George Gittoes

George Noel Gittoes, Template:Postnominals (born 7 December 1949) is an Australian artist, filmmaker, director and writer. In 1970, he was a co-founder of the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney. After the Yellow House he moved to the South Coast of NSW and has worked globally across many mediums. Gittoes’ art has consistently expressed his social, political and humanitarian concern at the effects of injustice and conflict. Until the mid-1980s, this work was chiefly centered in Australia, particularly involved with First Nation subjects. In 1986 he travelled to Nicaragua, and since then the focus of Gittoes’ work has been largely international.

He has worked in many regions of conflict, including the Philippines, Somalia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa, Congo, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Southern Lebanon, Sinai, Western Sahara, Yemen, Pakistan, Tibet, Bougainville, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and racially segregated communities in Miami and Chicago, USA. In 2011, he and his wife Hellen Rose established a second Yellow House in Jalalabad Afghanistan which continues to function as a multidisciplinary arts center. During a career of more than half a century he has worked across the disciplines of drawing, painting, holography, abstract and photojournalist photography, films, community arts, theatre production and writing.

He has twice won the Blake Prize for Religious Art, the Wynn Prize for Landscape, multiple film awards, a Centenary Medal, been made a Member of the Order of Australia, received a Doctor of Letters and in 2015 the Sydney Peace Prize. In 2025 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sydney Underground Film Festival.

Early life

Gittoes was born 1949 in Brighton-le-Sands, New South Wales and grew up in nearby Rockdale, both southern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Gittoes’ maternal grandfather, who lived in the same street, was a racehorse trainer, and was a significant influence in Gittoes’ childhood. Gittoes' father, Claude, was a public servant, who rose to be Secretary of the Department of Main Roads. His mother, Joyce, was an artist and potter. Gittoes’ first public art started with glove puppet shows he performed at the age of 11 years, for other children, on the back lawn of his house in Rockdale.

Both parents encouraged George as an artist. Gittoes completed his schooling at Kingsgrove North High School and began an Arts degree at Sydney University where Professor Bernard Smith became a supportive and ongoing mentor. Bernard introduced him to the visiting American art critic Clement Greenberg who, after seeing his Minimalist Abstract paintings, encouraged him to leave Australia for New York.

This led to Gittoes' abandoning his studies to spend time in America. Both parents supported this decision, particularly his father. In New York Gittoes came under the influence of the African American figurative artist, Joe Delaney, who connected him to the civil rights movement. Gittoes art veered away from abstraction towards the political, and in the US he began the ‘’Hotel Kennedy Suite’’, inspired by opposition to the Vietnam War. Gittoes, also met and briefly assisted Andy Warhol at the Factory, gaining experience which prepared him for his later contribution to the Sydney Yellow House.

Work in Australia, 1970–1985

Returning to Australia in late 1969, a meeting with Martin Sharp led to the establishment of the Yellow House Artist Collective at 49 Macleay St, Kings Cross, New South Wales. Gittoes worked with Bruce Goold, to transform the three-storey building into a space in which artists, filmmakers and performers could both live and exhibit their work. Gittoes’ most unique contribution was a psychedelic Puppet Theatre, in which he and colleagues performed both experimental dramas and puppet plays. The Yellow House artists were opposed to the Vietnam war at a time when Kings Cross was hosting American GIs on R&R from Vietnam. The Texas Tavern, the unofficial headquarters of the CIA, was across the road at 44 Macleay Street. The tension between opposites caused the Yellow House to operate in what felt like a war zone. 1972 Gittoes and Sharp left the Yellow House which continued for another year.

A keen surfer, Gittoes travelled for a while in a caravan up and down the south coast of NSW. Eventually he settled in Bundeena, a seaside village south of Sydney. For a time, Gittoes abandoned the politically driven art inspired by Joe Delaney and produced a series of abstract paintings, films and photographs in what is known as his Rainbow Way period. The Rainbow Way paintings used ideas drawn from Aboriginal art (in particular, the myth of the Rainbow Serpent), <ref>George Gittoes showed ‘Rainbow Way’ series of abstract colour photographs at Brummels Gallery in 1975 Template:Citation</ref> and the photographs and films were created from the optical phenomenon of using glass prisms mounted on a tripod to mix spectral light as it was reflected above and below the water of incoming ocean tides.

In the same period, he pioneered colour holography with scientists at the CSIRO and computer-generated random dot stereograms, known as mental holograms, at University of NSW. His first 16mm film ‘Rainbow Way’ was screened in the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals while his photographs and Holograms were shown at the Australia Centre for Photography, Sydney Town Hall and Brummels, Solander, Coventry and Macquarie Galleries. His paintings were exhibited at Coventry Gallery and his painting ‘Rainbow Serpent’ won the Fishers Ghost Art Prize. Large scale multimedia performance using projections, live dance, props and electronic music began with the Ashes of Sydney Festival in Sydney Harbour and Sunfish at the Dawn Fraser Swimming Baths in Balmain. Gittoes created the sets, props and projections for Poppy, a Sydney Dance Company production directed by Graeme Murphy. Gittoes’ early connection to Aboriginal art and performance, led in 1977 to his first journey to the Northern Territory and Western Australia where he met and was mentored by such tribal elders as Sam Wollogoodja in the Kimberley.

In 1979, he formed the environmental theatre group, Theatre Reaching Environments Everywhere (TREE), with Gabrielle Dalton, Ronaldo Cameron, and Martin Wesley-Smith. Between 1979 and 1984 TREE presented a number of outdoor events most notably at Wattamolla in the Royal National Park. They involved hundreds of local people as well as professional dancers and musicians and attracted audiences in the thousands. Gavin Fry has described these as “some of the most complete and spectacular art performances Australia has seen”. <ref>Gavin Fry, George Gittoes (1998), p. 16.</ref>

While Gittoes short films ‘Rainbow Way’ and ‘Refined Fire’ had been successful theatrically and in Film Festivals they did not reach the wider audiences available through television. Gittoes first took up the challenge of making feature documentaries with Tracks of the Rainbow (1984), a film where a group of semi-urban Aboriginal children who had been disconnected from traditional culture, travel to the Northern Territory on a journey of discovery, following the path of the dreamtime Rainbow Serpent and meeting tribal elders happy to pass on their ancient knowledge and customs. The completed film was sold to the ABC and screened Nationally. Through 1984 and 1985 Gittoes was based in the Northern Territory making a series of films about outback life, cultural confrontation, and art. The resulting documentaries Warriors and lawmen (1984), ‘’Unbroken spirit’’ (1985), and Visions in the making (1986) were broadcast Nationally on ABC and Frontier Women screened on Channel 7. Unbroken Spirit was shown on BBC in the UK. Gittoes Northern Territory paintings were exhibited at the Darwin Museum and Art Gallery.

