Elizabeth Fortescue

It’s been quite a big week for this visual arts writer in Sydney. Here’s how I saw it unfold:

On Tuesday morning I dropped into the NG Art Gallery in Chippendale to speak to Fiona White, whose exhibition titled Misfits I was to open the following night.  http://www.ngart.com.au/artists_white.html

Fiona moved to Killcare on the Central Coast about four years ago, where she lives in a pole house on the side of the hill. Influenced by Mexican art and in particular Frida Kahlo, and also influenced by African naive art such as you see on the boards outside barber shops advertising different styles of hair cut, the paintings were pure flights of fancy.

Fiona borrows faces from “just everywhere”. She takes pictures in the street when she’s overseas, or she bases them on photographs in newspapers and magazines. People even send her photos. She looks for “a face that has character, or looks like it has a story”.

On Wednesday I interviewed artist Jonathan Jones, who was selected as the winner of Kaldor Public Art Projects’ competition, Your Very Good Idea. (My Daily Telegraph story on Jonathan Jones.) Jonathan, who used to be a curator of indigenous art at the Art Gallery of NSW, told me that his very good idea would focus on the Garden Palace which was located in the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, from 1879 until it burned down in 1882. The giant conflagration, a cinder from which set fire to a home in distant Potts Point, destroyed vast amounts of early historical documents and objects, including possibly thousands of indigenous artefacts gathered from around NSW and put on show in the Sydney International Exhibition which the Garden Palace had been built to display.

Jonathan told me that the loss of these objects has had a grievous impact, robbing today’s generations of indigenous people of the means to connect with many real objects from their heritage. I had no idea there were so few artefacts left.

On Thursday I went to the official announcement of Your Very Good Idea being won by Jonathan, which was held in the rose garden at the Royal Botanic Garden. The Garden Palace stretched, in fact, from the Conservatorium right across the gardens flanking Macquarie Street to the State Library — a gigantic footprint making it the most dominating building in Sydney at the time.

I ambled through the gardens to the Art Gallery of NSW to see who would win the Archibald People’s Choice.

It turned out to be Vincent Fantauzzo and his painting of his four-year-old son Luca ,which Vincent considered to be a self-portrait. Vincent’s very attractive wife, the actress Asher Keddie, accompanied him to the announcement and she stood to one side, somewhat bemused but obviously pleased, as her husband got the limelight. My story on Vincent Fantauzzo.

Going back to Wednesday, I went to St James’ railway station on the City Circle to interview Justine Muller, an artist who was brought up with an instinct for heritage, largely thanks to her mother and father who ran the East Sydney Hotel and knew Jack Mundey, the hero of the 1970s green bans. Muller is, in fact, Mundey’s Goddaughter. Muller’s large-scale drawings were of people she spotted around Millers Point, where vast numbers of people who have lived in the area have been forcibly displaced to make way for gentrification by the State Government.

The drawings were being hung inside glass cabinets along the platforms of the station, and looked fabulous. I’m sure commuters will love them. The exhibition was under the auspices of the Conductors Project run by Tristan Chant. It was the first time the Conductors Project has taken over both platforms at the station, Chant told me. My story on Justine Muller.

Thursday night saw the announcement of Nick Stathopoulos’ painting of author Robert Hoge as the winner of the People’s Choice in the Salon des Refuses. This is a wonderful picture (see left), heartfelt and sensitive, and Nick tells me a documentary is being made about its creation. This is going to be one to watch out for. 

Finally, on Friday, I ducked down to Oxford St, Darlinghurst, to meet Emilya Colliver of Art Pharmacy, an on-line art sales business which has occasional pop-up exhibitions like the one I was about to see. I thought Emilya very enterprising, having tapped into the willingness of art buyers to buy on-line. Emilya said it was only works in the hundreds of</a> dollars that sold on-line, after which people tended to prefer to see the works in person before buying.

Finally, the Australian Museum has a brilliant new show on the Aztecs. My Aztecs story here.

Elizabeth Fortescue, September 15, 2014

Erika Diettes’ photographic portraits of Colombian women are printed on lengths of fine silk. Numbering about 20, the portraits are delicately suspended from the ceiling of St Canice’s church in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, as part of the Head On Photo Festival.

The peaceful interior of St Canice’s is a perfect setting for these extraordinary images of real-life suffering, of faces that call to mind the women in Renaissance paintings of the entombment of Christ.

