This week I thought I would share the work of some contemporary Australian artists with everyone.
First up, Matthew Sleeth, and his work published in 2002 as Tour of Duty, now out of print. The work was made during 1999-2000 in East Timor, where at the time the Australian military was leading INTERFET, the International Force for East Timor, a multinational force mandated by the United Nations to intervene in the humanitarian and security crisis begun after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia.
The book cleverly steps away from the language of photojournalism to illustrate the manipulation of the media and the voting public by the Australian government and Defence Force. In showing an act of military intervention essentially as one big PR exercise, the work calls into question these kinds of 'humanitarian' missions, and the motivations behind them. It is undoubtedly one of the most important photo books to have been published in Australia, not only for its incisive critical position, but also for its deployment of a new visual language in the environment of war.
First up, Matthew Sleeth, and his work published in 2002 as Tour of Duty, now out of print. The work was made during 1999-2000 in East Timor, where at the time the Australian military was leading INTERFET, the International Force for East Timor, a multinational force mandated by the United Nations to intervene in the humanitarian and security crisis begun after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia.
The book cleverly steps away from the language of photojournalism to illustrate the manipulation of the media and the voting public by the Australian government and Defence Force. In showing an act of military intervention essentially as one big PR exercise, the work calls into question these kinds of 'humanitarian' missions, and the motivations behind them. It is undoubtedly one of the most important photo books to have been published in Australia, not only for its incisive critical position, but also for its deployment of a new visual language in the environment of war.
Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty
Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty
Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty
Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty
Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of DutyThis last one, for the uninitiated, shows a bunch of Aussie soldiers putting on a barbie and cooking some snaggers for the locals. Some of them can be seen wearing thongs.
A slightly Web 1.0 presentation of images from the book can be found here. Matthew Sleeth's more recent work, which is quite different from Tour of Duty, can be seen on his mind-bending website.
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