johnston notes that, Anangu Lands sixty years ago. At Hazelhurst a smaller installation was shown, and it acted as a kind of conceptual core for the exhibition as a whole, with The work features literal references to violent conflict (the four spears the spear being a potent metaphor for defense of both territory and culture. launching across Country from the lower right simultaneously evoke Weapons was a men-only exhibition, following from 2016’s Nganampa Kililpil: military, colonial and inter-tribal conflict), references to and memories Our Stars, which featured work by a large number of APY women artists. In of warriors past (some of whom inhabit the painted trees as protective addition to the young and senior APY men, Weapons featured fifteen invited ancestral sentinels), and key sites and ceremonial practices (such as inma artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, drawn from across the country, [traditional dance and song]) implicit to caring for and thus defending whose work references aspects of conflict and cultural memory. These included Country spiritually as well.27 Abdul Abdullah, Jonathan Jones and Uncle Charles ‘Chikka’ Madden, Danie Mellor, Brook Andrew, Steaphan Paton, Reko Rennie and Lionel Bawden. This framing is highly relevant to the Hazelhurst exhibition—subtitled I should declare a bias as the designer of the exhibition catalogue produced Defending Country, Culture and Family—which was initiated by the young by Hazelhurst Arts Centre, however it seems to me that this is the kind of men of the APY lands, mentored by and including works by senior artists, and thoughtful, nuanced and culturally inclusive exhibition that we could do incorporating the Kulata Tjuta (Many Spears) project, described as ‘an ongoing with more of. The curatorial commitment to artist-led exhibition-making,

eyeline 91 61 clockwise from left: Kunmanara (Ray) Ken, Weapons for the soldier, 2018. Acrylic on linen, 300x200cm. Courtesy the artist and Tjala Arts; Vincent Namitjira, Unknown soldiers, 2018. Acrylic on army surplus material, each 122x91cm. Courtesy the artist and Iwantja Arts and This Is No Fantasy; Kunmanara (Jimmy) Pompey and Eric Barney, Horses and Soldiers, 2018. Bronze, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artists and Iwantja Arts.

cultural agency, language accuracy and diversity of voices is exemplary. This 4. Richard Flanagan, ‘“Our Politics is a dreadful black comedy” – Press Club is doubly true because, as a regional gallery, Hazelhurst does not command Speech in full’, The Guardian, 18 April 2018. the resources of major museums to develop and mount projects of this scale 5. For example, see Paul Daley, ‘The story of us: how the inflated Anzac myth from scratch. The exhibition received modest support from the Anzac 100 obscures our national identity’, The Guardian, 28 October 2018. Also See Paul cultural fund, alongside state and national funding, however any refences to Daley, On Patriotism, Melbourne University Press, 2018. WW1, and to warfare in general, were veiled, perhaps most prominently in 6. Online statement, Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund. Accessed at Vincent Namatjira’s compelling portrait series Unknown Soldiers (2018). The anzaccentenary.gov.au juxtaposition of large collaborative paintings, ceramics, drawings, photomedia, 7. The core participating artists in Concrete were: Laurence Aberhart (NZ) | objects and installations yielded a multi-layered experience which allowed for a Jananne al-Ani (IRQ/UK) | Kader Attia (DEU/DZA) | Saskia Doherty (AUS) | subtle conversation between tradition and innovation, framing the APY Lands Fabien Giraud & Raphael Siboni (FRA) | Igor Grubić (CRO) | Carlos Irijalba (ESP) art centres as vibrant zones of contemporary practice, dynamically interacting | Nicholas Mangan (AUS) | Rä di Martino (ITY) | Ricky Maynard (AUS) | Callum with urban styles and with diverse cultural perspectives. Morton (AUS) | Tom Nicholson (AUS) | Jamie North (AUS) | Justin Trendall Lest we forget.  (AUS) | James Tylor (AUS). 8. Online statement, Concrete, Monash University Museum of Art, 2014. notes Accessed at https://www.monash.edu/muma/exhibitions/exhibition-archive/2014/ 1. Ben Brooker, ‘100 Years of Anzac: ludicrous spending for nationalist validation’, concrete Overland 233, Summer 2018. 9. Ibid. 2. David Stephens, ‘Update 12 May 2017’. Accessed at HonestHistory.net. 10. Paul Daley, ‘Manufacture. Sell. Deploy. Commemorate: Is This How We 3. According David Stephens, the projected British spend per fatality was $109, Should Memorialise War?,’ The Guardian, 23 May 2018. See also: ‘Beating the France $52, New Zealand $1,713 and Germany $2. See David Stephens, ‘Why Khaki Drum: How Australian Identity Was Militarised’, The Guardian, 1 February is Australia spending so much more on the Great War centenary than any other 2018. country?’, John Menadue – Pearls and Irritations, 20 June 2015. Accessed at 11. Eora Journey is overseen by writer and curator Hetti Perkins. Details of public https://johnmenadue.com/david-stephens-why-is-australia-spending-so-much- art projects can be accessed at http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/projects/eora- more-on-the-great-war-centenary-than-any-other-country/ journey/