‘Warriors and Lawmen’ tells the highly controversial and politically challenging stories of two confrontations between aboriginal law and white law as implemented by the Northern Territory Police Force. The release of this graphic and emotionally charged film encouraged Gittoes to believe he had the experience and confidence to step into filming in international conflict zones. ‘Frontier Women’ which recognized the pioneering courage and contribution of women in the Outback of the Northern Territory inspired Gittoes to look to role of women in revolution and conflict zones.

Australia and overseas, 1986–1992

In 1986, the success of the Northern Territory films led Gittoes Nicaragua, to make Bullets of the poets (1987), a film about a group of Sandinista women poets, Daisy Zamora, Giaconda Belli, Miriam Guevara and Dora Maria Tellez who had fought as heroes of the Nicaraguan revolution. This was a turning point for Gittoes art. He was influenced by Nicaraguan poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal, whose philosophy of Externalism he later described as follows: “The Externalist poets believed in using real life events and physical experiences in their poetry, instead of the imagery of the imagination. For them reality was more incredible than fantasy.” <ref>George Gittoes, Heavy industry (Broken Hill City Art Gallery, 1992), pp. 12– 13.</ref> Gittoes’ key work from this period was the drawing, ‘The captured gun’, depicting a half-crippled Sandinista fighter who carried a captured American rifle adapted to use Russian ammunition, which he felt “symbolized that particular phase in the conflict ... and by taking me back to figurative drawing became a major breakthrough in my artistic career.” <ref>Quoted at Gavin Fry, George Gittoes (1998), p. 19.</ref> Gittoes’ first, wife Gabrielle Dalton, gave birth to their son Harley Gittoes in 1986 followed 18 months later by their daughter Naomi Gittoes.

In 1989 Gittoes travelled to the Philippines, intending to make a film about women political prisoners known as the Sparrows. Funding problems prevented the film being made, but again he was brought face to face with victims of conflict, especially between government forces and the dissident New People's Army. The resulting works included the Salvage series, documenting the discovery of the body of a torture victim. He also began a long friendship and collaboration with Filipino artist Nune Alvarado. Like Nicaragua, the Philippines helped shape Gittoes’ future work: “Through my art I can be an advocate for people silenced by poverty and the conflicts around them.” <ref>Quoted at Gavin Fry, George Gittoes (1998), p. 20.</ref> From the Philippines Gittoes turned his attention back to Australia. Gittoes was concerned that manufacturing was leaving Australia with Globalization taking jobs to countries like China where wages were much lower. He saw this as a short-sighted mistake and undertook the challenge of documenting Heavy Industry in Australia while it still existed.

1989 Wollongong Regional Gallery enabled him to be artist in residence at the Port Kembla Steelworks in NSW. Between then and 1992 he worked systematically in steelworks, mines, chemical plants, and an oil rig, in Wollongong, Newcastle, Broken Hill, Whyalla, and Bass Strait, depicting those working in these tough environments, against a background of industrial decline and difficult and dangerous working conditions. In doing this, he felt he was not only holding true to the Externalist idea of art, but also returning to Joe Delaney's view of art “about a historic social struggle exuding pathos and humanity”. <ref>George Gittoes, Heavy industry (Broken Hill City Art Gallery, 1992), p. 13.</ref> Out of concern for homeless people living rough in Sydney streets he painted, Ancient Prayer, which in 1992 won the prestigious Blake Prize for Religious Art.

In this period, Gittoes was deeply affected by the death of his friend Ronaldo Cameron, a dancer who had been part of the TREE productions. Gittoes painted Cameron in the advanced stages of motor neuron disease before leaving for Somalia to document Operation Solace. On his way back from Somalia in 1993 Gittoes leant that his portrait of Ronaldo had been hung at the Art Gallery of NSW as a finalist in the Archibald Prize and his Painting, ‘Open Cut’, from the Heavy Industry series, had won the Wynn Prize for landscape

Peacekeeping and war, 1993–2001

From 1993, Gittoes’ career took a distinct new direction. Building on his work in Nicaragua and the Philippines, he made a long series of visits to war zones, initially those in which Australian military personnel were serving in multinational peacekeeping operations. As with Heavy Industry he set about to capture what promised to be an era which could bring an end to war. Since World War I Australian War Memorial had a long tradition of employing official war artists, Gittoes was never a designated Official Artist by the Memorial because they did not regard Peacekeeping operations as genuine warfare. His role was, however, authorized by the Chief of General Staff Lt General John Grey, enabling him to travel and work closely and unrestricted at the frontline of Australian Army operations. It is to the credit of General Grey that Gittoes was given unlimited access and freedom from censorship. Without his photographs, drawings, diaries and paintings the contribution and sacrifices of Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers would not have been professionally or systematically documented. Gittoes took thousands of photographs which have been used multiple times in Army and War Memorial publications and exhibitions.

True to the Externalist tradition, many of the drawings incorporate written texts describing the situations which had inspired them. One aspect of Gittoes’ work in this period which differentiates him from Australian official artists is an enduring interest in and concern for the ways in which the conflict, which led to the arrival of the peacekeepers, had affected the local people. Gittoes did document the activities of the military personnel he was accompanying, but his vision was also consistently much broader.

