April 25, 2025

Commemoration

Civic Art Bureau is closed for exhibition changeover. Next show is Benny Chop’s Never Perfect, opening 3pm Saturday 3 May. The Bureau window gallery remains open all the time, now showing Ruth Waller’s Someone Once.

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Anzac Day, 25 April, commemorates all Australians who have served in war and peace. This year marks the 110th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. It is also 80 years since the Second World War ended, and 50 years since Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war ceased. Australia’s military contribution to war in Afghanistan ended in 2014, with legal and political proceedings continuing, not to mention the many lives ruined.

Australia’s experience of war is largely in distant lands. Aside from the sacrifices of First Nations people who defended Country during settler and colonial violence, many Australian service people fought and died overseas.

During Anzac Day we can also remember the sacrifice of civilians during historic and ongoing conflicts, and for those who have sought refuge in this country and whose friends, comrades and families continue to suffer.

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Civic Art Bureau has presented work by three artists who have responded to distant conflicts and state-sponsored violence: Ruth Waller, Kate Stevens and Hilary Wardaugh.

Ruth Waller’s Someone Once is a response to the continuing daily reports of violence in Palestine and Ukraine during the past few years where the death toll has escalated, and international diplomacy appears to have failed. Australia’s involvement is ambiguous, yet the community stands in protest and continue to welcome those seeking refuge.

Waller states: “It seemed hard to justify making paintings in the face of such atrocities on our screens every night. I thought of ancient classical funerary urns which traditionally carried narrative imagery, and finding myself with neither the words nor the imagery to respond to present events, I chose to render these vessels mute, and hence ‘intentionally left blank’.” 

The motif of redaction on Waller’s urns reflects Kate Stevens’ use of this device in her paintings that consider Australian military involvement Afghanistan. Stevens has committed a substantial part of her practice to examining war. Similarly to Waller, she not only seeks to respond to horrific violence, but the often-inexplicable politics that surround these situations, and the obfuscation and censorship of events and political motives.

Kate Stevens’ work also depicts ruined landscapes of Gaza and Allepo, Syria, derived from news photography and drone footage. She has close personal contact with military whistleblowers who have given testimonies to inquiries into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan by Australian personnel. Her portrait of David McBride, now imprisoned, won the Portia Geach price in 2023, and earlier this year she exhibited her portrait of army medic Dusty Millar, witness to alleged murders in Afghanistan.

Hilary Wardaugh’s A meditation of death confronts violence in Gaza in a manner similar to Waller’s, where a narrative imagery cannot serve to express the artist’s horror and despair. Wardaugh is a press photographer, skilled at capturing decisive moments. She abandoned the camera in this photographic work, instead producing stencils by carefully piercing card to create lumen prints. She draws from the Buddhist meditation practice of Maranasati, where mortality is kept in mind, an active remembrance that encourages us to consider the Australian tradition of Anzac Day in a different light. Each of Wardaugh’s stencil piercings represents a Palestinian life lost due to state-executed violence at the time of making.

Waller, Wardaugh and Stevens’ work urges compassion and empathy while barely concealing their anger and horror. They not only offer a considered response to the violence and suffering they witness in ongoing reportage, but call attention to the falsehoods, deceptions, misinformation and omissions that are used to justify war, and that often persuade civilian populations to favour the use of force by the state.

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Many thanks to Lucie Thorne, Peter Vandermark and Leo Loomans for their recent Civic Art Bureau exhibitions. Music fans can catch Lucie performing in support of the Cruel Sea in Canberra on Saturday 3 May.

Saturday 3 May is also when NEVER PERFECT opens, Benny Chop’s first exhibition as maker and curator, with two motorcycles and works by fifteen other artists. Keen observers may notice that the Civic Art Bureaucrat Adam Bell is included.

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Thanks for reading, until next time, stay cool and keep the rubber side down! Cheers from Adam

PS. Our baby boy Lewis is almost 3 months old and he is wonderful!