A.L.S.O.

Art – George Gittoes

“The Preacher” – George Gittoes

Art has impact. It comes from and takes us to the spaces between life’s linear sameness. Giftedness? I think there could be but determination, practice, focus, people, failures and opportunities all end up in the parabolic tensions of growth. My own mark making has evolved into the spaces between while considering how far to move away from the avalanches of amazing artists like George. How does one make a mark with their own mark? I am learning this: mark making must be honed from concept, dream and intuitive hints. And never ending actual mark work in the studio. And wherever.

George Gittoes is a unique and outstanding artist in Australia who is well known as a painter and film maker and for his remarkable Yellow House in Kabul and more recently his work in Kyiv, Ukraine. “Gittoes [has an]unflinching belief in the power of art to counteract war.”

I found the following story by Elizabeth Fortescue deeply moving.

Image Courtesy George Gittoes – Hazelhurst Sutherland Shire

“This painting is called ‘The Preacher’, by the Australian artist George Gittoes. It depicts that moment when the preacher was urging peace and strength on his flock, just before they were all hacked to death in the Kibeho Massacre, an infamous event in the history of Rwanda. Gittoes witnessed the horrors of the massacre as it unfolded over several days. This preacher, who was calming his flock just before they were all hacked to death, remains to this day a symbol of calm and dignity in the midst of the unthinkable. Now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the painting has just gone on view to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the massacre. 
Gittoes wrote: “In the midst of [the massacre], I heard the most beautiful choral singing. I followed the sound and there was a preacher holding a bible up and leading his congregation in song. It was incredibly moving. He had restored their dignity. They would not die like frightened animals but with their inner pride in place. I asked him if he thought that if I stayed with them they might not be killed. He said: ‘It is more likely George, as they do not want witnesses and you have documented their crimes’. He then showed me four young boys whose parents had been killed in the night and asked me if I could try to get them to safety. Reluctantly, I agreed. I used my best magic and got the boys out safely past the killers who were beheading anyone who tried to escape. I put them under a UN truck and they lived. When I returned, the whole congregation were dead on the ground among their possessions. I could only find the preacher’s blood-stained yellow coat. I never found his body”.

By Elizabeth Fortescue
#gittoesartist
#Australianarthistory
#artnotwar
#georgegittoes

Original Post/Source: Facebook.

Does pretty art or art with an aesthetic appeal have a place in our lives?

How does art act as a signpost in our lives, influencing decisions and futures?

Peter Breen, April 2, 2025.

“George Gittoes is an eyewitness in the world’s contact zones. Visiting the battle- and killing-fields of Rwanda, Iraq, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Bosnia and Afghanistan, Gittoescaptures the atrocities and attacks on basic human rights. He produces poignant, rare images of the aftermath of terror, shock and death on the edge of human experience.

Gittoes is described simultaneously as a figurative painter, a modernist, a postmodernist, a social realist, a pop artist and an expressionist. His painting The Preacher, winner of the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1995, was completed following his visit to Rwanda in 1995 with the Australian peacekeeping forces.

Also an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, several feature films covering the war on terror have been released by Gittoes since 2004. 
Gittoes acknowledges his journey is one into the heart of human darkness: “I believe there is a role for contemporary art to challenge, rather than entertain. My work is confronting humanity with the darker side of itself.”

Gittoes has received significant critical acclaim and is widely published, with a monologue on the artist’s career released by Gavin Fry in 2003. His work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, the State Library of NSW, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Museum & Art Gallery of NT, as well as in regional Galleries throughout Australia and private collections in Australia, Germany, the USA, Canada, the UK and Switzerland.

After being awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of NSW in 2008, Gittoes relocated to Berlin in early 2009, working closely with Mayen Beckmann, the distinguished German curator and granddaughter of the iconic German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann. It was in Berlin that Gittoes produced and exhibited his Descendence series (2009–10), before returning to the Tribal Belt of Pakistan.Gittoes’ ongoing endeavour to reveal the horror and complexity of war is unique.”

Ref: http://www.nandahobbs.com

ONENESS

This is a great word for hippies and being at Woodfolk Folk Festival or for elasticity in relationships. It’s great for the personality types who don’t demand and expect none to be given. But a folk festival cannot last forever! In retirement now – technically and officially, just ask Centerlink – I am glad to have minimal time with any other human, to live in my studio with ink and charcoal. But as Nick Cave says in his Red Hand Files today:

The creative urge is a gift not afforded to everyone, and those of us who possess it bear a responsibility to pursue that impulse wholeheartedly. However, there are other duties beyond those at the tip of your brush or nib of my pen – beautiful and sacrificial fidelities. You have committed to your wife and son to offer them more than just the crumbs of yourself, the dregs of what remains of you after a day with the devil in the shed. You are in service to your creative impulses – and by the same token to God – but you are also in service to the world as it presents itself, and to those entrusted to you. This is a point of honour.  It is with a hard-earned understanding, and the most profound regret, that I can tell you that no artistic endeavour, no matter how sublime it may appear, is worth denying your family or sacrificing those in your care. 

