Gallipoli 'the beautiful city' | Lev Vykopal

‘the beautiful city’ works by lev vykopal |1

“Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”

– HOMER, THE ILIAD

Lev Vykopal’s paintings in Gallipoli ‘the beautiful city’ capture the Gallipoli battlefields as they are today. The nature of his art forces us to see into the landscape and into the faces and look back to this campaign fought a century ago. I have walked Gallipoli’s battlefields many times and these are familiar images, but Lev captures something new. The horse trough at Suvla Bay inscribed with the name and date of the engineer unit that built it, while behind it we can see an ancient sarcophagus adapted for the same use. It is the nature of this battlefield, the centuries intermingle. We see the rotting posts and wire in his paintings of the Nek and of Chunuk Bair and imagine they are a century old, rather than the remains of an honest attempt 25 years or so ago to shore up original trenches and in doing so, destroy them, creating replacements that now wear the patina of age. We see the Nek from the Turkish perspective but this time looking out of the treeline that covers the Turkish front line over the cemetery where the unknown dead of the Light Horse lie.

We see the remains of the crane at Kelia Bay used to stretch an anti submarine boom across the Bosphorus, tying together Europe and Asia momentarily. The destroyed gun on Baby 700 positioned to stop any further attempt to invade. Populate these images with figures and picture the bustle, smells, cacophony and agony of opposing armies in battle? They have gone, but the ghosts remain. Gallipoli is an emotional landscape and these images demand our reflection and respect.

— LIEUTENANT COLONEL (RETIRED) CHRISTOPHER PUGSLEY, ONZM, DPHIL, AUTHOR GALLIPOLI: THE NEW ZEALAND STORY

works by lev vykopal Fremantle Arts Centre April 11–May 24, 2015

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gallipoli ‘the beautiful city’ The Gallipoli peninsula and the surrounding region is an astonishingly rich and poignant landscape – a place that is both beautiful and starkly confronting. It is a place where human history leaves its footprint everywhere you go – from the Greeks and the Romans to the Byzantines and the crusaders, to the desperate attacks of the allies in 1915, and the equally desperate Turkish defence. And yet the landscape survives – still beautiful, and with an astonishing brightness and peace. Lev Vykopal’s work captures the rich diversity of the place, and the layers of suffering that it has witnessed. There are the faces of survivors with harsh endurance etched into their faces, the Hades-like trenches and tunnels at Anzac, and even the ancient sarcophagus at Suvla Bay, which is used to this day as a watering trough for the local goats.

Vykopal takes us to the whole Dardanelles region from Homer’s Troy, to Cape Helles to Anzac and to Suvla. His images capture the essence of the place, both past and the present, and remind us of the suffering that took place in the ‘beautiful city’ that is Gallipoli.

Another layer of complexity in the use of names in the region is that Greek-speaking peoples lived here from early antiquity – probably from some time in the 7th century BCE. The Dardanelles waterway (ie. the Hellespont) was seen by the Greeks as a natural boundary between their world and that of the Barbarians, especially the Persians, and so the region has a crucial symbolic role to play in notions of Greek self-identity.

If you do a historical study of the Gallipoli battlefields, or even if you are just a passing visitor to the sites, one of the first things to strike you is all the different names.

The idea of beauty that is embedded into the name of the town also has its application to the peninsula as a whole. Even in antiquity the peninsula had a reputation for its beauty. Xenophon described it as ‘beautiful’ (kalê, as in kalli-polis) and ‘prosperous’ (eudaimôn).

The Athenians, and others, saw the region early on for its excellent agricultural potential, and they used it accordingly.

At the Anzac battlefield many of the names that are most familiar to us were coined by the soldiers in 1915, and they help to tell their story of the conflict – Quinn’s Post, Walker’s Ridge, Russell’s Top, Lone Pine, the Sphinx, and so forth.

The Turks, of course, have their own names for those landmarks, and in some cases these help to reveal their sufferings in the war – Quinn’s Post is Bomba Sirt (‘Bomb Spur’), and Lone Pine is Kanli Sirt (‘Bloody Ridge’). In some cases the allies used the Turkish names for specific features of the landscape, and these are now part of the English vocabulary of the campaign – names such as Kum Kale, Ari Burnu, Gaba Tepe, Seddulbahir and Chunuk Bair.

