Introduction

Abstract

This Special Issue of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Art follows a year after the symposium titled War, Art and Visual Culture: Sydney. The symposium held at the SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney on Monday 25 February 2019 set out to explore current international thinking on the art and visual culture of war, conflict, terror and political violence. Both this special issue, the Sydney symposium, and the symposia in London and Los Angeles that followed later in the year, are an important part of Art in Conflict, a three-year ARC Linkage project led by Curtin University, collaborating with University of Melbourne, UNSW Art & Design and University of Manchester, and partnering with the Australian War Memorial and the National Trust (NSW). The project aims to consider the politics of addressing war in contemporary art and visual culture, particularly the potential for conflicts, compromises and complicity. One of the major outcomes is an exhibition of recent contemporary war art, with curation led by the Australian War Memorial’s Anthea Gunn. We (Messham-Muir and Cvoro) are co authoring a book on art and war, scheduled for publication in 2021, twenty years after 9/11.