Cave has been ripped from his hard earned ego stroking entitled lifestyle by tragedy. His life, art, relationships, world view and mental health have been shocked into multiple new paths of living, being and understanding. Now there is a desperate generosity, kindess and disciplined listening at a staggering level of commitment.

Suffering, surprise and survival.

We are conditioned to hold celebrity, success and achievement as important marks of being human to the detriment of relationships and community, of oneness. A Cave catastrophe, illness, separation or just getting older with more time to seriously reflect can awaken awareness of others to where it should have been. I use “should” advisedly but it is a modal verb that indicates a failure in the past, questionable action or a narrow undeveloped world view. The path to being more at one with a world we are already one with is fraught by dint of the conditioned capitalist systemic sacred cow of individualism. It’s a mind control that velcroes us to our selves and so in the words of Bob Dylan from Rough and Rowdy Ways – “I contain multitudes.” Making the move to a new awareness of being one with humanity and all that is living is not for the faint hearted. But it is essential if for nothing else for the flourishing of life and beauty. There are multiple examples in the world out side of ourselves that demonstrate the ugliness of unrestrained ego.

I Contain#1, Multitudes #2 – Ink, charcoal, collage, graphite, guache, glue on paper. Artist: Peter Breen. 2025.

A strong word for me is intention. It is a word that opens a window on how to be in the demands my relationships and world bring to my lived experience and all part of the oneness I believe in. It does not necessarily determine how well I behave or respond to others or my environment but it tempers harsh judgement, slows panic and dilutes fear. I have found that I am more at one with myself if my intention is to respect and listen to others and to foster observation and understanding. The dark side of intention is burnout or exhaustion but that does not mean abandoning oneness or intention. Self-respect and self-care are disciplines that are necessary elements of a life lived as if oneness is in our DNA. And it is.

What is the hardest aspect of oneness with other people for you in your lived experience?

What is an example of one thing you have you overcome and how are you overcoming it to strengthen oneness?

Peter Breen, March 26, 2025.

Spirituality

Well known Fransican priest Richard Rohr suggests that religion in the early days of Christianity was a nurturing space for the healthy growth of spirituality and spiritual inquiry. My experience of Christian religion has rarely fostered that idea but in general it has been around protecting tribal belief systems rather than a very broad and non dualistic spiritual safe place. It could be said that religion looked at from the outside seems exclusive and hardly nurturing though initiatlly welcoming. It seems light on love and listening – particularly the monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Isalm – and strong on proclamation. However, a place and space – as an individual or in a group – where spirituality can be experienced, fostered, explained and shared and has not become cultic I am convinced is possible.

Deciding to write on spirituality on this page as part of my A.L.S.O. acrostic is daunting but spirituality or spiritual inquiry is of the essence in being human, being alive and being part of a living planet. As holocaust survivor and logotherapy founder Viktor Frankl says we need to and want to make some kind of sense and meaning of our lives. He infers that spirituality is part of that. I want to write about how my understanding and experience of spirit/spirituality continues to evolve and hope that in that writing there will be some resonance with readers.

Having been a preacher for 20 years of my life, megaphone style, I realise that declarations are part of the persona. I relished the trust given to me to unpack life, scipture and story but in reflection the spiritual experience of mine and of parishoners was probably best described as light on. And I am not really sure of what it could have become given where I was at when I began my life as a pastor. Intense and determined I was. But being part of a tribe for those years I was obliged to perform and believe while all the time battling with questions of meaning and spiritual reality.

This drawing of mine represesents dissonant tensions. Proclomation, indoctrination, time management and apparent insurmountable blockages in the search for certainty.

I have concluded that certainty is not attainable while mystery and the unknown are safe realms.

How do we live with mystery and the unknown and make sense of them if only for a moment in time?

Is this all in our spiritual wondering? I have no definitive final answers.

Stories including art and film from multiple sources are becoming the frameworks of my endless spiritual inquiry.

Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Peter Breen March 18, 2025.

LOVE

Love has multiple interpretations, mulptiple experiences. The romance of it has flourished and been tarnished and lost. It still flourishes, is still tarnished and is still lost….and found. People divorce and separate and try again. Families break up and then creep back together with or without unburdening the hurt of years, mistakes, abuses or misundertandings.

“Love is strong as death.”

In the public domain the shop steward on the factory floor – a diminishing figure for years now – could be said to be living out love in his/her solidarity and action with and for the legislated and hard fought rights of the workers against capitalist greed.

The 3 year old embraces and cries, laughs and plays with everyone in the playground without judgement. The ageing nursing home resident finally says after years of moving on and distancing friends and family who are different: “We just need to accept each other.”

Nelson Mendela after his release from 27 years of incarceration tells this story of love: ….”After I became president, I asked my escort to go to a restaurant for lunch. We sat down and each of us asked what we wanted.On the front table, there was a man waiting to be served. When he was served, I said to one of my soldiers: go and ask that gentleman to join us. The soldier went and conveyed my invitation to him. The man got up, took his plate and sat down right next to me.While he ate his hands trembled constantly and he did not lift his head from his food. When we finished, he said goodbye without looking at me, I shook his hand and he left. The soldier told me: Madiba that man must have been very ill, seeing as his hands didn’t stop shaking while he ate. Absolutely no! the reason for his trembling is another. Then I told him: ….That man was the warden of the prison where I stayed. After he tortured me, I screamed and cried asking for some water and he came humiliated me, laughed at me and instead of giving me water, he urinated in my head.He is not sick, he was afraid that I, now president of South Africa, would send him to prison and do to him what he did to me. But I’m not like that, this conduct is not part of my character, nor of my ethics.Minds that seek revenge destroy states, while those that seek reconciliation build nations. Walking out the door to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave all the anger, hatred and resentment behind me, I would still be a prisoner.”

