GEORGE GITTOES ( b Australia 1949- )
George Gittoes is one of Australia’s foremost figurative painters . He has won a number of prestigious awards, and has been invited to represent Australia in major international exhibitions and artist residency programs. In 1997 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his contribution to the Arts and International Relations .
For the last decade and a half Gittoes has been working in areas which are usually the reserve of journalists. His work catches the complexity of individual circumstance, of human frailty, empowerment and survival, against a backdrop of world issues. They are images about both ‘the moment’ and ‘the big picture’.
Gittoes gives us a powerful, close up response to conflicts best known to us from the nightly news – famine and peacekeeping in Somalia, de mining after civil wars in Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the elections in South Africa which brought Mandela to power, eruptions to the peace process in the Middle East – together with journeys to less familiar places –China, Tibet, Bougainville, and most recently, the effects of the War on Terror in Pakistan, Aghanistan; ‘shock and awe’ in Iraq.
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