Gittoes arrived in Somalia in March 1993, where Australia had provided a battalion to the American-led Unified Task Force (UNITAF), which was trying on behalf of the United Nations (UN) to restore order to a country devastated by civil war, collapse of government, drought, and famine in what was called Operation Solace. Gittoes worked in Mogadishu and in and around Baidoa, the town in south-central Somalia which was the main base of operations for the Australians. Rather than remaining in the safety of the fortified base, he consistently and at great personal risk, accompanied the troops on patrol and when protecting the delivery of humanitarian aid. At Makuboy camp many of the children were so malnourished it was beyond the capability of the NGO workers to save their lives.

Gittoes drawings of Mirrow and Awliya were developed into the most moving paintings he brought away from Operation Solace.Awilya's grandmother, after her daughter's death from starvation, carried her 3 grandchildren a great distance to reach the aid camp, carrying one then leaving her to return for the other two and so on. But when she reached the camp Awliya, the youngest, could no longer swallow to take nourishment. Gittoes gave her a barley sugar candies to suck, which activated her saliva and resulted in her surviving.

Soon afterwards, in May and June 1993, Gittoes visited Australia's other major peacekeeping operation at the time, in Cambodia. Unlike Somalia, he funded his own travel and expenses. On arrival he checked in with the Australian Commanding officers and gained access and cooperation to document the efforts of the Australian contingent sent to assist with ensuring a fair and honest election.

Cambodia had suffered from American bombing in the Vietnam War, the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of 1975–1979. and long years of civil war between the Vietnam-sponsored government which had ousted the Khmer Rouge and various other factional groupings. Australian diplomatic leadership in achieving a settlement to the conflict under the auspices of the UN meant that the resulting UN operation, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), was led by an Australian, Lieutenant General John Grey. Gittoes documented the activities of Australian signalers with UNTAC but was also moved in particular by the stoic endurance of the many Cambodian victims of landmines and Pol Pot's killing fields regime. After completing the task of recording the Australians he rented a grass hut in a Khmer Rouge controlled village to witnessed how the transition was affecting ordinary Cambodians. While in the hut he painted the large canvas ‘Legless Bike’ which was exhibited in Taiwan in a survey of contemporary Australian art curated by Deborah Hart.

In 1994, the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General John Grey again authorized and supported Gittoes, as he had with Operation Solace in Somalia, to visit Australian peacekeepers in Western Sahara, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon. In Western Sahara he worked with Australian signalers who were part of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). Gittoes next went to the Middle East. In Egypt he visited Australian peacekeepers serving with the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), an American-led multinational operation set up in the wake of the Camp David Accords to monitor the Egyptian–Israeli border.

In Israel and Lebanon he met Australian military observers serving with the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). Shortly after arriving in Israel he heard gunfire and rushed to the site of the massacre of February 25, 1994, in the Palestinian town of Hebron. What he witnessed reinforced his belief in the need for the artist as independent witness and as an advocate for the innocent victims of conflict. <ref>Gavin Fry, George Gittoes (1998), p. 24.</ref> In southern Lebanon, then under Israeli occupation, he visited Australian military observers with UNTSO monitoring the border with Israel, but was again moved by the plight of people spending their lives in a conflict zone. His ironic drawing and painting ‘Welcome to Gaza’ remains a metaphor for the ongoing conflict.

Also in 1994, Gittoes travelled privately to South Africa, to witness the transition to black majority rule and the election on April 27 of Nelson Mandela as president. Mainly working in black townships, his sympathy for black South Africans led to run ins with members of the white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging; when documenting an AWB rally at Kruger Farm he was severely beaten.

Gittoes’ visit to South Africa coincided with the outbreak in Rwanda of the most concentrated genocidal violence of the modern era. In three months between 500,000 and a million Rwandans died. The resulting UN operation, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), included an Australian medical contingent and associated security and support personnel. A year after the original genocide, Gittoes visited the second rotation, once again with support from the Australian Army. By this time the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had won the civil war, but Gittoes was witness to a tragic epilogue to the original genocide. Huge numbers had been displaced in the 1994 fighting. The largest camp for internally displaced persons was at Kibeho, in south-west Rwanda. The camp held between 80,000 and 100,000 people, some members of the Hutu Interahamwe, which had been central in carrying out the original genocide, hid out among them.

In April the Rwandan government announced that the camp would close, surrounded it with soldiers, and began causing panics by firing in the air, carrying out spontaneous executions and burning the refugees’ housing. UNAMIR had a Zambian company at Kibeho, and on 19 April they were joined by 32 Australian medical personnel and infantry, to provide medical treatment and assistance evacuating the refugees. Gittoes joined them with the knowledge a retaliatory blood bath was predicted.

Late on April 22 the Rwandan forces began a massacre, using rifles, machine guns, RPGs, bayonets, machetes, and mortars. Next morning the Australians counted 4,000 dead in their general vicinity, no doubt fewer than the overall number. During the massacre the Australians gave medical treatment to and evacuated as many as they could, all the while witnessing scenes which affected them deeply. The commanding officer of the RPF told Gittoes that if he ‘even thought of taking a photograph he would be killed.’ Gittoes ignored the threat and took over 1,000 photographs, splitting his time between helping give direct assistance to individual victims and documenting the massacre and its aftermath. His photos were used in subsequent war crimes investigations, and he flew to New York to report to the UN on what he had seen. Kibeho remains a powerful catalyst in directing his art to help end inhuman violence and war

In 1995 Gittoes won the Blake Prize for religious art a second time, for his painting. ‘’The Preacher’’, a powerful image of a preacher trying to bring calm to the people around him and maintain their dignity amidst the chaos and carnage of Kibeho. The preacher was killed with his flock and the image of him holding up a tattered bible burnt itself into Gittoes mind, making it, by necessity, the first canvas he painted on his return.

1995 the works from Somalia, Cambodia and the Middle East were curated into a national touring exhibition curated by Deborah Hart and titled ‘Realism of Peace’. The exhibition started at Darwin Museum and Art Gallery NT and travelled to 20 public Galleries over two years. An excellent catalogue accompanied the exhibition.