– Nelson Mandela.

In Julia Baird’s book “Bright Shining – How Grace Changes Everything” she writes in The Callus : On Restorative Justice ” What’s fascinating about restorative justice, experts say, is that the loudest calls for it are coming from survivors, who are pushing for alternatives to a justice system that too often revicitmise and fails the people who have been harmed. Typically, restorative justice works alongside – not in place of – the legal process, and involves bringing victims together with perpetrators in a facilitated environment where they can seek accountability, information and an opportunituy to speak some truths. It aims to give victims a voice, usually denied in court, where they may only get to answer questions or, in some rare cases, when there has been a conviction, give a witness statement. Victims usually want to be heard and believed, and to be sure the person won’t reoffend.

Restorative justice has been used with great effect for decades in juvinile justice, with victims of motoring accidents, and in dealing with a range of other offences, in myrias ways, in Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Northern Ireland, Belgium and the US state of Arizona, and among Navajo, Maori and Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander communities. “

Love has this kind of application.

I am finding that I need to take time to sit and let the love imperative take centre stage in my heart, my intention and my planning – immediate and long term. Sitting or on the run, in conflict and in reflection love is the return button. How can I advocate for young offenders under the current conservative government in Queensland’s “Adult Crime, Adult Time” legislation given what Julia Baird writes? What about closer to home in differences in understanding and communication in our 51 year marriage?

“Love is strong as death.”

Peter Breen, March 12, 2025.

What is an experience of love that you would be willing to talk about that has enriched your lived experience?

Next week I will be reflecting with you on Spirituality in the ALSO acronym. This is an evocative term and one that might trigger revulsion from previous bad religious experiences or on the other hand, it might be one you love to consider and immerse yourself in out of your own interest or hunger.

ART is some kind of mark making response to the moment, to the swirling observations, thoughts, emotions, mysteries, traumas, beauty and silences we live immersed in.

More than one friend has said to me “O you’re a bit arty are you?” or “O my wife does that kind of stuff to help her while I’m away” or “Now that I’m retired I’ve decided I will do something arty.”

South African artist William Kentridge describes his art practice: “I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending – an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.” Instagram: @williamkentridgestudio

John O’Dononue suggests convincingly that we are all artists with imagination and so we are all constructing a world from those centres that continue to add to building and breaking. I am convinced that nothing is ever finally built or broken as all existence is in a never ending flow.

“We can speak beauty into the world or poison it with our words; we can build things up or tear them down; we can dream of a world that is vast, alive, and interesting, or reason it to be small, hard, and empty. “We are each an artist”, said the poet, priest, and philosopher John O’Donohue, “We each possess an imagination. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is involved in the construction of the world”. Every action we take and every word we speak builds or breaks the planet.” Nick Cave Red Hand Files Issue #315

Identity Crisis Ink, red pencil, guache, graphite, gesso on found dictionary pages. Artist: Peter Breen 2017

Dried aerosol paint chards on a plinth. Approximately 16 years aging. Jugglers Art Space 2018

The Folly of Certainty – Waste no Time #2 Charcoal, ink, red pencil on paper 2023 Artist: Peter Breen

City Lights – a Mile Up Charcoal on arches paper Artist: Peter Breen 2024

The Near Present Opportunithy Guache, ink, charcoal, gesso on found encyclopedia page. Artist: Peter Breen 2025

All of the above works are an attempt to observe, listen and respond to the life I am immersed in. The moments each work concept arrives, triggering the work as a note in a journal or a list or a mark on a scrap of paper on the bench. Each work is within a moment in time, a response. And then it evolves or is the door latch to a new draft and as Kentridge says that it is the “less good idea” that often gets up!

Artist: Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy is an installation artist based in Scotland. This work of his was my profile image on Facebook for a couple of years. Evocative of “kicking against the pricks” – a well worn biblical phrase – and for years it communicated a subtle sense of comfort. It seemed to me that this artist was looking out through my eyes into my life’s thorn infested pilgrimage in the flow of living.

Each of my works above evoke memories and further questions. They invite me to sit with them a bit more. To find their soul and mine. And I wonder about Andy Goldsworthy’s inner path to his installation.

What is going on with these works?

The multitudes of possiblities are scratched onto old pages in Identity Crisis, grief’s stamp is on the beauty of 16 years of open graffiti studios, The Folly of Certainty, Waste no Time #2 is a call to find a path in the brambles of overwhelming words and noise, nostalgic reminiscences flying into Narm in City Lights – A Mile Up as I listen spell bound to composer Stuart Greenbaum’s piece of the same name on ABC radio and then under the spell of Russian film maker Andrei Tarkovsky I sit with him and refect on the multitudes of possibiities in The Near Present Opportunity. What do I give myself to? What does existence mean? The honest never ending search for meaning is as open ended as anything can ever be.