Naming Gallipoli The name Gallipoli comes from the Greek ‘kalli-polis’, which means beautiful city or beautiful town.

When you use the word ‘Gallipoli’, or ‘Gelibolu’, you are not only speaking ancient Greek – after a fashion; you are unconsciously evoking the idea of physical beauty (kalli-). Originally, it was the Greek town itself that was meant to be beautiful, but because of its size as the largest modern settlement, the name Gallipoli came to identify (in English) the whole peninsula.

An appreciation of the beauty of Gallipoli – the peninsula – was not confined to antiquity. It has an important part to play in some accounts of the campaign in 1915.

“When you use the word ‘Gallipoli’, or ‘Gelibolu’, you are not only speaking ancient Greek – after a fashion; you are unconsciously evoking the idea of physical beauty (kalli-).” |9

The view from the trenches Strange as it may seem, many participants at Gallipoli took the time out to ponder the beauty of the landscape. This seems to have been particularly true of the Australian response to the Gallipoli landscape. As one Australian Gallipoli historian, P.A. Pederson, puts it: “the beauty and strange serenity of the peninsula, even during the most bitter fighting, were paradoxes which struck many who served in the Dardanelles. Few men tired of watching the magnificent sunsets”.

A national epic In the 20th century in Australia Gallipoli became the nearest thing to a national epic. It became a special conflict around which many people could rally to express their national identity, not unlike the way that the Greeks rallied around the story of Troy, or the Persian wars, or Alexander’s eastern conquests.

The correspondent Charles Bean, who had done Classics at Oxford and became the official Australian historian of the war, was certainly one person who appreciated the austere beauty of the Gallipoli landscape. Indeed, it seems to have had an impact on his whole perception of the campaign.

In the case of Homer he was not just a good poet. The Iliad manages to capture the essence of what it means to be Greek. The great issues of human existence are its subject – life and death and family and community – and the action is played out in a beautiful and exotic setting in a war against a foreign adversary.

When he went back to Turkey in 1919, after the western front, Bean saw the peninsula from his ship at a distance, and he wrote of his delight in seeing its hills: “they were the hills of the Dardanelles, and at that moment I, for one, was poignantly homesick for them”.

We may be thankful there were no epic poets around about in Australia to tell the tale of Gallipoli. But epics can be formed without the need for poets skilled in formulaic verse structures.

The creation of a national epic in the modern context is a social phenomenon, not so much a poetic one.

In some ways this is quite a remarkable thing to say for a place that saw an allied defeat, and was the setting for so much death and misery. Nonetheless, the Mediterranean setting of the campaign – the blue water, the sunrises and sunsets, the islands and the beaches, the old villages, the foliage, the hills and ravines – all these made their impression on the men at the time.

And they all played their part in the way that the campaign would be remembered in the period afterward – or so it seems to me.

My own view is that the beauty of the Dardanelles landscape, and the ancient context of the campaign – especially the fact that Troy is across the waterway – have fed into the myth-making aspect of the Gallipoli story in Australia.

British writers such as John Masefield and Compton Mackenzie even compared the Australian men with heroes from old poetry – and they did so with considerable hyperbole.

“In the 20th century in Australia Gallipoli became the nearest thing to a national epic.”

It is not determined by a single hand, or by a group of good poets, but by a much broader collective impulse. And in the case of Gallipoli the mechanisms and genres of modern society played their parts in the process – literature and historiography, art and architecture, film, political discourse.

The result has been that Gallipoli’s place in the psyche of modern Australia is nothing short of astonishing. If you explore this phenomenon of epic formation against a background of comparative epic poetry from many countries, it becomes clear that it is an ancient process manifesting itself within a modern social context.

Distortions of the classical prism Why do we fight wars? What happens to human society when we do?

How is it that we perpetrate terrible acts on one another? What are the consequences for the people who do so?

It is very revealing about Greek attitudes to this subject that in their pantheon of gods they had two gods of war, not just one.

These two gods represent different, though not mutually exclusive, aspects of warfare.