In 1997 Gittoes set up an installation of his Rwanda works at documenta X in Kassel, Germany. It included ten large confronting 3 X 1.5 m paintings, employing what Gavin Fry describes as “a violent, gut-wrenching expressionism”, to depict the depths of violence and depravity reached at Kibeho; the floor was covered in rags, clothes, and plastic containers. <ref>Gavin Fry, George Gittoes (1998), p. 28, with an illustration of the exhibition.</ref> In 2014 he returned yet again to the Rwanda material with a series of “synthages”, combinations of photograph, drawing and painting developed in collaboration with printer John Wesley Mannion.

Gittoes followed on from Rwanda travelling to Bukavu in Congo where Rwandan Military were continuing the kind of slaughter he had experienced at Kibeho. Surprisingly, Rwandan President Paul Kagame was willing to sit while Gittoes drew his portrait. He titled the work which came out of this his time in Congo ‘Heart of Darkness’ series. Gittoes continued to travel to scenes of conflict, but not with the army again until Bougainville and East Timor.

In 1996 he went to Bosnia, where a NATO-led force was gradually restoring order and peace after the devastating Bosnian War which followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. His work now focused on the plight of children orphaned and psychosocially damaged by the years of conflict as most powerfully expressed in his painting ‘Shatter Chatter’.

The following year, 1997, he travelled to Northern Ireland at a time when the Northern Ireland peace process was just getting underway, meeting members of both the Irish Republican Army and the Protestant paramilitaries, but again focusing particularly on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He was on Garvaghy Road when protests over Orange Order Marches led to violence between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the IRA. His painting ‘The Orangeman’ of a marcher who resembled his Protestant Irish grandfather, George Halpin, brought back memories of his childhood when his grandfather taught him to how to fight and also how to ‘take a beating’. His experiences in Ireland enabled him to visit the sources that had tried to form him as a youth and which he had rebelled against and rejected. In 1998 Craftsman House published the first monograph on Gittoes Art written by Gavin Fry and launched at Australian Galleries accompanying a survey of his paintings.

Gittoes went to China in 1998 for 6months, working with artists at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, but also travelling to areas of the Yangtze River affected by construction of the Three Gorges Dam, and to Tibet. A feature documentary for ABC, directed by Don Featherston, titles Eye Witness, was filmed during his residency. In the same year he once again worked with the Australian military, visiting members of the Australian-led Peace Monitoring Group, which was helping establish trust among Bougainvilleans in the peace process which was bringing an end to the civil war between secessionist Bougainvilleans and the Papua New Guinea government.

Gittoes had first encountered the victims of landmines in Nicaragua in 1986, and continued to meet them, in Cambodia, the Middle East and elsewhere. “For me”, Gittoes wrote, “landmines are the most damning proof of man's inhumanity to man – while the moments spent with mine victims have given me some of the most encouraging proof of the strength of the human spirit.” <ref>George Gittoes, Minefelds (Sydney, Australian Network of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 2000), p. 4.</ref> In 1999 and 2000 he travelled widely to mine-affected areas: Thailand, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, East Timor, Congo and Rwanda, leading in 2000 to an exhibition, Minefields, in aid of victims and to support the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (in which Australians took a leading role) to ban anti-personnel mines. As The exhibition was displayed at the United Nations in Geneva, Palais des Nations, the old headquarters building of the League of Nations. While there Gittoes was invited to exhibit in Yemen. The exhibition was titled ‘Across the Lines’ and was supported by the French Council for the Arts. It showed in the Arthur Rimbaud Centre in Saana and in Aden where Gittoes gave talks and workshops. Gittoes took the opportunity to work and travel throughout Yemen.

The Russian organization ‘Doctors Against Nuclear War’ invited George to take the exhibition to Moscow where it was shown in an annex of the Puskin Museum. Early in Putin's rise to power, the Russian economy and self-esteem were at a low point. Gittoes represented this time with his painting ‘Cosmo’. 2000 National Touring Exhibition ‘World Diary’ opens at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and features new works from Bosnia, Tibet and East Timor.

In 2001 Gittoes made three trips to South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria), to link up with a retrospective touring exhibition, ‘’Lives in the Balance’’. In Pretoria he was invited to Mandella's Incorporation where Mandella gave his famous Rainbow Nation Speech which Gittoes considers the most inspiring experience of his life. His painting ‘Long Awaited Kiss of Freedom’ encapsulates that seminal moment of victory in Human History. He also travelled once again to Israel and Palestine, documenting the ongoing conflict over Gaza.

Art and films in the post–9/11 world, 2001–2010

On 11 September 2001 shortly after returning from Nablus and Gaza, Gittoes was working at home on a painting titled ‘No Answer’, depicting a public phone booth where a Palestinian had gone to make a call and was blown apart when he triggered a deadly booby trap. Gittoes turned on the TV News as the second plane hit the tower and he realized that the world had suddenly changed and his hopes for worldwide peace were shattered.

The resulting wars and confusion in the Middle East and South Asia were to provide the driving force for Gittoes’ career over the next 25 years. By November 2001 the United States had invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban government, beginning two decades of war in the country. Gittoes had already visited Afghanistan as part of the ‘’Minefields’’ project and quickly became engaged in the effects of this new war on the country. He has maintained this engagement ever since.

In early 2002 he travelled to Afghanistan for six weeks with Médecins sans Frontières, visiting refugee camps established after the invasion. He also had a commission from the Visible Art Foundation in Melbourne to paint three works for digital enlargement to Billboards, marking the 11 September anniversary for the Republic Tower Art Space Template:Webarchive . The works, ‘’War on Terra’’, were rejected for what Gittoes believed to be political reasons. This resulted in a forum and exhibition chaired by Professor Bernard Smith at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne. Later in the year he was invited by Daniel Herwitz to exhibit his ‘War on Terra’ works and speak at Ann Arbor University in Michigan. He visited the site of the Twin Towers in NY making a series of photographs of a city in shock and morning.