These works are autobiographical, narrative chapters in a complex life of complex choices and experiences. Moments caught as marks. Making marks is a human thing, a way of being, acting and acting out and recording. As an artist I spend time, hours and days finding my mark making genre and honing eye hand fluidity. I look foward to the creak of the studio door, the space on the bench, the brush and ink, the charcoal and paper, the guache and pencil, the founation pen. The draws of paper and progress and completed works, collections and books stored away from moisture and moths. The space as a place of home.

Reflection:

Which one of these works would you consider you have some resonance with?

Why?

In the next ALSO – ART essay I will look at Art’s appeal – aesthetics and decor.

Next week: March 12, 2025 The second ALSO word: Love

Peter Breen March 5, 2025.

Artist: William Kentridge “Sunlight on a leaf”

As we wait for cyclone Alfred to land here in Brisbane, “Sunlight on a leaf” has future possibilities.

Art, Love, Spirituality, Oneness

A.L.S.O.

I am keen to continue writing, to explore my world – in my head and outside of it – with stories, images, reflections, opionions and reviews, to share with you, my friends and reading audience.

ALSO is an acrostic outline around the four areas of inquiry – Art, Love, Spirituality and Oneness that came to me in a dream last year and it has anchored me since as a ritual of sorts. It leads to reflections, meditation and mark making in the home studio.

What does art mean and why do I need to make marks?

What is love in good times and bad?

What is spirituality after experiences of religious disillusionment and never ending aggression?

What does human oneness look like when peace seems impossible in families much less in nations?

My life is full and given the state of the world, which in my life time as a privileged white male, has never been so fraught and tentative, I need some kind of framework to enable me to consider what is in and what is out, what I feel impelled to respond to and what to let go as the overwhleming nature of its impact increases.

I hope that this can be of some assistance to readers and friends and I will respond to all replies.

I look foward to some kind of loose community of thinkers and inquirers.

Peter Breen

Guache, collage, glue on paper. 21 x 29.7 cm Artist: Peter Breen

Leitir Fraic, Connemara, Eire Water Colour on paper. Artist: Peter Breen

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President Trump and fantasy

THE LION, THE WHICH OR THE WARDROBE

There’s a story that was read to us as kids and then we read it to ours and now they read it to theirs and so the story goes on. It is, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – by Oxford don C S Lewis. It is a great christian based myth/allegory but it’s beautifully crafted and in the end the wicked witch is knocked out, the lion [ Aslan] dies and comes back to life and the wardrobe children are more than minions – they are princes and princesses and saints if you will.

Let’s fast forward from Narnia to Washington D C and the inauguration of President Trump today.

Feels like….?

Along with Trump and his billionaire minions are the prayers of Franklin Graham. Some of you will have no idea who that is but he is the cloned son of a once fauned and famous protestant evangelist – a salesman ostensibly – Rev Dr Billy Graham who was like the Protestant Pope in the heady days of Nixon and ML King.

After my swim this morning with Maeve [ necessary after her repaired broken hip and surgery – & doing really well!] I was showering and had this idea and as David Lynch says, when you have an idea WRITE IT DOWN!

Let’s play with C S Lewis.

The snow storm and a never been done before inauguration inside [ in a wardrobe??] where the magic light and the descent into the golden age of dark dawn reversals – cold hearted glee with which witch? The magic turkish delilght is a reject shop copy and the theories of a good world are elevated unapoligetically to replace love, social justice, grace and humilty by billionaires, a cloned evangelist [with a narrowly skewed literalist gospel ]and a narcissistic yellow lion look alike fake news saviour. The people cheer outside in the snow and we wonder who the saviour will be. The light just outside the wardrobe shines a yellow beam on snow and despair while in the wardrobe of doom the jingle of bit coins rings loud in the pockets of glazed eyed scrooges.

Lewis’s “resurrection” of the lion and the salvation assistants – the wardrobe children born of the light on the path – will be the people for “The people have the power” [ Patti Smith ]. The people slowly frozen down to almost down for the count will find the power in their collective born again vision for democracy, decency, humanity and justice born of necessity, born of despair, born of humanity while wisdom will arise in the stress of extremity. And it will be born again over time, times and half a time again and again while despots will die, money will rot and mother earth will roar.

Peter Breen

I have never followed or been that interested in David Lynch. His prominence came about in my tightly controlled religious years – controlled by me and others – and so now as he has died and I discover his genius as a surrealist artist, I am playing catchup.

It seems that he was indeed a mystic, a surrealist and a genius. This is the current view by fans and critics both and I am strongly drawn to mysticism of all kinds.

I am partcilarly drawn to three statements of his I have listened to over the past week:

On death:

“I believe life is a continuum, and that no one really dies, they just drop their physical body and we’ll all meet again. Otherwise I don’t see how anybody could ever, once they see someone die, that they’d just disappear forever and that’s what we’re all bound to do. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make any sense, it’s a continuum, and we’re all going to be fine at the end of the story.”

On ageing:

“Inside, we are ageless…and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around the ageless centre.”