The women in Diettes’ photographs had also endured suffering of Biblical proportions, having been forced to witness their loved ones tortured and executed during the armed terror which has beset Colombia throughout decades of armed conflict.

One of the women was made to watch as her mother’s tongue was cut out and her eyes gouged out. Another woman scooped up and drank her murdered husband’s blood in an irrational bid to absorb his life force into her own body. Another had been raped by six men but had suppressed her screams for the sake of her children who were locked in the next room.

Diettes photographed all these women as they related their stories of pain and death. During each interview, there inevitably there came a moment when words could not describe the women’s pain. That was the moment, almost transcendental in its intensity, that Diettes pressed the shutter button on her camera.

“I had the particular intention of photographing them in the moment that their eyes closed, because they are present in the exact moment of the memory of that killing,” she said.

I met Diettes at St Canice’s this week, finding her to be younger than I had expected. Her manner was warm and open. She talked about why she had titled the series of photographs Sudarios, meaning “shrouds” in Spanish.

“The basic connection for me was the holy shroud of Turin which is supposed to be the last time Jesus’s face is supposed to have left a physical impression on the fabric,” Diettes said.

“That’s my intention with printing it on silk. This would be the last impression of these women while alive.”

Even though the women lived, there was a part of them that died.

“I have been working with victims of violence for quite some time now,” Diettes said. “Many family members of the disappeared or that have had somebody killed, they always say after the encounter with violence ‘it’s like you are left dead but you are still alive’.”

Diettes sat with each of her subjects for two or three hours. A therapist was also present as the women told their stories, often for the very first time.

The series was shot in 2010 and 2011.

“All these women were from a region called Antioquia. Medellin is the capital,” Diettes said. “I took the images in rural areas of Antioquia in a place very historically hit by the guerrilla and paramilitary violence [as well as land disputes and the drug trade].”

It shows the level of trust the women had in Diettes that they agreed to be photographed with bare shoulders. One of the first portraits in the series was of a woman in a flowery shirt. Diettes thought the shirt was distracting. She asked the women to keep their jewellery and makeup on, however, as symbols of their dignity in the face of terrible adversity.

Diettes has not displayed the women’s stories alongside the photographs in the exhibition. To do so, she felt, would be to connect the stories too closely to the individual women. The sad fact is that Colombia is not the only place where such atrocities occur. They happen all over the world.

Elizabeth Fortescue, May 16, 2014

It’s not easy to describe George Gittoes.

Film maker. Painter. Performance artist. Keeper of illustrated diaries. So far so good.

Independent war artist and eye on the world in conflict. Yes, all that too.

Restless mind, inquiring nature, fearless pursuit of truth. Definitely all of that.

And yet you have to know Gittoes for a long time before the man’s extraordinary contribution can be understood in the fullness of its reality.

I’m planning to devote an extended post to Gittoes on this website,, quoting from the many interviews which I have had with him since our first meeting in 1995. Since that time, I have been fortunate to witness the unfolding of one of the most extraordinary and singular lives in art.

As a prelude to that effort, I’m posting an email which Gittoes sent to me and other friends from Kabul. I received it yesterday, and Gittoes has given me permission to reproduce it here. By reading the email, you will get a sense of the commitment, intelligence and empathy with which Gittoes travels to the most conflicted and violent places on earth. In the letter, Gittoes refers to Hellen Rose, the Sydney performance artist who is his partner. Here is the email.

THOUGHTS ON A HAUNTED AFGHANISTAN

Hi Friends,

Hellen and I are back in Kabul and still a few days from heading down the road to Jalalabad. There are always things to do here like securing our multi entry visas, but it is also the place to plug into the nerve centre and work out where this country is going. The streets are covered with election posters , mainly dominated by the face of Abdulla Abdulla who seems to be everyone’s favourite. Snow is on the ground from what people are describing as their toughest winter in memory, and the temperature is below freezing.

I have not been able to do much email as the internet is not working at Cedar House except, sporadically , through a cable which only Hellen’s computer will accept. Hellen is very sick with the flu.

This usually full guest house is empty . There may be four or five other guests and all are Afghan Nationals. There are no foreigners on the streets after the Taliban bombed a popular aid worker restaurant a few weeks ago, killing a large number of Internationals. No one is allowed outside. Kabul belongs to the Afghans.  Most of the beggars have disappeared because their foreign targets have gone. I have not seen a single American Military vehicle or person and there are only a fraction of the security guards outside businesses as before. The skies are clear of helicopters and military flights.

