Politics of Artists in War Zones

Kit Messham-Muir, Professor in Art, School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University, Australia, and Uroš Cvoro, Associate Professor of Art Theory, Arts, Design & Architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia are the authors of Images of War in Contemporary Art: Terror and Conflict in the Mass Media (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Trump Effect in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture: Populism, Politics, and Paranoia (Bloomsbury, 2022).Monika Lukowska-Appel is Research Assistant for ‘Art in Conflict’ at Curtin University, Australia.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Contemporary War Art, Kit Messham-Muir (Curtin University, Australia), Uroš Cvoro (UNSW, Australia) and Monika Lukowska-Appel (Curtin University, Australia)Part One: Colonisation, Memory and AmnesiaIntroduction1. Unsettling Colonial Postamnesia: Contemporary Art, the WW1 Centenary and Beyond, Ana Carden-Coyne (Manchester University, UK)2. Above all Else: Art as a Weapon, Lisa Slade (Art Gallery of South Australia)3. WAR (ART): what is it good for?, Anthea Gunn and Laura Webster (Australian War Memorial)4. Colonisation, Memory and Amnesia: Interviews with Baptist Coelho, Alana Hunt and Abdul AbdullahPart Two: War Art, Official and UnofficialIntroduction5. The War at Home, Charles Green (University of Melbourne, Australia)6. Soldier/Artist: Negotiating the complexities of military service and critical practice, Kit Messham-Muir (Curtin University, Australia) and Uroš Cvoro (UNSW, Australia)7. War Art, Official and Unofficial: Interviews with eX de Medici, David Cotterrell, Karen Bailey and Phillip CheungPart Three: Knowing and TestimonyIntroduction8. The Art of Testimony, Paul Lowe (University of the Arts London, UK)9. Inconvenient Narratives: Addressing moral ambiguity in the national war museum, Kit Messham-Muir (Curtin University, Australia)10. Knowing and Testimony: Interviews with Todd Stone, Andrew Sneddon and Joanna BourkeBibliographyIndex

A monumental and richly curated volume that challenges our notions of war itself, questioning how mass violence comes to count as meaningful and worthy of official memory.