On music:

“Music can swell the heart till it almost bursts – you can’t believe that beauty that comes….and it comes from these notes…”

David Lynch, Hands Up, Cowboy!, 2020, mixed media painting on wood, 41 3/4″ × 37 11/16″ × 4 7/8″ (106 cm × 95.7 cm × 12.4 cm) © David Lynch. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer, Los Angeles

William Blake as an English outsider artist and poet [28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827] was dismissed by the church and the arts community as off the wall and crazy and then, as sometimes happens in history after the death of such a person, he became seen as a significant and highly influential poet and artist in the so called romantic school eg William Wordsworth. His mysticism had various iterations including a so-called visit from God at the window of his bedroom when he was a 4 year old and exposure to the Moravians and Count Zinzendorf. No doubt film and social media were big on the influence and popularity of David Lynch before his death and now he has joined Blake. I will be researching the primary influences on Lynch but surmise it will be at least, the father of surrealism, Salvatore Dali.

Artists are not always this influential and the seeking of influence is the curse [ and sometimes, maybe, small blessing] of social media. The artist who wants to paint and draw and direct films for the pure joy and struggle of mark making might become a Lynch or a Blake or most likely, not at all. They might at least and best have some sense of being in a place of purpose and meaning. This is becoming my experience now that I have some sense of condfidence in my own intentional mark making after hundreds of hours of making marks over the last 10-15 years. One needs to be determined and disciplined to be an artist and to write down any ideas that come as David Lynch used to say: Don’t rely on your own memory if you have a good idea – write it down however small or big it might be or become – a painting or a script for a film – write it down!

Blake’s apprenticeship as a young print maker developed his obvious draughtsmanship seen in such works below. [ The Sun at his Eastern Gate, Water colour over pen and ink, illustration, 1816-1820]

There is talent and then as “they” say, it’s all about perspiration. If one has some interest in and love for visual arts then get going and keep going – talented, young, old or disabled. It IS work, work, work, make, make, make that makes the artist and the place in his/her/their own story.

Blake and Lynch were huge talents, gifted and influential in their own and aligned worlds. They also tapped into another real but unseen mystical world, the imagination alive and the sense of the other as a regular visitor made alive in the making and in the final works we have to revisit.

Music as mind altering or God tapping on windows or strange groups of spiritualists doesn’t fit with rational thinking or scientific impiricism – albeit there is a huge upswing in qualitative research now – but it is a place where the spiritual is impinging on open hearts and minds. A breath, a silence or something akin.This is not a call to cultic exclusivism not a return to fundamentalism but rather is driven by my own intense interest, imagination and experience and one that I am convinced ties us all to the spirit/spiritual and to ancient and modern mythology, inexplicable inspiration, ideas and art beyond consumption and decoration.

Suggested Reading:

William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience,

Dr Martin Shaw Smokehole

Out of Office, Out of Mind Charcoal, guache on Arches Water Colour Paper 2024. Artist: Peter Breen

Peter Breen, January 2025. Brisbane Queensland Australia.

Photo Credit: Peter Breen at Goomburra Valley on Unceded Bungalung Country

For a while now my first activity of the day after a few stretches and coffee is to draw. I make quick sketches of plants on the back deck and around the yard. Small sketches – usually 2 or 3 to an A4 page with a fine tipped Mitsubishi black pigment ink pen, or occassionally with an old Parker fountain pen. The paper is an inexpensive 160 gsm 24 page pad I found in Big W for $3. The paper is exceptional with a slight textured surface and an off white tint.

This new ritual has been going for about two or three months now but last week I had one of those mornings where two of the drawings on a page were not going well. The more line I added the less sexy they were! I brushed in some Indian ink which made both drawings look like graffiti tags and not the kind of sketch I wanted – as per the above. I developed this daily ritual for eye hand coordation and to keep learning to draw! It’s also become a meditation for the day’s beginnings.

I tore out the two failures and threw the torn page segment in the bin. There was one satisfactory sketch on a third of a page with a ripped edge. After an hour or two I began to reflect on the idea of drawing/art as story where the story is attached to the process – including the frustration, the tearing and the binning with a ripped page remaining and in the drawing itself. The affect and story building of the drawing on the viewer, including the aesthetic appeal or otherwise, is part of the mystery of art for viewers, gallerists, collectors, critics and artists.

Then a new story began to form for me around the binned drawings. I pulled them out and began tearing up the page around and through the failed drawings. I began arranging these bits on found printed encyclopedia pages [ Encyclopedia Britannica] and finally I drew the opening words of a recent Bob Dylan song on two pages: I contain multitudes. The bits of discard became random collage pieces glued to the old print pages telling a story about me , my drawing that morning and the recreation of something new.

I am interested in what kind of story or experience this might trigger for others who read this “art as story” of mine.

It’s important to keep making marks if for no other reason it makes us into better artists so that we can make marks that are good! But it is also important to reflect on the failures and to let an emerging idea out of the failures grab us, find a story evolving around that emerging idea and make work in those moments that leads us to rework bad work – or sometimes to discard it altogether. We will know how to find the path in those moments. This example from my daily ritual is not about a commission or the preparation of a body of work for a group show. It was part of my daily drawing ritual and so this meant I was under no pressure or high expectations that often sits with me when I am preparing for an exhbition or a group show. Because I was able to take more time and did take a more inutive reflective approach to what might be done with the discard, I found I was able to follow a small idea about reworking the “bad art” by listening with intution into working up something entirely different that I am happy with. Inspiration comes and “doors open” when we least expect them to but we must be working and failing and succeeding and being still all in a flow that has us in its gentle grip.