First there is the beautiful Athena, daughter of Zeus, born from her father’s head, the goddess of courage and heroism, wisdom and strategy. In Homer she combines the idealised attributes of the male in human society – especially beauty, courage and heroism – together with the ideal female aspects of beauty, loyalty and wisdom.

The other war god is Ares, a son of Zeus and Hera. He is god of the blood and the guts and the cruelty of war. In the Iliad he is defeated by a human warrior, Diomedes, together with Athena’s help. After he is defeated he scurries back to Olympus, only to receive abuse from his father Zeus.

It says a lot about the Greek attitude to war that Ares is humiliated in both Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. To the Greek mind, Athena could represent something good about war, which people could aspire to and admire. Her presence and her identity signify that there can be major social benefit from courage and steadfastness and wisdom in war.

Athenian mythology even made Athena a divine participant in the battle against the Persians at Marathon. The glory of that battle, so few against so many, could be attributed to her support. But Ares, in his main function, was the terrible face of human suffering in war.

Gazing at the beauty of Gallipoli We don’t have gods of war today, but heroism and courage and strategy still operate alongside the gruesome realities of the killing and the wounding. The process of epic formation and heroisation almost always privileges the former over the latter.

The process by which history is turned into myth, or into epic, usually involves us fixing our gaze upon Athena, rather than looking Ares full in the face. And this has been the experience with Gallipoli in Australia. When we ask ourselves why Gallipoli is the subject of so much myth-making, rather than the western front, it is worth bearing the dichotomy of Athena and Ares is mind.

“The process by which history is turned into myth, or into epic, usually involves us fixing our gaze upon Athena, rather than looking Ares full in the face.”

The characteristic beauty and nature of the landscape of the Dardanelles, and the adjacent world of Homer’s Troy, both feed into the narrative in an irresistible kind of way as a fitting place for heroic conduct.

— DR CHRIS MACKIE IS PROFESSOR OF GREEK STUDIES AND HEAD OF SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AT LA TROBE UNIVERSITY. THIS IS AN EDITED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE THAT WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CURRENT AFFAIRS WEBSITE THE CONVERSATION.

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lev vykopal: working method Some years back I had the chance to become artist on two residencies with the Australian Army in the Northern Territories. I had only just arrived in Australia from grey, cold London, and here I was stepping off a landing barge on the Tiwi Islands, assaulted by the red dust, bushflies and pre-wet season humidity which was so intense it is hard to describe. I found one of my paper rolls, sent on ahead, had been eaten by termites.

It was also my first contact with the Australian Army and these were the engineers. The term ‘digger’ was first used in the Gallipoli campaign and came to be synonymous with the ANZAC soldier, both for their ability to dig in physically and emotionally. Most of the men I met were less than twenty years old, but they were serious beyond their years and had a hard job to do. Should anyone one day trawl the vast art archives of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra they may come across my files of drawings. Men turning over the red soil with shovels in small groups, dozing in the shade of a grader in the fifty-degree midday heat, being consumed by clouds of dust while working machinery or feeding a stray dog from the local township. The paper is still choked with the iron-rich red dust. I suppose this is where my interest in Gallipoli began.

My Czech surname also, coincidentally, means ‘to dig’. The French philosopher and First World War ambulance driver Jean Cocteau once asked: “what is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end”. In no other country, I think, is there quite the equivalent to a founding legend like Gallipoli, or what Gallipoli has become in the cultural framework of a nation. I was fascinated to see if this narrow strip of land in the Aegean, so far from Australia, had any clues to offer up in the overall narrative.

I often use history as a starting point and inspiration in my work.

History is, after all, a balance of truths, stories and myth. Landscape is the vehicle I use to explore this. It provides me with the palette and the palette is often the landscape. In 1996 while on residency in Iceland looking at the Icelandic Sagas I began experimenting with mixing paint pigment from naturally found materials. I ground materials and mixed them with binders such as linseed oil and shellac. This forms both a conscious and visceral connection to the place for me. I dislike working from photographs as they contain too much information, though I will use them. I distrust colour. It can distract the viewer from the main object of the work and to me can be ephemeral, though sometimes a useful and powerful tool. I work mainly on paper. I like the tactile feel of the material and it is easy to transport, cut down and roll. It’s amazingly tough for its weight and has a directness about it that appeals to me. It also suits my drawing based methods and does not obstruct me in my transition from site to studio. Often my pieces are rolled out on the ground to work on and weighted down with stones.

