F E AT URE
Wendy Sharpe: Official war artist in East Timor The idea of women being appointed as official war artists still raises eyebrows. The typical response to the suggestion that women might work as war artists is: ‘‘are there any?’’ War and art are still viewed as a man’s thing, ruled by issues of propriety about what women should and should not witness, and spatial zones they ought not transgress.[1] War, even modern-day techno-war, still employs an older style language of ‘‘the front’’ where battles take place, while the home front is supposedly a safe zone, even though frontline battles take place in towns and villages where women and children live. The language and geography of wartime space are deeply gendered. [2] Yet women artists have always engaged with issues surrounding war and conflict. Gay Hawkes’s mocking portrayal Saddam Hussein on a Rhinoceros (1990) comes from the days of the Gulf War; while Barbara Hanrahan’s biting Poppy Day (1982), showing war widows attempting to put a brave face on their plight, is informed by the anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam War era.[3] Commentary of this kind has been done at distance, and from the safety of the home front. Even today people still have to be reminded that three Australian women artists, Nora Heysen, Stella Bowen and Sybil Craig, were appointed to the position of official war artist during the Second World War. All were required to work in-situ, reflecting the view that war artists typically need to observe what is going on to work effectively. Nora Heysen’s subjects were principally women in the Pacific, so she worked in New Guinea and northern Australia; Stella Bowen’s subjects were Australian servicemen in the main in the Air Force in Britain, so she was based in three British air stations; while Sybil Craig worked on the home front in munitions factories in Melbourne.[4] These three women 18
AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPER
Wendy Sharpe with Timorese children. Wendy Sharpe.
were out-numbered, though, by the 47 male artists who were official war artists during that war. Another 54 years passed before Sydney artist and Archibald Prize winner Wendy Sharpe became the fourth woman to be appointed as an official artist in 1999. This was the time of the horrific East Timor conflict and she originally refused the offer to work there, only agreeing when conditions improved. Rick Amor, who was also appointed, went in September, and Sharpe spent three weeks there in December 1999. Both marked a new era for war artists. It was the first time male and female appointments have been equal in numbers. Also, Sharpe was not required to join the
defence forces as were two of her three predecessors, Nora Heysen and Stella Bowen, who were each appointed at the rank of Captain in the AWAS (Australian Women’s Army Service). By 1999, much of the red tape which delayed their appointments in 1943–44 had vanished. Sharpe was simply a defence civilian attached to the Army History Unit in Dili; her dress was plain khaki and a patch on her sleeve identified her as an Australian official artist. She was not restricted in her movements, as was Heysen, and travelled all over East Timor under the protection of two armed soldiers. None of the clashes between the army and artist, which so frustrated