George Bush's build-up to the war in Iraq had already begun and he travelled to Washington with ANSWER and others protesting against the planned invasion of Iraq. He observed the protesters were mainly baby boomers from the anti-Vietnam era and not contemporary youth. He had always been interested in popular culture, but now he saw a new importance in reaching the MTV and rap-music generation of younger Americans, many of whom would be fighting in the war. This helped lead him back into film-making. Small videotape cameras had replaced the much more expensive 16mm cine cameras he had previously used making a self-funded independent production more affordable.

In March 2003, he visited Iraq soon before the American-led invasion which began on 19 March. On this visit he was able to observe how Iraqi civilians were preparing for the war they knew was coming. After the invasion he visited Iraq three times before May 2004, interviewing American soldiers and Iraqi civilians and soldiers, focusing especially on the role of music on the modern battlefield. Although Australian troops were serving in Iraq, Gittoes had little contact with them. Out of this came one of his most acclaimed films, Soundtrack to War, which was released in 2004 and shown on Australian TV and on MTV in the United States. Selected for Documentary Fortnight at MoMA New York. Eighteen scenes from Gittoes’ film were used in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Gittoes also, produced a lot of art out his time in Iraq, leading to an exhibition, ‘’No Exit: a Tale of Two Cities’’ – George Gittoes in New York and Baghdad curated by Rod Pattenden for Macquarie Universit’.

Gittoes was invited to show his NO EXIT works in Portugal to coincide with an International conference on ending conflict. His works from East Timor were of particular interest due to the link to Portuguese colonial history and were collected by the Museum.

In 2006, he linked up again Elliot Lovett who had featured in Soundtrack to War, when rapping at Uday Hussein's Palace Baghdad, on his home turf in Miami, Florida, to make, Rampage, about life in the gang and poverty stricken ghetto of Brown Sub. Elliot had commented that Miami was more dangerous than Iraq. Sadly, in the course of filming, this urban war zone took the life of Elliot's brother Markus Lovette. Elliot had hoped Gittoes could assist Marcus into a rap music career. With the death of Marcus, Gittoes attempted to the career of his younger brother Denzell. ‘Rampage’ was selected for the Berlin and Raindance Film Festivals and broadcast on ABC, Screened at MoMA Documentary Fortnight, and African Diaspora in NYC.

The following year, 2007, Gittoes began an enduring phase of making films in Pakistan and Afghanistan by filming Miscreants of Taliwood, in the tribal belt of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province with the assistance of a presale to SBS Television Australia. The Pashtun film industry was being attacked by the Taliban who saw it as immoral and un-Islamic, bombing video stores, attacking film sets and killing actors. Gittoes was directed to this crisis for filmmakers by the friends he had made when documenting Pakistani land mine victims for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Waqar Alam who was working with ICBL joined Gittoes to assist on the film. In a departure from his previous films, Miscreants of Taliwood uses elements of docudrama, combining the action and comedy of Pashtun language dramas with real life footage Gittoes filmed in the Taliban-controlled tribal belt.

Gittoes formed a lasting relationship with local film-makers and actors (some of whom later worked with him in Afghanistan), and worked with them to direct and produce two films in Pashto language: ‘Servants’ and ‘Fire’. The art he produced in Pakistan led to an exhibition, ‘’The Time: a season in Pakistan’’, at Hazelhurst Gallery, Sydney in 2008. Miscreants of Taliwood was widely screened at major film festivals such as Telluride and IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) and Documentary Fortnight at MoMA NYC. Broadcast on SBS TV in 2009 and 2010.

In 2008 Gittoes moved into a Surry Hills studio below the studio of Performance Artist and Musician Hellen Rose (they married October 14, 2019). In the same year, he again linked up with units of the Australian Defense Force in Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan making video and photographic documentation as well as developing his Descendence series of paintings.

In 2009 and 2010 he was invited to Berlin by his friend Mayen Beckmann (granddaughter of German Expressionist artist Max Beckmann) who helped provide a studio. He was joined there by Hellen Rose and had a productive period working on ‘’Descendance’’, a series of large-scale paintings inspired by his recent period in Afghanistan and Iraq. Accompanying the paintings were narrative panels of text resembling a short graphic novel that viewers to the studio could read while walking through.

In 2010 with the aid of a grant from an international NGO Gittoes returned to Pakistan's tribal belt to make three more Pashto films to help the local industry survive in a period when they were seriously under attack by the Pakistani Taliban. These three dramas were: ‘’Moonlight, Starless Night’’ and ‘’The Flood’’. Hellen Rose joined him in on location in the mountainous region of Ayubia and participated as an actor and singer alongside Pashtun stars.

Work in Afghanistan, 2011–2015

In 2011, while maintaining their Australian base Gittoes and Hellen Rose, began a long period working in Jalalabad, the second-largest city in Afghanistan. Jalalabad, in far eastern Afghanistan, has a predominantly Pashtun population, similar to Peshawar where Gittoes had made ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’. Gittoes was invited by Mohammad Shah Majroh, the President of the Film and Arts Association of Jalalabad to meet a large group of artists, actors, writers and filmmakers who requested the kind of assistance Gittoes had provide in Pakistan. Working with Hellen Rose (the first European woman to appear in Pashtun Films) but otherwise with an entirely Afghan and Pashtun cast and crew, in 2011 Gittoes set about making a trilogy of interconnected Pashto love films: Love City, Talk Show, and The Tailor's Story. The films featured female leads and stories as a way of influencing positive social advancement for women and girls.