Peter Breen

This is a work in progress [WIP] but probably done now. I prepared this is a hurry after hearing Stuart Greenbaum’s composition “City Lights – One Mile Up” on ABC Classic FM and my response was a memory of flying into Narm. It seems that my drawing habit is to leave the work as if finished and then return to finish it off – sometimes weeks later which is the case here. I added the horizon line which divided the drawing into 3. I back filled the black charcol random shapes and shaded the sky after adding white charcoal, added a sole tree in the window and high volage towers in white charcoal. This now works better than its earlier face. [ Charcoal on Arches paper]

Image: Water Colour on paper. #untitled Artist: Peter Breen

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Melbourne, Vic 3000

Australia

British Mythologist Dr Martin Shaw tells stories, makes up stories, revises stories, translates myths and talks about them. Incessantly. I find his spoken word and books a new discipline revealing a new path of spiritual and cultural forest exploration. And it is as if I am in a hall or under a tree listening intently. Recently I watched a short video of controversial New York composer Philip Glass talking about what is required for the arts. For visual art it is looking and for music performance it is listening. Overstating the obvious but nevertheless it was a refocus reminder. My world, in and out of family, is around and outside and inside music and visual art. I have had a switch turned on in my head recently that has taken me beyond the aesthetic appeal of art as I struggle and wonder what on earth art making is for and about. My looking has changed to see that the works in our house, on walls and in draws, on desks half finished and pinned on boards as stories in process, chapters, phrases, moments. And so too are those at GOMA, NGV, QCA and MONA and on trains and subway walls. Stories and myths that invite us to look and then to listen as if it was a performance giving voice to the still small voice of the artist finding and telling her/his/their story in a mysterious darkness that we interpret and wonder at in an “ah-ha” moment – eventually – or in a dissonant disiplined looking and wondering that leaves us maybe judging the aesthetic or modality rather than wondering about the artist and the story.

The following are some visual stories of mine from about 2020.

What stories are hidden in these?

These – below – are quick drawings responding to some of my experiences in Cambodia in 1974/75 at the height of the Vietnam war with its Cambodian and Pol Pot Killing fields knocking at the door.

City Lights – A Mile Up Charcoal on Arches Paper Artist: Peter Breen

Out of Office, Out of Mind Charcoal, guache, collage on Fabriano Paper. Artist: Peter Breen

He being dead, still speaks Ink, collage, charcoal, guache, pencil, glue [liquid nails], found book cover. Artist: Peter Breen

These works have all been completed this year – 2024. 

The Martin Luther King Jr mixed media drawing is on the book cover remains of a 1950’s Funk and Wagnells Dictionary. I have used all the pages over the past few years in this book to draw and print on. Mixed media included black and white ink, charcoal, red pencil, and gouache. This is a work for the invitation only Vacant Assembly Block Show in December 2024 where artists are asked to prepare a work in the general dimensions of a besser block. The book cover has been secured by using liquid nails to adhere two strips of wood on the back with options for hooks to hang it with. I’m interested in the use of old books, old book pages and old book covers through the work of William Kentridge and Sam Lock [ a British minimalist abstract painter].

The office worker drawing is for an invitation only group show at Flying Colours bar in West End. The theme: “Out of Office”. The idea of desperation of the masses who grind away on the treadmills of living in a capitalist society at breakneck – and break the spirit – pace to fund the growth myth leads to starved souls, vacant eyes and a longing for the flowers of beauty and renewal. “Out of Office, Out of Mind” I posted a work in process as well as the finished work in the back end of the studio.

The first charcoal drawing:

“City Lights – A Mile Up“

“This work was drawn in response to Australian composer Stuart Greenbaum’s work “City Lights – A Mile Up.” I drew this in my home studio with the paper pinned to the wall. When I heard Greenbaum’s music i imagined flying into Melbourne [Naarm] my birth place. I sketched the first idea in my journal with fountain pen. Flying into Melbourne is always a joy with rolling hills on the approach, mostly dark skies and at night, lights and roads scattering and moving, heaving and dropping away. This work is about that anticipation and the inherent beauty of lights and industrial constructed impacts on once pristine space, landscape and country. My regular ritual is to draw daily, with pencil, ink or fountain pen in my studio or back deck and I have a print making practice relief print [ lino – cut] and monotype.

