A Painting Surrendered So Artist Can Honour His Promise

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday October 1, 2007

Jonathan King

A SERIES of evocative paintings by an Australian artist have been chosen as a highlight of Belgium's 90th anniversary commemorations of the World War I battle of Passchendaele - but the artist has been forced to sell his biggest work to finance the show.

Murray Kirkland sold Passchendaele Beyond to the Australian Defence Force Academy for $9000 to pay for his airfare and freight.

He has now been warned that he cannot recoup further costs by selling other paintings overseas because these would be taxed and classified as an export business.

Speaking from the Memorial Museum Passchendaele, Kirkland told the Herald he'd long ago promised curators he would exhibit, and it was a "matter of honour" that he not disappoint them.

"The Department [of Foreign Affairs and Trade] would not give me a grant ... they really stuffed me around, as they told me to apply for a grant, saying I had a good chance. But weeks later when I phoned for results they announced the grant had been discontinued," he said.

"But I'd promised the Belgians I would exhibit ... so rather than miss their deadline, I sold one of my best paintings ... which I loved dearly, but had no option."

Word from the museum is the works will be a highlight of commemorations funded by Belgium's Ministry of Defence and local government. A spokeswoman, Debbie Manhaeve, described them as "beautiful and so full of evocative images of devastation".

Kirkwood said all Australian soldiers who served in the war were now dead. "Nobody is left to tell the truth. My paintings speak for ordinary soldiers who suffered on that dreadful battlefield," he said. "I try to dispel myth-making and deification because they were not supermen on some noble playing field, but real people coping with terrible conditions. The scale of horror and destruction is overwhelming and incomprehensible."

Passchendaele was the most terrible of a series of battles fought by the Allies over four months to save the strategic town of Ypres. "We died in hell," a wartime poet wrote. "They called it Passchendaele."

The Australian War Memorial's senior historian, Peter Burness, said that for an entire generation the word Passchendaele was synonymous with death, horror and enduring sorrow.

"For Australia, the period was the worst ever experienced The weather was bad, observation was poor, ground impassable and troops, supply columns, engineers, and stretcher-bearers, bogged down in mud," Mr Burness said."Worst of all, artillery could barely move - guns sunk, shells, covered in mud were unusable and it was sheer misery."

The Minister for Veterans Affairs, Bruce Billson, urged Australians to remember the battle. "It is 90 years since the start of Passchendaele, part of the 1917 Flanders offensive which resulted in 32,600 Australian casualties, including more than 12,000 who lost their lives."

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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