Oil slick

Places
Accession Number ART29722
Collection type Art
Measurement Overall: 20 x 22.3 cm
Object type Print
Physical description etching with aquatint with burnishing on Hahnemuhle paper
Maker Gittoes, George Noel
Studio One: Print making workshop
Date made 1991
Conflict Gulf War, 1990-1991
Copyright

Item copyright: AWM Licensed copyright

Description

A seabird covered in oil, with burning oil rigs in the background. Gittoes wrote: 'This image was a response to the television footage of the environmental damage when Iraq allowed oil to spill into the Gulf in what was described as an act of 'environmental terrorism'. Television footage showed sea birds like cormorants and shags covered in oil and dying, unable to lift their wings. This image was drawn directly from my memory of the news images. Inverted oil rigs fill the sky and spew flames down towards the sea, representing the burning Kuwait oil rigs lit by the forces of Saddam Hussein'. The work is one of a series of 24 etchings, the 'Empire State Suite' Gittoes produced during the build up to the Gulf War in 1990, printed at Studio One Printmaking Workshop, Canberra, 1991.