Brothers in Arms

This series of five lacquer panels depicts the Australians and South Vietnamese military personnel who served alongside one another in the Vietnam War. Artist Dr Dacchi Dang began his research interviewing veterans who served in the war with either the Australian or South Vietnamese forces. He wanted

‘to concentrate on the relationship between Australia and the South Vietnamese. Since their resettlement in Australia, the Vietnamese veterans’ stories have largely been silent in Australian communities. One of the possible factors to this under-representation of their stories in the Vietnamese or other Australian communities is that the soldiers still feel trapped from their painful past and loss of their homeland. Their stories and accounts of the war are of particular interest to me in my research for this project. My aim is to create a new understanding of, and a relationship to the representation of, the memories and experiences of the Vietnam War through the tales of Australian and Australian–South Vietnamese veterans.’ (Dacchi Dang 2016)

Dang used traditional Vietnamese lacquer to create a tangible connection with the Vietnamese subject matter. He selected archival photographs from the collection of the Australian War Memorial, based on the experiences of the veterans he interviewed, and created a digital montage which was screenprinted in black onto marine ply, and then covered in lacquer.

Dr Dacchi Dang (b. 1966) spent his childhood in Saigon, and his experiences of the war came both via the media and from the streets. In 1982, aged 16, he and his siblings fled Vietnam, enduring a traumatic sea voyage in a fishing boat, spending nine months in the Pulau Bidong camp in Malaysia before being accepted as refugees to Australia. On arrival Dang learned English and obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales and a PhD from Griffith University. His research-based practice has focused on the Vietnamese diaspora and the experiences and sense of identity of refugees. His work has been exhibited extensively both within Australia and internationally.

Dr Dacchi Dang was commissioned to create works of art responding to this important but relatively little-known aspect of Australian history with the support of funds from the Gillespie Bequest. Major John Milton Gillespie was a Vietnam veteran and immigration consultant.