{"id":4983,"date":"2014-08-19T03:38:26","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T19:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/soldiers-internal-war-shown-ben-quilty\/"},"modified":"2024-10-25T08:56:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T00:56:07","slug":"soldiers-internal-war-shown-ben-quilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/soldiers-internal-war-shown-ben-quilty\/","title":{"rendered":"A soldier\u2019s internal war shown by Ben Quilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you walk through Ben Quilty\u2019s exhibition, After Afghanistan, you\u2019re initially struck by the stares looking back at you. With only a few strokes of thick paint, Ben Quilty<\/a> portrays the sadness, the furrowed brows and the ten-mile-gaze of the eleven soldiers he painted.<\/p>\n

Quilty was commissioned by The Australian War Memorial to depict Afghanistan under the\u00a0official war art scheme<\/a>, first established\u00a0during the First World War to record and interpret the Australian experience of war. The scheme was reactivated during the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

This rich tradition of official commissions has included works by major Australian artists Arthur Streeton, George Lambert, Donald Friend and Nora Heysen, and occupies a unique position in the history of Australian art.<\/p>\n

After receiving the initial phone call, it was only five weeks before Quilty was deployed to Afghanistan to record and interpret the experiences of Australians as part of Operation Slipper in Kabul, Kandahar, Tarin Kot in Afghanistan and Al Minhad Airbase in the United Arab Emirates. <\/i>During his\u00a0first night at the base, they were rocketed three times – Quilty was the first to admit that he was out of his element.<\/p>\n

\"Image
Photo: Jess Ibacache
Paintings: Ben Quilty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Quilty was adamant that he would not let the soldiers stereotype him as an artist as much as he didn\u2019t want to stereotype the soldiers. This enabled him\u00a0to quickly form strong relationships with some of the soldiers. With this closeness, the group opened up to Quilty and allowed the emotionally raw paintings to unfold.<\/p>\n

The paintings are initially confronting.\u00a0The unfocused gazes and bodies strewn in relaxed positions make you question if the subjects are portrayed as dead or alive. Quilty didn\u2019t want to paint the soldiers in their uniforms, as he wanted them to be seen for their core emotions and nothing more.<\/p>\n

The point of conversation for this exhibition is written across the face of every person portrayed:\u00a0Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Research Assistant from the Faculty of Health Sciences,\u00a0Petra Skeffington,\u00a0spoke about her work with patients suffering from the condition,\u00a0in relation to Quilty\u2019s exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like seeing the exhibition would help me see what war was like, but it doesn’t”\u00a0Skeffington says. Instead,<\/ins> she says, \u201cit gives you what that person felt in that moment –\u00a0not what they felt in the next moment, in the next year,\u00a0\u00a0or five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image
Photo: Jess Ibacache
Paintings: Ben Quilty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Skeffington is interested in the resiliency of people. She explores trauma and PTSD with a special interest in people such as soldiers, police officers and<\/p>\n

firefighters who intentionally choose a profession which puts them into high-risk situations day in and day out.<\/p>\n

Skeffington says that people \u201ccan experience trauma and bounce back to be stronger and better people than they were before.”<\/p>\n

In order for that to happen, symptoms of PTSD and trauma need to be identified, and this is where exhibitions like Quilty\u2019s are important.<\/p>\n

Skeffington states that in her work, she has seen and treated soldiers across the spectrum of trauma –\u00a0some who didn\u2019t even know what PTSD was while others understood that they were showing signs of PTSD and sought help. She\u00a0states that it\u2019s considerably easier to treat symptomatically traumatised\u00a0people when they\u00a0are aware and willing to seek help as opposed to those that believe there\u2019s no need for help.<\/p>\n

Quilty’s emphasis on the soldiers’\u00a0psychological\u00a0\u00a0self, rather\u00a0than their physical attributes, made the images confronting for many of the subjects.\u00a0For once, they weren\u2019t just another uniformed soldier –\u00a0their fears, concerns and joys portrayed as starkly as their naked bodies.<\/p>\n

Air Commodore John Oddie sat for three of Quilty\u2019s paintings and was particularly struck by the way he was captured, \u201ceither through a lack of insight or unwillingness, I wasn\u2019t always admitting the truth to myself about my life,\u201d \u00a0says Oddie.\u00a0\u201cBen really took that out and put it on the table in front of me like a three course dinner and said \u2018well how \u2018bout that?\u2019 and,\u00a0you know, I sort of thought well I\u2019m not gonna come back to this restaurant in a hurry.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the exhibition, five out of the eleven soldiers Quilty painted have been diagnosed with PTSD and are being treated. As Petra Skeffington states, PTSD is not a life sentence and people can work through their trauma to become asymptomatic, but that won\u2019t happen until we start to speak about it openly and honestly.<\/p>\n

The exhibition, Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan<\/em> is showing at the John Curtin Gallery<\/a> until September 14 2014.<\/p>\n

Visit Ben Quilty’s website<\/a>\u00a0for more information about his work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you walk through Ben Quilty\u2019s exhibition, After Afghanistan, you\u2019re initially struck by the stares looking back at you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":4984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"6443,7726,7529,5184,6757,7096","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":3,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":{"title":"Jess Ibacache","url":"#","target":""},"media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}},"post_components":false},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/BQ_exhibition15forweb.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 04:56:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}