In the course of making the films it became clear there were no art or media schools and no places for artists to collaborate in Jalalabad. Gittoes and Rose were guided to a suitable building which they leased and set up the Yellow House Jalalabad – to be a center for film production and education in art, film-making, music, dance and performance. An artists’ cooperative in the tradition of the original Yellow House of 1970–71 in Sydney it aimed to use culture to counteract the prevailing landscape of war and conflict. The slogan of this Jalalabad Yellow House was, “Declare love on war!”, and its aim was to provide “a safe space where artists from all mediums can meet, work and create independently of the destructive forces that not only threaten their physical lives but their inner spirit.” A priority of the Yellow House is to be “a ‘safe haven’ for women and girl's artistic expression and education.” The Yellow House features a cinema, traveling tent circus, painting studios, Secret Garden Café, Rose Theatre, outdoor stages and a full postproduction film editing suite. As well as activities in the House itself, the members have organized a travelling tent circus, film shows and other activities in villages in the area.<ref>http://yellowhousejalalabad.com/News/ Template:Webarchive (accessed 6.4.2015).</ref>

To extend their reach outside the city Gittoes and Rose purchased another building enabling the a Tribal Yellow House . 2011 Jame Harithas curated a retrospective ‘Witness to War’ at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston Texas and published a high quality catalogue. Gittoes travelled from the Yellow House in Jalalabad to participate.

The Yellow House continued to produce high quality Pashto language dramas and Buraq Films Template:Webarchive was formally set up and recognized by the Government. These have included the children's film, Simorgh, directed by Neha, the first female Pashtun film-director. Another member of the Yellow House, Amir Shah Talash, has created a Pashto-language TV series. During the same period Gittoes was making a feature documentary, Love City Jalalabad, showing life at the Yellow House. The producer was Piraya Film, Stavanger, Norway. While documenting the difficulties of filming, especially with female actresses, in Afghanistan, the film articulates a positive message, that film-making and cultural production generally can be an alternative to armed force in bringing about social change. The film previewed at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, before being released in 2013. Anthology Films in New York presented a retrospective of Gittoes Films which included his Pashto Language Dramas.

In 2013 Gittoes took up a position as artist in residence in Syracuse, New York, where he developed and produced the ‘’synthages’’ referred to above, as a new means of working through his experiences at Kibeho nearly 20 years before.

In 2014, Gittoes and Rose returned to Jalalabad to begin work on their next film, Snow Monkey, for which they received funding assistance from Screen Australia. Snow monkey tells the story of three rival groups of youths the Kuchi Ghostbusters, Snow Monkey ice cream sellers and Steel's gangsters. ‘’Snow Monkey’’ premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2015. With its searching portrayal of the lives of young people in Jalalabad is was described by film critics as “one of the greatest films showing the lives of Children at war”, Snow Monkey won the Audience Award at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna, Italy, in June 2016.

2015 Retrospective of Gittoes Films at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia titled ‘What the World Needs Now’.

Recent work, 2016–2025

In 2016, Gittoes published an anecdotal autobiography, Blood Mystic, combining reproductions of works with reminiscences spanning his life. <ref>George Gittoes, Blood Mystic, Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2016.</ref> He continued to paint, and in 2017 painted two portraits of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, and a series of “black paintings” done in Jalalabad.

At the start of 2018 Gittoes began work on a similar gang violence film to ‘Rampage’ titled ‘White Light’. When in Baghdad at Uday's Palace Elliot Lovett had told Gittoes that Miami was more dangerous than Baghdad. Another soldier, Yonas Hagos overheard the comment and cut in with ‘but Miami is not as dangerous as Chicago’. Yonas kept communicating the need to film in Chicago until Gittoes took him up on it.

Gittoes, Rose and Alam moved into an apartment building in segregated Southside Chicago and quickly found Yonas’ claim had not been an exaggeration. After initially gaining training and experience on ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’ Waqar Alam had become a permanent member of the small, Gittoes Films production team. With 500 fatal shootings a year in Chicago, and violent gangs controlling micro-territories, Gittoes, Rose and Alam found themselves in as lawless and dangerous a place as any they had experienced, referred to by locals as Chiraq. They quickly gained the trust of gang members from May Block Englewood and were present at a police bust. The central story of ‘White light’ was developed around the shooting of aspiring super model Kaylyn Pryor, killed in a drive-by on the corner of May Block. Reverend Mike Pfleger's campaign of mass protests against gun violence is woven through the film. ‘’White Light’’ aired on ABC on July 14, 2020, and coincided with news about the police killing of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter protest movement. White Light has found a place in the company of classic documentaries about the civil rights movement. White Light was, also, released theatrically at Event Cinemas.

This period saw two large scale art works created in South Side Chicago, 'Kill Kulture Amerika' and 'Renaissance Park' acquired by the Peabody Essex Museum Salem, Massachusetts. Gittoes earlier achievements in Laser Holography and Mental Holograms led him to experiment with making Virtual Reality (VR) films, using a 360-degree camera, embracing the artistic possibilities of this technology to replicate 3D visual experience. The VR films have been made in collaboration with partner Hellen Rose and with long-time assistant and righthand frontline camera man, Pakistani Waqar Alam. The first, filmed in Afghanistan, Fun Fair Jalalabad, was shown at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2017, and the second, Bring in the Clowns, a satiric drama attacking opponents of gun control in the US, at the MCA in 2018.

February 2020 Newcastle Art Gallery, Premiered the Regional Touring Exhibition 'On Being There' curated by Rod Pattenden who clearly define the uniting factor in Gittoes practice as his insistence of being physically present before his subject wherever it may be in the World and always intimately involved with the people. The selection focusing on the work done in communities like Afghanistan and South Side Chicago.

During the Covid lockdown Gittoes created the Augustus Tower Suite reflecting his early Kennedy Suite of etchings created in the U.S. in 1968.The series speculates "Is this a time when the bad guys have won." October 7–11, 2020, Gittoes and Rose collaborated on a site specific exhibition, installation and performance. Gittoes exhibited The ‘Augustus Tower Suite’ in the 'Surf Shack Show' in a soon to be demolished house next door to his and Rose's residence. The ageing house previously inhabited by professional surfers was demolished to make way for a new home. The entire Augustus Tower Suite of 34 oils on canvas was hung in the house and Rose used the grounds to perform the accompanying Haunted Burqa performance and the back yard shed as an installation and experimental documentary film screening of the same title. Representing the faceless countless innocent victims of Gittoes' portrayed 'bad guys'.

Gittoes and Rose returned to Chicago to make a follow up film to ‘White Light’ titled ‘No Bad Guys’ about the power of music as an alternative to the gun culture. The funkadelic singer and performer Tamari T is featured.

