Intrepid artist George Gittoes has spent the last four decades travelling the globe, throwing himself into fraught situations, from the ostentatious surrounds of Uday Hussein’s palace, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, to the killing fields of Cambodia and the brutal massacres of Rwanda. Wherever he goes, he listens and learns from the locals, then documents what he witnesses, creating art inspired by both the horrors and the undimmed hope he finds: the light in the darkness.
A new exhibition at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre offers an invaluable insight into his process. George Gittoes: On Being There demonstrates both the best and worst of humanity. Gathering his incredible visual record through street art-style paintings, sketches, striking photography and excerpt from his many compelling documentaries, the show is an audiovisual celebration of survival. Art persists in even the worst of situations.
Gittoes will be on hand on May 24 and 28 to guide visitors through insightful tours of the exhibition, and there will also be free screenings of his films White Light, about gun violence in Chicago, on May 29, and Love City Jalalabad, about kids in Afghanistan rejecting war and making their own films instead, on May 14. This show is sure to be powerful stuff. “I feel privileged to have been able to spend much of my life creating beauty in the face of the destruction of war,’” Gittoes says. “I have been waging a personal war against war with art.”
