About


The war at home: art describes Australia’s turbulent present


ARC Special Research Initiative Grant. “The war at home: art describes Australia's turbulent present.” Prof Charles Green (Arts, University of Melbourne), Prof Jon Cattapan (Honorary Professorial Fellow, FFAM, University of Melbourne), Prof Gary Anderson (Biomedicine, University of Melbourne), A/Prof Richard Frankland (VCA/FFAM, University of Melbourne), Dr Lyndell Green (Honorary Fellow, Centre of Visual Art, FFAM, University of Melbourne). 3-year project, 2021-23.

This project investigates the friction between the nation’s stories of itself, and the current massive fracturing of health, of places and of peoples. Because Australia is changing beyond measure, it is even appropriate to talk about the war at home. From World War 1 onwards, the Australian government decided that war artists be commissioned to make art about the nation at war. Our project proposes that a team of Australian artists, with a deep experience of picturing conflict, investigates the current war at home, guided by a senior Gunditjimara elder and in collaboration with an eminent biomedical scientist. Future Australians will benefit from the heritage created by art portraying a new understanding of the current war at home.

From World War 1—when war was understood to mean hostilities at a great distance from home—Australia has commissioned artists to make art about the nation at war because it is in Australia’s national interest to create a cultural heritage that encompasses our experience of conflict. We now experience profound turbulence and disruption from disease and climate amounting to a war at home, and so making new art about the war at home will benefit the community when it looks back and understands not just the present-day fracturing of places and peoples but also resilience. Australia’s national identity is inextricably underpinned by our art, so the dramatic illumination of the new war at home substantially reconfigures our understanding of Australian identity. As Australian art moves from a negative portrait of fracture to the positive depiction of agile, humanitarian, cultural strengthening, future Australians will benefit from art depicting our war at home in the same way that generations of young Australians gain from war art at the Australian War Memorial when they visit with their parents.


[Banner Image]
Lyndell Brown, Charles Green and Jon Cattapan
Afterstorm, 2019,
Oil and acrylic on digital photograph on canvas, diptych, each 135 x 250 cm
Courtesy ARC One Gallery and Station