![]() ![]() Today we’d call these works “assemblages”. At the end of the war Pearl moved to Canberra where he worked as a carpenter at the AWM, but remained so anonymous that no-one has managed to find a photo of him.ĭuring those long stretches of boredom that punctuated the slaughter, Pearl kept himself busy making sculptures from whatever bits of metal and wood he could obtain. Born in Tasmania in 1894, he served as a Field Engineer on the Western Front, getting a first-hand view of the carnage. Sapper Pearl, the catalyst for this show, was a remarkable, somewhat enigmatic figure. ![]() It’s fantastic to see Richard Lewer creating old-fashioned dioramas in emulation of the classic pieces in the Australian War Memorial Nicholas Folland making ‘dazzle camouflage’ abstractions or Baden Pailthorpe putting aside his video work to produce a wall of papier-mâché Kevlar helmets.īaden Pailthorpe, Cadence III, 2013, HD video, colour, sound, 4 mins, AP 1 © Baden Pailthorpe A great deal of thought went into this selection and each participant has risen to the occasion, many of them venturing into entirely new areas. The other artists are Tony Albert, Olga Cironis, Nicholas Folland, Brett Graham, Fiona Hall, Richard Lewer, Alasdair McLuckie, Baden Pailthorpe, Ben Quilty and Sera Waters. Curator Lisa Slade and her team hit upon the inspired idea of using the Australian War Memorial’s collection of artefacts created by Sapper Stanley Keith Pearl as the nucleus and inspiration for an exhibition featuring work by 18 contemporary artists, including 8 members of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers collective. The AGSA has followed a different path by not concentrating on the landscapes of conflict but on the artistic impulses that stirred even in the depths of the trenches. ![]() Later this year, another group of artists will travel to the Western Front to work in the battlefields. The 2015 touring show, Your Friend the Enemy, in which I was involved, was privately organised and funded. Of the $325 million this country has devoted to WW1 commemorations until now there has hardly been a worthwhile art exhibition. Sappers and Shrapnel deserves the attention because it is a genuinely innovative attempt to contemplate the First World War through the eyes of contemporary artists. Nevertheless, one of the roles of this column is to provide a critical assessment that lingers long after an exhibition is finished. Exhibitions at the AGSA are often of a short duration and there’s now only a week to run for this event. I’m regretful about Sappers and Shrapnel: Contemporary Art and the Art of the Trenches at the Art Gallery of South Australia – not about the show but about how long it lingered in the queue before I could get down to Adelaide for a viewing. ![]()
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