With the American withdrawal from Afghanistan Gittoes and Rose travel to Pakistan where they established an alternative Yellow House at the SS Club in Peshawar. This became a sanctuary and refuge for artists and filmmakers unsure of what the future would bring under Taliban rule. The troubling rise of toxic dictators worldwide inspired the Yellow House ensemble to film a remake of Charlie Chaplin's ‘The Great Dictator’, with the comic stars Arshad and Bull Bull playing Hitler and Putin and Hellen Rose and Neha Ali Khan their female accomplices. They were not aware that Putin was planning the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and that material from this dark comedy would be perfect for inclusion in their later Ukraine Documentaries.

In March 2022 Gittoes and Rose travelled to Kyiv by train and set up residence shortly after the Russian invasion when the city was surrounded by Russian tanks and the media was predicting a victory for Putin within days. They filmed the first of three documentaries titled ‘Ukrainistan’ which combined footage about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan with the recent invasion of Ukraine. Putin ordered his military to target places like the House of Culture in Irpin to promote his lie that Ukraine does not have an independent culture. Gittoes and Rose decided to create a kind of Ukraine Yellow House in the ruins of the House of Culture by curating an exhibition of works by Ukraine artists around the exterior walls as well as performances and workshops inside the gutted interior. While visiting Odessa they met the brilliant curator Uma who had been doing similarly defiant outdoor exhibitions. Uma introduced them to many new artists including Kyiv based Ave Libertateamour. Gittoes immediately felt a deep affinity with the dark graphic style and subjects in Ave's work. They met in Kyiv and began what Gittoes describes as the greatest collaboration of his career. The work they produce was immediately featured at the House of Culture and later published in their graphic novel KISS OF DEATH.

Three of the large canvases painted in Kyiv, ‘Russian Bear’, ‘Bridge of Death’ ‘Through the Glass’ were rolled and transported back to Australia where they were exhibited at Queensland Art Gallery GOMA, Two of which were purchased by the Lindsay Hogg collection. After leaving Ukraine Gittoes met up with Waqar Alam and travelled overland into Afghanistan for first time since the American withdrawal. Their reception by the Taliban was positive and they were able to gain a permit to film. They were reunited with all their Yellow House friends who were keen to restart the Yellow House. Gittoes was able to access and film inside to the former US airbase and Travel to Zabi's village. The Tribal Yellow House was purchased. 2023 Gittoes and Rose returned to Ukraine to continue their work at Irpin House of Culture in collaboration with Ukraine artists Ave, Artem, Sasha and Marysia. Gittoes and Rose were surprised when Ave appeared with her newborn baby girl Penelopa. The large mural ‘Kiss of Death’ was completed using combined elements from both Gittoes and Ave's drawings.

Gittoes also painted three additional murals at the different locations - a City Recreational Park, the Bridge of Death at Irpin and Borodyanka. These can be seen alongside murals by Banksy. Rose continued her performance art works and joined in concerts and recording sessions with local Ukraine musicians. Their documentary ‘Ukrainistan’ screened in New York at Anthology Films.

2023-4 Gittoes moved the old Jalalabad Yellow House to a larger building, a former business school, in the center or the city. Gittoes worked for two months to transform classrooms into aesthetically exciting spaces, with the dedicated help of the Yellow House team, Waqar, Ishrad, Zabi and Salahudin. He was joined in December for another 4 months by Hellen Rose who re-started women's workshops at the new venue and gave classes for girls at the Tribal Yellow House. Gittoes painted a canvas to give to the Taliban Ministry of Culture, and was delighted when it was accepted and hung in their reception office by the Minister of Culture Noor Mohammad Hannif.

Gittoes proudly declared this to be proof that ‘Art can succeed where 20 years of war have failed.’ The Taliban commander of the Regional Military Force visited the Yellow House with a large group of armed fighters and offered his approval and protection. Gittoes used his knowledge of ceramics, learnt during childhood from his mother, to teach local potters how to fire glazes onto their earthenware pots and tiles, a technique which had been lost for centuries. The pottery workshop at the Yellow House was filmed by Afghan Television. Rose was interviewed without any face covering and seen throughout the country. Serious filming for the new documentary commenced when Zabi, now a man but previously one of the Ice-cream boys from the film White Light, took Gittoes to his village to interview survivors of US Military attacks.

From there Gittoes and Zabi travelled to another village where most of the male members had been killed when a drone bombed their mosque while they were innocently in Friday prayer. The documentary footage shows how the US military targeted progressives like school headmasters, doctors and farmers. The brother of a doctor, who had been targeted and killed along with his family, explains that the aim of the Americans was “to keep Afghanistan unstable.” By using archival footage from as far back as 2011 the film was able to show changes to its central characters over a 15-year period. Zabi and Salahudin, who learnt to use cameras to make a children's drama when they were teenagers had grown to manhood.

Amad was filmed the day he was born and is seen as a baby in the Love City film. Amad asked Zabi to show him how to make a film about the children of his village. Amad's filming of the innocence of children at play provides the last scenes of the documentary. Gittoes used his studio at the Yellow House to paint a series of oil on canvas paintings which he titled ‘Doorways’ and exhibited in the Rose Garden. The show which used the patterns from ancient carved stamps was well attended and appreciated by the people of Jalalabad.

2024 Gittoes’ ‘Ukraine Guernica’ exhibition of paintings, drawings and film created in Ukraine were curated and exhibited at Hazelhurst Gallery then traveled to Deakin Gallery Melbourne. Ukraine Guernica screened at MIFF. Gittoes and Rose fly to Lodz in Poland for the Exhibition of ‘Kiss of Death’ prints by Ave and Gittoes and the screening of ‘Ukraine Guernica’.

Gittoes and Rose travel from Warsaw to Ukraine for the third time to complete the filming of ‘Humanity in Danger’- the third Ukraine film after ‘Ukrainistan’ and ‘Ukraine Guernica’. They filmed the story of Roman Lubiy, a fellow artist who pioneered the use of drones to combat the Russian forces occupying Irpin. And they continued work at Irpin's destroyed House of Culture, on murals in collaboration with Ukraine artists Ave, Taras and Marysia.