“what is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.”

Landscape without a human scale or narrative is an alien environment. Without reference points, to me, painting from life becomes an exercise for observations sake. History is the patina that forms on landscape where human activity has marked it. Battlefields, where terrain has often dictated history (as at Gallipoli) can be very powerful places to work indeed. I grew up in England (which has more battlefields than you can imagine), though my family were American migrants who originally came from all across Europe. I didn’t come

from a military family but we had our stories. My great uncle was a US paratroop medic who was awarded the purple heart at Anzio and fought his way onto Berlin. My wife’s grandfather was fighting on the opposing side with the Italian army, and spent four years in a prison camp. He carried a lump of shrapnel next to his heart all his life.

Gallipoli to me is about contrasts and balances. Hector and Achilles, the Australian and the Turk, ancient and modern, blue water and hard brown land. Brutal and sublime with a dash of chaotic set against a sense of timelessness. Men in the trenches being mechanically shelled and shot at came across shards of pottery, tile and weapons from Ancient times as they slid from the sides of their funk holes or made contact with their picks and shovels as they dug. Even as both sides obstinately clung to their patchwork of trenches they possibly may have felt the sense of place of where they fought.

“Gallipoli to me is about contrasts and balances. Hector and Achilles, the Australian and the Turk, ancient and modern, blue water and hard brown land. Brutal and sublime with a dash of chaotic set against a sense of timelessness.”

The word ‘Gallipoli’ is derived from the Greek ‘kalli-pollis’, meaning ‘beautiful city’. As a starting point I was intrigued with this idea of beauty and horror that existed in this place. With the stature of the Gallipoli legend I expected a landscape of great scale but found one of intimacy. Photographs are misleading. Anzac can be traversed in a day on foot. The scale of the conflict in terms of effect on Australian society and culture were huge, the place is tiny. Also I felt I wanted to tackle the broader narrative of the campaign. To depart from the

twisting claustrophobia of the gullies and trenches of Anzac and see the dusty plains of Suvla, the rolling olive groves and wheat fields of Cape Helles, and across the water the crumbling remains of Troy. The story of Gallipoli is one more chapter in a very long book of history which takes us back to the first writings of the western world by the poet Homer, a thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Trojans, Greeks, Spartans, Romans, Persians, Mongols, Macedonians, Crusaders, Ottomans and Anzacs all spilt blood on this ground.

I like the feel of the earth beneath my feet as I work. Working on location grounds me as being part of a narrative and not just observing it from an external perspective. I work in places where a strong genius loci or spirit of place pervades and I like to think this enters the work at some level.

Art to me is about putting yourself in life’s way. When I am alone working, I make connections between what I am seeing and other things on a subconscious level. Memories, snatches of poems or writing, emotions and tactile experiences. Work become experiential rather than just observational.

“I work in places where a strong genius loci or spirit of place pervades and I like to think this enters the work at some level.”

Yet as much as this immediacy is key to my work, distance allows me the deepest response to my subject. In my head and in my journals I erratically jot into are dreams born of experiences in these places. Sidney Nolan came to Gallipoli on the 50th anniversary and produced hundreds of pieces based on his few short days there.

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He once remarked that “one ends up with a landscape one has never seen before but it is presumably the landscape you were feeling as you started the painting”. Experience and dream meet and landscape is re-imagined.

Works done on site are rarely touched. Works in my studio evolve, sometimes over months. Paintings are painted over or fall to the floor and are covered with new works. People are part of the landscape too. The weathered farmers’ faces from the village of Kocadere, a few kilometres from the Anzac battlefields, remind me of the ero vded and fissured terrain I have been struggling over. The faces of the Australian descendants of the 11th battalion, who I meet on a blistering hot day in Kings Park, Perth, for the re-creation of the famous Cheops pyramid photograph, remind me of why I am struggling over it.

