Image: Supplied
Caption: Steve Lopes – WINNER OF GALLIPOLI PRIZE 2018 – Exposed Wood, Mont St Quentin
The Salient exhibition, commemorating 100 years since the ceasefire on Armistice Day 1918, features the work of 12 Australian artists who visited the battlefields of the Western Front in 2017 – a century after the conflict that claimed so many lives.
Salient: Contemporary Artists at the Western Front brings together new paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture created by the artists in response to their experiences of these sites as well as their personal family histories.
During the four-year conflict (August 4, 1914 to November 11, 1918) over 46,000 Australian troops perished at the Western Front in a brutal campaign of trench warfare which stretched 440 miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea, the highest casualty per capita suffered by any Allied nation.
For the artists participating in Salient (Deidre Bean, Harrie Fisher, Paul Ferman, Michelle Hiscock, Ross Laurie, Steve Lopes, Euan MacLeod, Ian Marr, Idris Murphy, Amanda Penrose Hart, Luke Sciberras and Wendy Sharpe) the journey was a powerful reminder of the impact of war on our history, culture and society.
