Pale Rider 3

Place Asia: Afghanistan
Accession Number ART91937
Collection type Art
Measurement Overall: 43.9 x 62.4 cm
Object type Work on paper
Physical description pencil on paper
Maker Gittoes, George Noel
Place made Australia: New South Wales, Sydney, Bundeena
Date made 23 February 2002
Conflict Afghanistan, 2001-2021
Copyright

Item copyright: Unlicensed copyright

Description

Depicts a member of the American Special Forces riding a horse at a buzkashi game. Buzkashi is a violent equestrian game, in which teams of riders on horseback contest to place a headless calf in one of two circles at either end of a field. The horse stands in a ring, rearing above the carcass of a calf, used in the buzkashi game. The landscape behind the rider is rocky, with areas of destroyed walls, while American stealth bombers fly overhead. Gittoes' notes of this work; '...all action stopped as one of the American Special Forces 'observors' was offered to join the game and given a mount. The horse must have been especially chosen for its ability to humiliate - at least the American stayed on but had no control over the animal which bolted to the other side of the arena...early TV footage of the War On Terror showed Special American Forces on horseback, Pale Riders, with their Afghan allies'.

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