The Obscure Dimensions of Conflict: Three Contemporary War Artists Speak

Abstract

This essay explains how and why three contemporary artists took on a commission from the Australian War Memorial. In doing so, it will examine how art that deals with conflict during the contemporary period has expanded and altered. It surveys the increasing preoccupation with conflict art and war photography in the West during the twenty-first century due to Western enmeshment in ongoing conflicts since Vietnam and up to Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, Libya, and Syria. It argues that different types of war image have emerged that blur the edges of art, document, and technology; in engaging with contemporaneity and contemporary art, war images have turned away from the traditional rhetoric of war art – both pro- and anti-war – and therefore challenge the public's investment in evolving national stories that, it has been far too easily assumed, would be made manifest in official war art and photography.

Keywords:

• contemporary art
• war
• war art
• photography
• painting

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Green

Lyndell Brown and Charles Green have worked in collaboration as one artist since 1989. In 2007, they were Australia's Official War Artists, deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Their works are included in most Australian public collections. They live in regional Victoria. They have recently worked with Jon Cattapan on a project documenting the aftermath of war with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Discovery grant. Dr Lyndell Brown is a research fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Charles Green is professor of Contemporary Art in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He has written Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970–1994 (Craftsman House, 1995) and The Third Hand: Artist Collaborations from Conceptualism to Postmodernism (University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Currently, Green and Associate Professor Anthony Gardner (University of Oxford) has written a history of biennales since the 1950s with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Discovery grant. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Jon Cattapan

Jon Cattapan lives and works in Melbourne. He is a professor in the School of Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. His art is included in almost all Australian public collections and there is an extensive literature on his art, including Chris McAuliffe, The Drowned World: Jon Cattapan Works and Collaborations (Melbourne: Ian Potter Museum of Art, 2006). In 2008, he was Australian Official Artist, deployed with ADF peacekeeping forces in Timor-Leste. He has recently worked with Lyndell Brown and Charles Green on a project documenting the aftermath of war with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Discovery grant. Email: [email protected]