Canterbury Diptych (with James)

'Canterbury Diptych (with James)' is from a series of works that Euan Macleod made in response to a trip to the beaches of Gallipoli, in 2014, as part of the exhibition 'Your Friend the Enemy' that commemorated 100 years since the Gallipoli landings. For this project fifteen artists from Australia and New Zealand travelled to Turkey and worked outside 'en plein air', looking for new ways to paint the Gallipoli landscape and represent this important history.

Upon arrival Macleod forced himself not to paint for two days, instead he walked over the landscape observing and absorbing all around him. He responded by painting bold, dramatic landscapes that reflect on identity but also link to the idea of outsider as prevalent in his work - the soldier on a foreign land, an artist as a tourist on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Australian Graves on Turkish shores. As Macleod noted "It is about how we remember, what we remember and why we remember it. How we deal with the past and respond to the landscape."

Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Patrick Corrigan