There’s a large white memorial to the New Zealand dead at the top of Chunuk Bair, the high tide mark of the allied advance on Gallipoli. And like any tide mark on a beach, it has accumulated the flotsam and jetsam of history. Old and new trenches jostle with white stone memorials, concrete edifices and Turkish food vendors waiting for the next bus load of tourists. On the bottom step of the memorial, there is a clutter of fading plastic poppy wreaths and a picture of a soldier that has been put in a plastic sleeve. On the sleeve there is a large stone weighting it down. The stone is

polished, greenish granite. It looks like no stone around it or the ones from the beach here. I felt a certainty it had been gathered on the other side of the world by some descendant; possibly in one of the little rocky bays in Wellington or Nelson, Auckland or Dunedin.

This stone draws attention to the words written on the base of the memorial; ‘from the uttermost ends of the earth’. The next day as I pack my bag to leave, I pick up three of the rocks I have collected on the beach to use in my paintings and pop them in my suitcase for the long journey home.

— WRITTEN BY THE ARTIST, FEBRUARY 2015.

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anzac

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cape helles

the descendants

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lone pine

the nek

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chunuk bair

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suvla

suvla

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catalogue COVER IMAGE

PAGE 14

PAGE 19

PAGE 23

Entrance to Hades (Lone Pine), 2014 Soil, pigment, acrylic, charcoal and shellac on paper 260 x 240cm

View of The Nek from the Sea, 2014 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 67 x 116cm

Descendants #1, Gallipoli villagers of Kocadere, 2013 Soil, pigment,charcoal and shellac on paper (9 works), 168 x 234cm

The Light Horsemen (triptych), 2014 Soil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and shellac on paper 80 x 400cm each

INSIDE COVER Lev Vykopal at work on Cape Helles, Gallipoli, 2013

Looking down to Anzac Cove from Walker’s Ridge, 2014 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 67 x 116cm PAGE 15

PAGE 4/5 Eroded Landscape, Anzac (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm PAGE 6 Map of Gallipoli and surrounds (courtesy of artist) PAGE 10

Anzac Landscape Study #1 (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 28 x 38cm Dawn, Anzac Cove (field study), 2013 Soil, acrylic, pastel and shellac on paper 136 x 58.5cm Anzac Landscape Study #2 (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 28 x 38cm

Diggers and dog, Milikapiti, Tiwi Islands, NT (army residency field study), 2000 Collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra Soil and pencil on paper 41 x 28cm

View of the Sphinx and Russell’s Top (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm

Diggers levelling out, Tiwi Islands, NT (army residency field study), 2000 Collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra Soil and pencil on paper 41 x 28cm

The Return of Odysseus (wrecked lighter at W Beach), 2014 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 237 x 215cm

PAGE 12

The Bathers (shipwrecks at X Beach), 2014 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 60 x 180cm

Selections from the artist’s field journals PAGE 13 Artist at work at dawn, Anzac Cove Gallipoli, 2013

PAGE 16

PAGE 17

PAGE 18 Descendants #2, 11th Battalion, 2015 Soil, pigment, charcoal and shellac on paper (9 works), 168 x 234cm

PAGE 25 PAGE 20 Collapsed Trench, Shrapnel Valley, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm Turkish Trench, Lone Pine, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm Trench, Lone Pine, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm Old Trench Field Studies (Lone Pine, The Nek, Shrapnel Valley, The Apex), 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 34 x 47cm each PAGE 21 Entrance to Hades (Lone Pine), 2014 Soil, pigment, acrylic, charcoal and shellac on paper 260 x 240c PAGE 22 Remains of an Australian trench at the Nek (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm The Charge at The Nek (after George Lambert), 2015 Soil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and shellac on paper 230 x 116cm

The Last Stand (Chunuk Bair), 2014 Soil, shellac, photo transfer on paper (49 panels) 200 x 160cm PAGE 26 Point Suvla (field study), 2013 Acrylic, soil and shellac on paper 136 x 90cm Suvla landscape (field study) #1, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21cm Field study of the Salt Lake at Suvla with smashed rum jars, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21cm Suvla landscape (field study) #2, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21 cm PAGE 26/27 The Lost Battalion, 2015 Acrylic, soil, charcoal and shellac on paper 309 x 220cm PAGE 28 Searching for the Sandringhams (Suvla), 2014 Soil, shellac, photo transfer on paper (49 panels), 200 x 160cm REAR INSIDE COVER Entrance to Hades sketch, 2014 artist’s field journal, (detail)