What is a work of art

if not to be a squeeze of something inert untouchd

and unable to be assessed by smart logic

a kind of smart not felt but deduced outside of intuition and affect

while small marks and loud, colours and movement of charcoal

splashed with bent brushes finding not a design but a final resting place

that births a song in slow sincopation

Peter Breen 2024

In 2012 when the former LNP Leader Campbell Newman came to power as premier [for one term] he came with the same kind of mantra as this guy. It is classic Machiavellian rhetoric that convinces the general public. You’re being robbed – we will fix it and lock ‘ em up. Then under Newman and Bleiji – it was graffiti writers and bikies. On the first Saturday after Newman came to power Jugglers private property was invaded by two plain clothes QPS officers when they saw two young artists painting in the tunnel. On private property! And parking their vehicle over the driveway on the footpath and having been enboldened by the new Premier they marched in waving their new found popwer. What ensued was a frigtening experience for the lads ending up with my going to the Crime and Misconduct Commission about the incident. Now under this government it is [largely] young aborigial kids. At the time Newman came to power, I was running Jugglers Art Space and had been working with a New York model Diversion program experiment in the Brisbane Magistrate’s Court [ Court #1] with magistrate Christine Roney with some contact with Sisters Inside Inc ‘s Debbie Kilroy . It was set up to assist with a new way – diversion instead of incarceration – of dealing with law and order issues in a way that would both help the arrested person to find new pathways, reduce recidivism and reduce the impact of imprisonment on the state – among other things. We were working with that court with young people arrested for graffiti misdemeanors as were the The Salvation Army Australia and other groups around other social misdemeanours. Within the first month of the new Newman Government the new Attorney General – Jarrod Bleiji – yes the same Deputy [who would be premier] Premier sworn in today dumped the Masistrate Court #1 Program. “I don’t believe in diversion programs and they don’t work” he was quoted as saying. We need and must push back against this draconion cruel and just plain dumb approach to law and order. I am not advocating for riots and law breaking without consequence. I am advocating for intelligent, compasionate and long term belief in humanity, family systems and better approaches to the crime among young people. The current new idea – it isn’t! – by this new government will fail and will not make us a better or safer state around this issue. Just a more fearful one.

Peter Breen, Co-Founder, Jugglers Art Space Inc

Queensland LNP’s ‘fresh start’ for youth detention is just a cruel repackaging of failed punitive policies 

‘Beneath all of the fancy footwork and buzzwords, it’s just another punitive approach that punishes children for the failures of the state.’

The Queensland Liberal-National Party’s so-called “fresh start” for Queensland’s youth detention system is anything but fresh. Over the weekend the LNP released its detention reform program as part of its “Making our Community Safer Plan”, citing their “Detention with Purpose” program as a fresh start for Queensland. However, what we really got was a rehash of the tired, punitive measures of the past dressed up as rehabilitation — where words like “discipline” and “purpose” were being trotted out to mask the root causes of so-called youth crime and the very nature of rehabilitation.

The plan claims to reform youth detention by focusing on discipline and rehabilitation through compulsory education, behavioural management programs, and a zero-tolerance approach to violence. Under this proposal, privileges like TV and social time would be earned through good behaviour, while violent behaviour would result in enforced periods of isolation (solitary confinement). The plan aims to reduce “recidivism” by imposing consequences for both good and bad behaviour, alongside a 12-month post-detention support program to supposedly help kids reintegrate. But beneath all of the fancy footwork and buzzwords, it’s just another punitive approach that punishes children for the failures of the state.

Put aside the fact that we do not have the kind of “youth crime crisis” that LNP Leader David Crisafulli would have you believe. This was aptly debunked by criminologists this month, who offered data demonstrating a dramatic decline in youth crime rates in every state across Australia. Children are being used in this election as electoral fodder to win votes, and Crisafulli is so desperate to be elected that he seems prepared to throw our kids into hard cells to get the top job.LNP is set for an easy win in Queensland, but its first term may pose a much greater challengeRead More

The reality is, children’s prisons have become the default response to all of society’s problems — poverty, lack of housing, inadequate access to education, and the absence of proper healthcare. In blaming children for these failures, the LNP has created a policy that is not only unjust but will also be cruel and ineffective.

Let’s be clear: youth detention centres are not and will never be places of rehabilitation. They are children’s prisons. They are designed to punish, isolate, and control children, many of whom have already suffered at the hands of the state through racist policies of child removals, over-policing, surveillance and systemic neglect. And yet, the LNP wants to sell the voting public on the idea that locking a child away in a prison will somehow “rehabilitate” them — as if the state, as the commanding force in the child’s life, can be the correcting agent to “turn the child’s life around”. For many of those children, the state has been a violent and racist abuser. 

This is a plan built on a false premise: that children in prison are there because they need discipline and consequences for bad behaviour. The LNP conveniently sidesteps the state’s role in producing the conditions that lead to criminalisation in the first place. Compulsory education, framed as a solution in this plan, feels more like a band-aid for a gaping wound. 

If the LNP truly valued education for our children, why would they rip kids out of classrooms to lock them in cages? Why not pack support around our kids to keep them in the community? How can we expect kids to engage meaningfully with education while the trauma, instability, and abuse they’ve experienced goes unaddressed? Schools often fail these children long before they are imprisoned. Once they’re inside, the LNP offers no plan for individualised support, no resources for trauma-informed care, and no pathway to genuine healing.

Education inside a prison is not a solution; it’s the state’s admission of failure. If education were truly a priority, we would not need prisons to deliver it. Forcing children to learn while isolated from their families and communities, under the psychological pressure of confinement, is nothing short of cruel.

