item details
NameAnzac
ProductionShane Cotton; artist; 2015; Australia
Classificationworks on paper, screen prints
Materialspaper, colored ink
Materials SummaryScreenprint, printed in black, light grey-blue, dark grey-blue, and red, from four screens on paper
Techniquesscreen printing
DimensionsApproximate: 760mm (width), 560mm (height)
Registration Number2016-0006-3
Credit lineGift of The Australian War Memorial, 2016
Overview
Shane Cotton conceived of his print as a study of remembrance and an image of contemplation. Different histories are layered, mixed, and expressed in a blend of imagery and iconography.
Text floats above an exaggerated landscape of the Gallipoli Peninsula and branches of parekawakawa (Māori head wreaths symbolic of grief and mourning). A square ‘viewfinder’ represents Australian outlaw Ned Kelly’s iron mask. It also acknowledges Australian painter Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series.
For Cotton, the mask’s frame is a metaphor for framing history. He also connects the Ned Kelly and Anzac stories, seeing both as exemplifying ‘noble failure’, which he believes is a common trait in Australian and New Zealand identities.