The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Dennis Trew's 'Names from the Book of the Dead' (1992) consists of 108 separate sheets of portraits of Vietnam soldiers, with their service records listed and deaths noted over three pages. Trew has enlarged the individual photographs and biographies of the men and printed them on yellow/orange pieces of paper, which are pinned in place as if on a notice board, conveying a sense of impermanence. In choosing this medium Trew comments on the transitory nature of these young men's lives and creates an equally ephemeral memorial to them.
The central image, much larger than the others, is of Trew himself, a survivor of the conflict who served in the Navy. Scrawled across the face of the image of Trew are the words; 'Like Charon I was the ferry man, rowing them across the river Styx to the land of the dead Vietnam 1968-1970'.
The source of the material for the images of dead soldiers was the 'Australian' newspaper which printed the entire roll call of Vietnam casualties in this format in 1988 and reprinted them in October 1993.The 1992 newspaper supplement, '500: the Australians who died in Vietnam', included photographs and biographies of 500 Australians who had served and died in the Vietnam conflict.
By making the images of the faces life sized they become more imposing and confronting to the viewer. Set side by side, the faces of so many who died take on a powerful haunting presence. In this work Trew has appropriated the newspaper supplement from the public sphere of mass communication and recontextualised it into the realm of the personal. This work challenges the viewer to confront the fate of those who died, and to empathise with Trew's experience of this tragedy.
Illustration for the wartime publication 'Soldier superb: the Australian fights in New Guinea'. Depicts the remains of human skeletons. On verso; sketch of a soldier climbing a ladder. First publishe
COPY "THE AUSTRALIAN" 10/10/1987 TO COINCIDE WITH THE "WELCOME HOME MARCH" AND INCLUDED BIOGRAPHIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF 500 AUSTRALIANS (SERVICE PERSONNEL AND CIVILIANS) WHO DIED DURING SERVICE IN VIET
Depicts a large man's faces and superimposed children's faces, inside a room, with a window in the background. The work relates to the fragmented and broken lives of people in the former Yugoslavia. T
Hand-coloured woodcut illustrating the poem 'Trench idyll', the sixth illustration in a book of poems by British poet and novelist Richard Aldington (1892-1926), published by Beaumont Press, London, 1
Depicts a number of faces in the upper section of the work and the faces of women in the lower half, which relate to the fragmented and broken lives of people in the former Yugoslavia. The work expres
A German soldier dances through a cemetery with hats on top of wooden crosses. The man is trying to arouse the dead buried in the graveyard. He is possibly holding a tambourine above his head. This wo