Moreover, we must acknowledge that many of these children are victims themselves — of abuse, neglect, systemic racism, and social deprivation. Imprisoning these children is a grotesque act of victimising them all over again. It is the state’s attempt to erase its own culpability by shifting the blame onto the very children it has failed.In the 50 years since I was locked up as a kid, nothing has really changed in AustraliaRead More

The LNP’s plan to use solitary confinement — a form of isolation known to cause severe psychological damage and considered by the UN as a form of torture — is presented as a way to “reform” these young lives. But the reality is punitive measures like solitary confinement and behavioural management programs do nothing to reduce reoffending. These practices, in fact, make things worse by compounding the trauma that led many of these children into conflict with the law in the first place. 

Instead of rehashing punitive measures, the LNP should be focusing on social policies that build up our communities. We need more resources for public housing, education, mental health services, and opportunities for children to heal and grow in their communities, homes, and classrooms — not in prisons. Growth and development cannot happen behind bars. It happens in safe, nurturing environments where children are supported, not blamed and punished for circumstances beyond their control.

The LNP’s “fresh start” is a fundamental failure right from the beginning. Its so-called plan to reduce the criminalisation of our children will only increase the harm done to some of the most vulnerable in our communities. Under this policy, the real victims will be our children — criminalised, punished, and abandoned by a party more interested in slogans and soundbites than in genuine solutions.

The state must be held accountable for the well-being of every child, especially those in its care. It’s time to stop pretending that prisons are the answer. Children deserve better. They deserve real care and support, not just a new name for the same old punishment.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Debbie Kilroy

CONTRIBUTOR

Debbie Kilroy OAM was first criminalised at the age of 13 and spent more than two decades in and out of women’s and children’s prisons. Driven to end the criminalisation and imprisonment of girls and women, Debbie established Sisters Inside, as well as her law firm, Kilroy & Callaghan Lawyers.

Tabitha Lean

CONTRIBUTOR

Tabitha Lean is an abolition activist, writer and story teller who organises to disrupt and dismantle the colonial project, abolish the prison industrial complex, and annihilate racial capitalism.

From Crikey http://www.crikey.com.au

Tracks of History: Railroads, Train Art, and Cultural Narratives

One of the things I have learnt over the past 27 years since Jugglers started in Brisbane is that the evolution of art and mark making is a phenomenon with a life of its own. There is a constant in the human imagination, an endless movement in minds, souls and the visceral subconsious that creates a hunger for mark making, a hunger that needs to be asuaged and that is so once marks are made, however naive and undeveloped.

People have said to me: ” I love the mural kind of art but not the tags on fences and trains.” My usual reply is: “How do you think the process unfolds to where you enjoy the aesthetics of pubic murals?” A child’s early marks are restricted into something she must unlearn over a lifetime.

That a train museum would hold a street art event on site in Queensland was another indicator of the evolution of this life. An embracing of the unstoppable life of art and artists. Someone has said “Graffiti is the last bastion of freedom of speech” and yet this bastion will never be silenced. Street art in Queensland is alive and well and so too are tags and throw ups on QR trains. I have seen more train graffiti in Brisbane in the last couple of years than I had in the previous 20 – except after the 2011 Brisbane floods when trains were unguarded and accessible away from the Bowen Hills train yards.

There are tidal waves of crack downs and graffiti activity on trains and buildings in Queensland over the years that is indicative of the hunger for mark making and control of its aesthetic and application. Murals and street art are not replacing graffiti and one could say that there is an attempt at the gentrification of the art of graffiti. Mark making has for centuries had graffiti interations with names and tags while graffiti and tagging with aerosol was a new public art phenonmenon kicked off in New York on trains the 1960’s. It has been famously captured in the 1983 film Style Wars and by photographer Martha Cooper in her bible of graffiti Subway Art . A film by Brisbane film maker and Jugglers friend, Selina Miles – Martha tells some of the story. A TAG Conference was initiated in 2017 in Europe to consider the history and current practice of tags and graffiti. https://www.tag2024.org/

Campbell Newman the 2012-2014 Queensland Premier came to power on the back of a few slogans with one very clear one being his mantra to eliminate graffiti and graffiti mark makers from Queensland. His attempt included bullying and intimidation but clearly this has not worked. The argument around cost to the public is understandable while graffiti as the bastion of freedom of speech is as much about politics as art. It won’t go away soon and my view is that it may well emerge as something hungered for as social media infects the synapses of this generation.

Train art at Brunswick Street Station, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. September 2024

I was asked to facilatate a panel of 5 artists who were painting at the close of this all day event around the theme: Tracks of History:Railroads, Rail Art and Cultural Narratives. The artists were public street art muralists with a range of experiences in street art and graffiti. The conversation did touch on the illegal experimentation but mostly it focussed on the evolution of street art that now postively includes aboriginal and female artists that was once in Australia a young white male only collective.

Despite the heat of the day – it was Ipswich after all – there was a strong sense of good times and the plan for it to be repeated in 2025. The event was initiated by the Museum of Brisbane and curated by Yonder Festival and Super Ordinary in Brisbane. All artists and panel participants were paid – as was the facilitator and even though it was not an hourly rate it did cover some basic costs for travel and some paint. Boards and all preparation were supplied by the museum.

Peter Breen, October 14, 2024.