Using art to challenge the Australian community’s perspective of conflict

Art transcends barriers, conveys sentiments, shares experiences, and inspires actions. It offers solace, understanding, validation, entertainment, and exploration. The experience of art can also lead us to consider different ways of thinking about events in time, inviting us to consider perspectives we might not otherwise encounter. 

Led by Professor Kit Messham-Muir from Curtin University, the 2018 Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Art in Conflict: Transforming contemporary art at the Australian War Memorial investigates some of the conflicts and compromises that characterise official schemes for commissioning Australian contemporary war art. 

One major outcome of the project is Art in Conflict, an exhibition of contemporary art from the collection of the Australian War Memorial currently touring Australia. A showcase of diverse responses to war, the exhibition includes more than 70 paintings, drawings, films, prints, photographs, and sculptures. Leading Australian artists are represented, such as Khadim Ali, Rushdi Anwar, eX de Medici, Mike Parr and Ben Quilty. 

Professor Kit Messham-Muir says, “Our work with contemporary artists and the resulting exhibition highlights how war art can lead us to consider different ways of thinking about current and recent conflicts, inviting us to consider perspectives we might not otherwise encounter.” 

The ARC Linkage Project uses art to broaden the Australian community’s perspectives, foster curiosity, and encourage dialogue. 

“The contemporary artists’ responses to conflict bring to light untold stories, reveal neglected histories, and deepen our understanding of Australia’s experience of conflict, both past and present,” says Professor Messham-Muir. 

In his recent book The Politics of Artists in War Zones: Art in Conflict (Bloomsbury, London, UK), Professor Messham-Muir writes, “What role does contemporary war art play in this ambiguous, distributed, and often invisible world of conflict into the third decade of the twenty-first century? It is within this uncertain and often contradictory nexus of political, social, and military conflict that this book attempts to create new understanding of the relationship between contemporary art and war.” 

Professor Messham-Muir explains that the study of this relationship is not new. “The 18th-century Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner, renowned for his captivating landscapes, also wove the threads of politics and societal change into his art, including the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,” he says.  

Growing up in Wales, United Kingdom, Professor Messham-Muir’s school’s motto was Dim heb Ymdrech — Not without effort. It is perhaps this adage that motivates Professor Messham-Muir to invite the Australian community to do just that, that is, to use strength and courage to consider different perspectives about current and recent conflicts that contest prevailing conventions.  

For information about and tour dates for Art in Conflict, please visit: Art in Conflict | Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au) 

And if the Australian community is ready to face the challenge of an artistically driven perspective on conflict, Professor Messham-Muir will soon be adding a new challenge with his successful 2022 ARC Linkage Project grant application for the project Art of Peace: New Perspectives in visual art on peacekeeping from the 1990s. 

Let's see how we go!

Image: Loretta Tolnai