Overview
Gittoes is a painter, water-colourist, drawer, performance artist, filmmaker, photographer, printmaker, and sculptor. [2] According to Mitchell Fine Art, he has been described as a pop artist, a figurative artist, a modernist, and a post-modernist, but his work is all related to documenting. [6]
He and his wife Hellen Rose have become well known for making anti-war art. [7] It has seen them travel to several war zones in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, [7] Cambodia, Somalia, [4] and Ukraine, where they travelled to make a documentary film about local artists. [8] Gittoes' travels include: US, 1968-69; UK, Europe, and US, 1984; Nicaragua, 1986; Philippines 1989; Africa and Asia 1993-95. [2] He has earned the designation "unofficial war artist", having travelled under the auspices of the Australian Defence Force, usually with and their protection and some assistance from them, but with no constraints on his work. [9]
Australia
Returning to Australia after his spell in New York, in 1969 Gittoes co-founded the Yellow House at Potts Point with other artists including Martin Sharp and Albie Thoms, [1] where Gittoes performed puppet shows. [10] [3] Later, in 2011 he relocated to Afghanistan and opened a Yellow House in Jalalabad, which focused on filmmaking, [3] but was also a centre for the creative arts. [11]
In 1971 he moved to Bundeena, New South Wales, where he created art studios and lived until 2008. He painted bush scenery and created holograms, and also started working with some local Aboriginal communities and learning about Aboriginal culture. Here he made his first film paintings, performances, holograms and a film composed of abstract images, The Rainbow Way in 1976, partly based on the creation myth of the Rainbow Serpent. Art historian Gabrielle Dalton collaborated with him on the film, and they later married. Martin Wesley-Smith composed music for the film. Dalton, Wesley-Smith, Ian Fredericks, and Gittoes together created a series of multi-media shows at Wattamolla lagoon between 1979 and 1981, [1] [12] [13] sometimes accompanied by live dancers. Gittoes and Dalton made a film called Wattamolla that was shown at the International Dance Film and Videotape Festival and Conference in New York in June 1981. [14]
He made his first documentary film, Tracks of the Rainbow, for ABC Television in 1982. This was about a group of Aboriginal children from New South Wales travelling north to meet with tribal elders from Mornington Island. [1] The first of a trilogy called The Territory Trilogy, Warriors and Lawmen (1984), showed the conflict between Aboriginal people and the white legal system. The film covers two criminal cases, one from 1968 and one from 1983, in the Northern Territory. Unbroken Spirit and Frontier Women followed in 1985. [15] Dalton produced Warriors and Lawmen, which she continued to do for many of his following films. [1]
Conflict zones
In 1986 Gittoes went to Nicaragua to make another war film, The Bullets of the Poets, exploring the connection between war and poetry, leading to a long interest in the intersection of art, war, and culture in conflict. [1]
The Australian War Memorial commissioned him to take photographs in the conflicts in Cambodia in 1992 and Somalia in 1993, accompanying the Australian soldiers working as part of the UN peacekeeping force. [1]
He travelled to Rwanda after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, accompanying the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda. Making a second trip in 1995, he witnessed the aftermath of a massacre by the Rwandan forces on 22 April 1995 [9] at Kibeho. He took photographs and made pencil drawings of what he saw, and helped to carry wounded victims. This led him to continue to document people's lives in areas of conflict, believing that "art can make a difference. It's art without borders". [4]
Gittoes made Soundtrack to War (2004) after two long stays in Baghdad. The film was based on interviews with young American soldiers about what music they played as they burnt and bombed the city and the impact of death on them. He also recorded music of Baghdad residents, as well as music created by African American soldiers, who made up most of the force there. In 2005, Soundtrack to War screened at the Sydney and Berlin Film Festivals, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, as well as in cinemas in Europe, the US, and Australia. Seventeen scenes in Soundtrack were used by Michael Moore used 17 scenes from Gittoes' film in his 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11 . [1]
His 2006 film Rampage is focused on the Miami subculture of a group of African American soldiers he had met in Iraq. It was screened at the Berlin, Sydney, Vancouver, and Montreal World Film Festivals ahead of cinema release Australia, the UK, and the US. Critic Margaret Pomeranz described Rampage as "intensely human, vulnerable, and insightful". [1]
In 2007 he went to the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan to make the third of a trilogy of films created as a response to the "war on terror", using this term as the series title. The first version of the film, titled The Miscreants, was screened at the 2008 Sydney Underground Film Festival. The final version, titled The Miscreants of Taliwood, was screened at the Telluride Film Festival in 2009, followed by a cinema release. [1]
In July 2009, Gittoes went to live in Berlin, Germany. [1]
In 2011, he relocated to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with his wife Hellen Rose, [3] and established Yellow House Jalalabad. [16] Two films were made there: Love City Jalalabad (2013) and Snow Monkey (2015). [17]
In 2018 he made White Light, about violence in Chicago, a feature documentary about the people involved in gun violence in Chicago, which was screened on ABC Television. [18] No Bad Guys (2021), a sequel to White Light, [19] is also about gun and gang violence in Chicago, particularly on May Block. It follows the lives of both the perpetrators and the bereaved families of the victims. Three of the subjects of the film were killed during the making of the film, which started filming in 2018, shot by Gettoes, Waqar Alam, and Hellen Rose, who was also responsible for the music and production. [18] No Bad Guys was screened at the Melbourne International Documentary Festival, where it won Best Australian Director; Bridge of Peace Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary; and at the Sydney Underground Film Festival. [19]
After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan and the Yellow House Jalalabad creative community was threatened, the arts centre relocated to Peshawar, in the Tribal Belt of Pakistan. This "Yellow House in exile" was named the Yellow Submarine, and serves as a sanctuary for the artists until such time as it is safe to return to Jalalabad. [11]
Ukraine
Gittoes and Dalton went to Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion in 2022, [20] and filmed there over three and a half years during the subsequent war in Ukraine. [19] Gittoes also created many artworks, and the couple collaborated with Ukrainian artist Ave Libertatemaveamor on new works, which were later shown in an exhibition titled George Gittoes: Ukraine Guernica at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre in Sydney. In 2022, Gittoes and Libertatemaveamor collaborate to produce a huge mural, Kiss of Death, on the outside wall of the House of Culture at Irpin. The kiss refers to the portrayal of Putin "as a hideous insect-like creature clumsily kissing his contortionist lover, grossly 'feeding off each other'". The two artists also created a graphic novel of the same title in 2024. [20]
In the film Ukraine Guernica: Art Not War, events in Ukraine are linked to Gittoes' and Rose's ongoing Yellow House Jalalabad, a creative centre and art school. [21] The film shows many atrocities of the war, including the bombing of the House of Culture in Irpin, as Russia tries to deny that there is a distinct Ukrainian culture. [22] Despite its gutting, artists continue to give performances and exhibitions, to show that their spirits cannot be destroyed. [21] Gittoes and Rose have noted many similarities between Ukraine and Australia. The film opened the Sydney Underground Film Festival on 6 September 2023, [22] and also screened at Melbourne International Film Festival; Screenwave International Film Festival in Coffs Harbour, NSW; and Salem Film Fest in Salem, Massachusetts. It also screened in competition in the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, won an award at Oniros Film Awards in New York, and was a finalist in the Bridge of Peace Awards in 2023. [21]
Humanity in Danger opens with Picasso's famous anti-war painting, Guernica , and was screened widely in Ukraine in 2024/5. Its official release date is 27 August 2025. [19]
