Revisioning Australia's war art: four painters as citizens of the 'global South'

This pictorial essay explores a current collaborative creative project between four artist-academics working in Australia. The families of all four have served in the twentieth century's major conflicts and, more recently, each has been commissioned in Australia and the UK to serve as war artists. Collaboratively and individually they produce artwork (placed in national collections) and, as academics, reflect deeply on the heritage of conflict and war by interrogating contemporary art's representation of war, conflict and terror. The visual essay briefly examines the origins of their current collaboration and reflects on how Australia's war-aware, even war-like heritage, might now be re-interpreted not simply as a struggle to safeguard our shores, but as part of a complex, deeply connected global discourse where painters must re-cast themselves as citizens of the 'global South'.