Content warning: The following story discusses suicide and domestic abuse.
In May this year, artist Kat Rae was announced as the winner of the 2024 Napier Waller Art Prize for her work, Deathmin (2023), an installation comprising the ephemera of “post-death admin” that Rae inherited after the suicide of her veteran husband Andrew in 2017.
The Napier Waller Art Prize is a biennial, acquisitive award established by the Australian War Memorial in 2018. The Prize invites entries from current or former members of the Australian Defence Force to demonstrate the power of art to tell stories, and aid healing and commemoration.
The Prize is a counterpoint to the Official War Art Scheme, which deploys professional artists into conflict zones to document, record and interpret the Australian experience of conflict.
The Scheme was established in World War I after British and Canadian precedents and reactivated during World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Since 1999, the Scheme has deployed contemporary artists to operations in Timor-Leste, the Middle East, the Solomon Islands and the Northern Territory of Australia.
It has been more than a century since visual art’s power to interpret and understand conflict was first officially recognised by government through this Scheme. Across the world, war continues, in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere.
The purpose of the Memorial, the Official War Art Scheme and the Napier Waller Art Prize is to interrogate the Australian experience of war, but to what ends? Is this only about commemoration – or systemic change?
In this article:
A century of Australian war artists
Many of us associate the Australian War Memorial with war relics and historical objects, but it is also home to a vast visual art collection of some 40,000 works.
This collection began with the Official War Art Scheme, which was established during the World War I and predates the Memorial itself, which opened in Canberra during World War II. It remains one of the largest and longest running commissioning programs of works of art in Australia.
‘Most historical objects, and the text that interprets these objects, takes on the authority of the museum,’ says Dr Anthea Gunn, Senior Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial. ‘Visual art allows for personal and diverse perspectives to come through, which, when you’re talking about something as complex as war, is essential. It enables a nuanced telling of history.’
The Scheme was initially conceived as a pictorial record of war, as well as a means to remember and interpret Australia’s role in conflict. A current exhibition of contemporary war artists at the Memorial is titled Critical Witness. Exhibition didactics describe the unique role of war artists to record the ‘visual, personal and conceptual dimensions of war and service’ in a way that is ‘distinct from other forms of reportage’.
‘First and foremost, the Memorial’s responsibility is commemoration, and a big part of that is understanding the reality of war. One of the crucial things about the Official War Art Scheme is that art can enable this understanding. I would also argue that civilians have a responsibility to pay attention to Australia’s experiences in conflict, because, for so many of us today, conflict is a remote idea,’ says Gunn. ‘It is part of being an informed citizen and an informed voter.’
The Scheme deploys professional artists, including such renowned practitioners as eX de Medici, Tony Albert, Megan Cope and Ben Quilty, but what sets the Memorial collection apart from other state collections is that it includes work by many who would not consider themselves to be professional artists.
This is the case for the Napier Waller Art Prize, the only eligibility requirement being that entrants are current or former members of the Australian Defence Force. This showcases the diversity of service personnel and their experiences.
‘A lot of the work is related to the veteran experience, but there’s also just lots of beautiful works of art that aren’t necessarily about service,’ says Gunn. ‘Military people aren’t only interested in the military, although they do have really interesting things to say about it.’
The Memorial’s collecting remit has always been to acquire works that convey the Australian experience of war and conflict, but recent acquisitions, including Rae’s Prize-winning work, demonstrate an increasing interest in its aftermath.
In 2023, the Memorial commissioned Alex Seton’s For Every Drop Shed in Anguish (2023), a sculpture comprising 18 marble spheres installed in the Australian War Memorial Sculpture Garden.
The work was initiated by a committee of veterans and family members who wanted to better recognise the ongoing physical and emotional toll of service.
‘The Memorial has always adapted in response to the way that Australians have understood and talked about war. Institutions have to reflect, because that’s what Australia is doing,’ says Gunn.
What is the role of artists?
Australia is currently reflecting on the devastating mental health impacts of military service on account of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which Rae considers to be a reckoning.
Rae describes Deathmin as a counter monument to the stoic imagery we usually associate with military commemoration. A stack of thousands of pages of paperwork in which her late husband requests support for injuries related to his military service, the sculpture stands at precisely Rae’s height and Andrew’s weight. It leans wearily against the gallery wall, a riposte to the military convention to never lean against walls, no matter how exhausted you are.
The Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force is required to investigate and report on every veteran suicide within a year. Andrew’s report was six years overdue and inadequate, lacking any recommendations to save lives. The report was signed off in March 2023, but was delivered to Rae in October 2023, giving her only three days to make a submission to the Royal Commission.
‘I listened to the televised hearings while making art. The whole time I had been told that Andrew and I were an exceptional case, that we’d fallen through the cracks. I realised that was a lie and that this happens more often than it should,’ says Rae.
Her winning work, alongside 16 other highly commended entries, is currently on display at Australian Parliament House until 13 October 2024. In previous years, the exhibition has been at the Australian War Memorial, but the temporary galleries were closed this year due to ongoing capital works.
Read: The controversies of ‘political art’ exploring war and violence
The curatorial serendipity is a welcome one for Rae, who feels that she is returning the documentation of the bureaucracy’s failings back to our nation’s decision-makers. Her work will be on display when the final report of the Royal Commission is handed down in September this year.
The subject of war and commemoration is a complex and contested debate – and, for Rae, an incredibly personal and painful one. How do we think critically about conflict while respecting those who have made the ultimate sacrifice?
‘I feel like this is the job of artists. Art is one of the few things that can transcend the binary and, at times, fraught debate,’ says Rae. ‘My art is always open to critique, but no one can deny my experience as a veteran, a widow of a veteran, a mother to a child who has lost her father.’
Rae’s practice interrogates who is left out of commemoration. ‘The history of war has been about great men, on great dates, doing great deeds. I see who gets esteemed and who doesn’t, and I feel left out of that imagery,’ reflects Rae. ‘Without nuance, we can’t reflect the whole social experience of war.’
Courage and bravery are qualities that we associate with military personnel in war zones, but for many, the greatest battles have been on the home front. Rae observes that her work is also interested in the propensity of the wounded to wound others. ‘What happens when the war returns to the domestic front? I have deployed to the Middle East three times, and far scarier for me was the danger and violence in my own home.’
Rae left a 20-year career in the Army to become a full-time artist, as a widow and mother to a young child, and uses her work to speak truth to power in an increasingly fraught political and social landscape.
‘As time goes on, I feel more and more courageous,’ Rae concludes.
The Napier Waller Art Prize exhibition 2024 will be on display at Australian Parliament House until 13 October 2024; free entry. Vote in the People’s Choice Award here until 13 October.
If you or someone you know needs help, support is available at Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. If you are an Australian veteran or family of a veteran, you can also call Open Arms, Veterans & Veterans Families Counselling Service, on 1800 011 046.