62 eyeline 91 William Kentridge, The Head and the Load, 2018. Detail multi-media performance. Photograph Stella Olivier.

12. Tony Albert, YININMADYEMI Thou didst let fall, 2014, mixed media 21. The National Picture: The art of Tasmania’s Black War, curated by Tim installation, curated by Hetti Perkins, situated at Hyde Park South, Sydney. Bonyhady and Greg Lehman, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 12 May to Citation accessed at http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/yininmadyemi- 29 July 2018. thou-didst-let-fall/ 22. Non-Indigenous artists such as Joan Ross, Tom Nicholson and Ruark Lewis 13. A useful guide to these can be found at the website CreativeSpirits.info in have explored these themes across numerous works. the directory /Aboriginal culture /history /Aboriginal war memorials. Accessed at 23. See for example: Amit Chaudhuri, ‘The Real Meaning of Rhodes Must Fall,’ https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal-anzac-day- The Guardian 16 March 2016. war-memorials#ixzz5NZJ6hprH 24. Steve Coll, ‘Things to Think About When Taking Down Statues,’ The New 14. The Aboriginal Memorial 1987-88, Ramingining Artists, Ramingining, Northern Yorker 31 August 2017. Territory, Australia. Installation of natural earth pigments on 200 hollow logs. 25. Richard Flanagan, ‘The World Is Being Undone before Us. If We Do Not 15. When Silence Falls, curated by Cara Pinchbeck, Art Gallery of New South Reimagine Australia, We Will Be Undone Too,’ The Guardian, 5 August 2018. Wales, 19 December 2015 to 1 May 2016. See https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/ 26. See Paula Cummins and Tom Piper interviewed by Imogen Tilden, ‘How we exhibitions/when-silence-falls/ made the Tower of London poppies’, The Guardian, 6 March 2018. See also, 16. With Secrecy and Despatch, curated by Tess Allas and David Garneau, 1418now.org.uk/Poppies: Weeping Wave and Willow. Campbelltown Arts Centre, NSW, 9 April to 13 June 2016. 27. Ryan Johnston, ‘Between four spears and a lifeboat: recharting Anangu and 17. Colony: Australia 1770–1861 and Colony: Frontier Wars, curated by Catherine Australian histories of conflict’s Weapons for the Soldier, catalogue, Hazelhurst Leahy, Susan van Wyk, Judith Ryan, Alisa Bunbury, Myles Russell-Cook and Arts Centre, Sydney, 2018, p.21. Rebecca Edwards, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 15 March to 15 July 28. Ibid, p.40. 2018. 18. Myall Creek and Beyond, curated by Bianca Beetson, New England Regional David Corbet is a writer, educator and curator based in Sydney. Art Museum, Armidale, NSW, 8 June to 14 October 2018. 19. The names of places website. Accessed at http://thenamesofplaces.com 20. AATSI artists Fiona Foley, Daniel Boyd, Jonathan Jones, Clinton Nain, Steaphan Paton and Laurie Nielson have all addressed these issues in diverse artworks and discourses.

eyeline 91 63