I do not know how the employees at this and other hotels will survive. None of the staff have been put off , including the guards at the gates, but there is no way they can be getting paid much from the few staying here. On all previous stays here – this area is called City Centre – there has been frantic building going on all around us. Most of the buildings are designed as tourist hotels or accommodation for foreign investors and workers. They all stand partially finished but empty . The optimism has gone and work dried up.

We visited the Australian Embassy and talked to the grey suits there. Their location is a semi secret so they do not become a target. Even though we have been telling them about the Yellow House for three years they still had not gotten it into their heads to try to develop a cultural assistance policy. They just wanted us to entertain them like exotic clowns from the jungle outside. I got very severe with them and tried some shock treatment statements to draw some emotion, but to no effect.

A couple of nights ago we watched the Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Bill Murray film THE MONUMENTS MEN  about a team during WW2 who were assigned to save the great works of art of Europe. They got the same kind of bullshit opposition – “culture is not important when soldiers are sacrificing their lives” to their efforts. We felt a lot of kinship with them and many of their script lines could have come directly from our mouths.

(Gittoes then discusses another film he watched — Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg. The character Wahlberg plays shows that he is “totally ignorant of the generosity of Pashtun custom – and gets more and more amazed these people are prepared to lay down their lives for his”.)

Hellen and I both realise we are surrounded by similar people at the Yellow House. None of them would desert us if attacked and (they would) die with us if need be. We love the Afghan people and are devoted to them and will see this through. Hopefully the Yellow House will survive for years to come.

I never have a clear idea of what my documentaries will be until I arrive and plug into the reality of the place. Snow Monkey will be a kind of Documentary Ghost Film. So many people  have died on the Afghan side, but as in LONE SURVIVOR  the sympathy of the world is with the returning soldiers – psychologically and physically damaged and mourning their lost buddies.  My film will give a face to the Ghost Town Afghanistan now is. The collatoral damage to the survivors of drone-Predator missiles, families and Afghan soldiers murdered by the Taliban insurgents from Pakistan, those killed and burnt by the  lone soldier madmen from the  US camp in Kandahar  and the victims of the crossfire.

Shahida, one of the cleaning ladies at our guest house, spent the morning telling Hellen how her husband was killed by the Taliban and she now has seven children to support. This is the memory of death mourned, but I fear my cameras will be rolling on a lot of fresh blood over the next year. At the moment there is calm but everyone is anticipating the violence that is building towards the elections and all predict it will escalate, after.

The segment I find most powerful and of which I am most proud , in all my films, is the Grey Mosque in Miscreants of Taliwood.  The old man cries “Blood ! Blood!” and we see the smoky spirits of the dead hovering above the shoes. This is my yardstick for Snow Monkey ….. it will be the Grey Mosque multiplied.

As we collect stories from the survivors of the violence of this war, I will begin to write up the Ghost Stories which will then be dramatised and intercut with the real . My play ‘The Afghan Book of the Dead’ was about the Hell of the American and Nato soldiers as they pass into the other side through death – this will be an Afghan Afghan Book of the Dead.

My fellow Afghan Film Makers at the Yellow House are inspired by this concept as it gives them a chance to help give faces to the lives lost that have  placed this whole country into mourning. As with Love City the new movie will be a team or collective  creation.

While the world is being told about the courage of the returning soldiers at medal ceremonies, our film is needed to remind people of Afghanistan’s loss and ongoing fear.

Everyone here , who I have known for some time , eventually asks if I know a way to get them a visa to Australia. They all want to escape what is coming.

Snow Monkey is going to be a lot harder to make than I thought and a lot more dangerous. It will not be a matter of waiting for threats to the Yellow House and responding to events outside its walls. I am going to have to go to the worst places, such as Kandahar and villages where drone strikes have occurred (Taliban country), to gather the stories and images. I will be well outside my relative comfort zone of Jalalabad.  I do not know if I really have the courage, strength and nerve to do it, but that is the plan. For the moment Waqar and I are working on adapting to our new cameras with their complicated digital systems …..like soldiers readying their kit and cleaning their guns. We are not wanting to be fumbling around with them when things get dark.

Lots of love ,

George G

Elizabeth Fortescue, March 3, 2014, Sydney