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The child featured in the paintings is not one of those caught up in the conflict, but the anguish written across his face underscores the universal horror of seeing the innocent suffer. Depicted is three-year-old Sonny, the son of a friend, his face a picture of pain after he had fallen during a visit to Quilty’s studio. “It’s such a visceral feeling when a child hurts themselves,” he says.
When Jan Minchin from Tolarno saw the portraits on Instagram, she found them incredibly moving, made contact and said she wanted to show them. The result is a series of 30 works called Sonny.
“I don’t have enough lifetimes to adequately respond to or comprehend this complete and devastating breakdown of humanity.”
Artist Ben Quilty
Having witnessed the impact of war on children firsthand in the Middle East, Quilty says he will never forget it. He was compelled “to actually say something in defence of the children who had no say, can’t vote, who are honestly the victims of our collective adult insanity”.
“They are the true victims of adults going each other. Complicated by history, by race and by religion, it’s always the children that suffer the most. And [that] creates the notion of trauma that we’ve been pretty good at ignoring in this country.”
As an official Australian war artist, Quilty travelled to Afghanistan in 2011. Then, in 2016, he and writer Richard Flanagan visited Greece and Serbia, and refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, with World Vision. “The trip was devastating for both of us. We found ourselves in tears many times. Particularly people crossing from Turkey to Greece – that river of humanity is something I will never forget,” he says.
Looking down from the plane upon arriving in Lesbos, Quilty was struck by the coastline lined with fluorescent orange, which he initially thought was an algae bloom. It turned out that it was hundreds and hundreds of orange life vests, discarded by people fleeing war and destruction. That trip resulted in his life-vest series, called High tide mark, part of which is now held at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
A tiny life vest from Lesbos in Greece, one of many Quilty had shipped to Australia.
“I feel like Sonny has become a bit of a talisman or reminder of the jackets that were found at that scene.”
Many of the life vests on the beach were filled with straw – they didn’t even float. The sheer volume created an environmental issue, prompting the Greek government to ask anyone who could take some to do so. Quilty imported as many as he could back to Australia and still has one that hasn’t left his studio. “It’s a tiny little life jacket with a sticker of Bugs Bunny on it.”
A trip to Syria followed. “I felt like I owed that experience more, so I went back and spent some time and got children to draw,” he says.
“Every single child draws the truth,” Quilty said at the time.
The death of my brother after being attacked by armed people by Amjad, aged 11, living in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon.
Some of those drawings by Syrian refugee children are also on show at Tolarno, taken from a book he curated called Home in 2018, with a forward by Flanagan. All proceeds from the sales of the book, published by Penguin, go to World Vision.
Anyone feeling overwhelmed by the horror of what is happening in Gaza can help, according to the Southern Highlands-based artist. Last year, he contributed a painting to a fundraiser organised by his artist friend Nathan Hawkes, which raised several hundred thousand dollars for Medecins Sans Frontieres. “If every Australian gave $1 to a cause that would help children in the Middle East, you would be looking at tens of millions of dollars.”
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“It’s not hard to find people doing good work,” he says, citing as an example a Palestinian father who lost his daughter in an IDF attack and an Israeli father who lost his daughter in a Hamas attack, who joined forces to ease their grief. They met at Combatants for Peace, an organisation created by former fighters from both sides to find solutions. He also urges the Albanese government to increase our foreign aid budget, which has been cut dramatically in the past decade.
“We all just need to give a little. And find peace among ourselves as well.”
Sonny is at Tolarno Galleries from February 17 until March 23.
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