2024 Return to Yellow House Jalalabad to complete filming and editing of ‘Yellow House Afghanistan’. This is the first film entirely edited in Afghanistan by Gittoes and Waqar Alam. The former Taliban fighter Mursamil joined the team and was pleased to put up his gun and to take up a camera. The advantage of editing in the place where the film was made enabled feedback from those involved and the chance to film additional linking scenes.

2025 SBS purchases ‘Yellow House Afghanistan’ and ‘Humanity in Danger’ along with return screenings of ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’,’Love City’ and ‘Snow Monkey’. All 5 films are available ON DEMAND at SBS. ‘The Preacher’ painting is hung on long term exhibit at the National Gallery of Australia in the context of historic Australian Painting. This coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Kibeho Massacre in Rwanda.

Gittoes writes a drama script titles ‘Yellow House Kings Cross’ and begins preproduction development to produce it as his first English Language Feature Drama. Sydney Underground Film Festival SUFF screens Yellow House Afghanistan at the Dendy Life and recognizes Gittoes contribution with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Bilateral hip and leg surgery delays planned travel to Poland, Ukraine, Jerusalem and Afghanistan.

Gittoes has visited the US regularly since 1968-9. He has befriended and collaborated with American Artists Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Carolee Schneeman and Bill Jenson. He gratefully acknowledges his American supporters: David Ross, David Levi Strauss, Del and Carolyne Bryant, Nancy Keefe Rhodes, Phong Bui of Brooklyn Rail, Evan Wright, Ray Mansfield, Trevor Smith and Jim Harithas.

Motivation

Gittoes has travelled to many places for his art, including: Nicaragua, the Philippines, Somalia, Sinai, Southern Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Western Sahara, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, South Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Yemen, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Russia, Europe, UK, Bougainville, China, Taiwan, Tibet, Timor, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He often travels to countries experiencing conflict and social upheaval, and uses these experiences extensively in his art. He has highlighted important issues, such as that of landmines. <ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Gittoes travels have taken him to many dangerous places; he has been in serious danger on numerous occasions. He has faced traumatic events, such as the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda . He has explained why he has chosen to work like this: "Why do I do it? As far as choosing the roads I have travelled, I have this instinct that if I get comfortable, the work will lose its 'sting', so I go out of the comfort zones and into the wilderness to find my art. In the past it was the natural world where predators fed on gentler creatures.

In the contemporary context, I go alone into a different kind of human wilderness – Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine – not to contemplate nature, but the basics of humanity..." George Gittoes Or, to put it more simply, “The whole world is my studio.” <ref>George Gittoes: I Witness (Gymea, Australia, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 2014), p. 129.</ref>

Honours

Gittoes' contribution to Australia has been recognised by the award of Member of the Order of Australia (1997) "for service to art and international relations as an artist and photographer portraying the effects on the environment of war, international disasters and heavy industry". <ref>It's an Honour Template:Webarchive – Member of the Order of Australia</ref>

He was also awarded the Centenary Medal (2001) "for service as an internationally renowned artist". <ref>It's an Honour – Centenary Medal</ref> He was given an honorary Doctorate in Letters by the University of New South Wales in 2009. A comprehensive public solo exhibition of his work, Witness to War, appeared at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, in April 2011. <ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Gittoes and Rose received the NSW Premiers Award in 2014 jointly for their Services to the Community, recognising the couples co founding of the Yellow House Jalalabad in Afghanistan and the Rockdale Yellow House in Arncliffe, New South Wales. Gittoes is twice the recipient of the Bassel Shehadeh Award for Social Justice (awarded at Syracuse University, New York, in October 2013 for Snow Monkey and in 2019 for White Light) Gittoes received the prestigious Sydney Peace Prize (November 2015).

In 2020 Gittoes received honorary membership to the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans' Association Inc. (For dedicated and selfless acts to chronicle Australia's Peacekeeping operations, and for his support and recognition of that community in Australia).

In 2025 Gittoes was presented with a Lifetime Achievement award by the Sydney Underground Film Festival.

Filmography

• Rainbow Way (1976 – cinematographer, editor)
• Refined Fire (1978 – director, cinematographer, writer, editor)
• Wattamolla (1981, cinematographer)
• Unfound Land (1983, director, writer, cinematographer)
• Tracks of the Rainbow (1982, director, writer, and cinematographer)
• Warriors and Lawmen (1984, director, writer and cinematographer)
• Unbroken Spirit (1985, director, writer and cinematographer)
• Frontier women (1985, co-director, writer and cinematographer)
• Visions in the making (1987,
• Bullets of the poets (1987, director, writer, cinematographer)
• Soundtrack to War (2005, director and cinematographer)
• Fahrenheit 9/11 (Iraq interviews and scenes)
• Rampage (2006, director, writer, cinematographer)
• The Miscreants of Taliwood (2009, director, cinematographer and writer)
• Love City, Jalalabad (2013, director, cinematographer and writer)[18]
• Snow Monkey (2015, director, cinematographer, and writer)
• White Light (2019, director, writer, cinematographer)[19]
• No Bad Guys (2021, director, writer, cinematographer.)
• Ukrainistan (2022, director, writer, cinematographer, editor)
• Ukraine Guernica (2023, director, writer, cinematographer, editor)
• Yellow House Afghanistan (2024-5, director, writer, editor, DOP)
• Humanity in Danger (2024-5, director, writer, editor, DOP)

See also

• The State Library of NSW holds a significant collection of material related to Gittoes' work in Australia and overseas including 44 artist diaries which have been scanned and are available on their website. State Library of NSW

External links

• Template:Official website
• [https://www.imdb.com/{{#if: 1982407

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• The Miscreants – Film Review and Video Trailer
• NZ Herald interview with Gittoes
• Lifelounge magazine interview with Gittoes
• Brooklyn Rail In Conversation George Gittoes
• Pacifica Radio interview with George Gittoes on Art, Media and War