list of works ANZAC Dawn, Anzac Cove (field study), 2013 Soil, acrylic, pastel and shellac on paper 136 x 58.5cm Looking down to Anzac Cove from Walker’s Ridge, 2014 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 67 x 116cm View of The Nek from the Sea, 2014 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 67 x 116cm Anzac Landscape Study #1 (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 28 x 38cm Anzac Landscape Study #2 (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 28 x 38cm Study of Destroyed Turkish Gun at Baby 700 (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 38 x 28cm Cities of Stone #1 (eight field studies of Anzac cemeteries), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 27 x 19cm each Eroded Landscape, Anzac (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm View of the Sphinx and Russell’s Top (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm CAPE HELLES The Return of Odysseus (wrecked lighter at W Beach), 2014 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 237 x 215cm Seddulbahir and V Beach, 2014 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 67 x 117cm Pink Farm, Cape Helles (field study), 2013 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 60 x 138cm

Remains of an Australian trench at the Nek (field study), 2013 Soil, pastel, acrylic and shellac on paper 136 x 58cm Cities of Stone #2 (eight field studies of the ancient city of Troy), 2013 Soil, pigment, charcoal and shellac on paper 18 x 28cm each 2 field studies of remains of crane at Kilye Bay, narrowest crossing point of the Hellespont, 2013 Graphite and soil on paper 47 x 34cm each

LONE PINE Entrance to Hades (Lone Pine), 2014 Soil, pigment, acrylic, charcoal and shellac on paper 260 x 240cm Old Trench Field Studies (Lone Pine, The Nek, Shrapnel Valley, The Apex), 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 34 x 47cm each Collapsed Trench, Shrapnel Valley, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm

The Bathers (shipwrecks at X Beach), 2014 Acrylic, shellac and soil on paper 60 x 180cm

Turkish Trench, Lone Pine, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm

THE NEK

Trench, Lone Pine, 2014 Oil on panel 60 x 90cm

Remains of ANZAC front line trench at The Nek, 2014 Oil on panel 90 x 150cm Remains of ANZAC front line trench at The Nek #2, 2014 Oil on board 90 x 150cm The Light Horsemen (triptych), 2014 Soil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and shellac on paper 80 x 400cm each The Charge at The Nek (after George Lambert), 2015 Soil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and shellac on paper 230 x 116cm 2 field studies of the Woods at The Nek Battlefield, 2013 Charcoal and soil on paper 47 x 34cm each 3 field studies of the remaining ANZAC trenches at the Nek. 2013 Charcoal, soil and shellac on paper 47 x 34cm each

(Beetle) near Point Suvla, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21cm Field study of British well at Lala Baba, Suvla, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 21 x 29cm DESCENDANTS Descendants #1, Gallipoli villagers of Kocadere, 2013 Soil, pigment,charcoal and shellac on paper (9 works), 168 x 234cm Descendants #2, 11th Battalion, 2015 Soil, pigment, charcoal and shellac on paper (9 works), 168 x 234cm COMPOSITE PIECES

SUVLA

The Last Stand (Chunuk Bair), 2014 Soil, shellac, photograph on 49 panels 200 x 160cm

The Lost Battalion, 2015 Acrylic, soil, charcoal and shellac on paper 309 x 220cm

Searching for the Sandringhams (Suvla), 2014 Soil, shellac, photograph on 49 panels 200 x 160cm

Point Suvla (field study), 2013 Acrylic, soil and shellac on paper 136 x 90cm Suvla landscape (field study) #1, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21cm Suvla landscape (field study) #2, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21 cm Field study of the Salt Lake at Suvla with smashed rum jars, 2013 Soil, graphite and pastel on paper 29 x 21cm Field study of wrecked landing craft

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gallipoli ‘the beautiful city’ Works by Lev Vykopal | Fremantle Arts Centre | April 11–May 24, 2015 Curated by Ric Spencer, Fremantle Arts Centre Curator

ARTISTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The artist wishes to acknowledge the many people who helped make this exhibition a reality.

IN AUSTRALIA First and foremost to my wife, Victoria Vykopal and our three children Joseph, Luca and Arielle for their forebearance and support over the course of the last two years. Professor Christopher Mackie, Head of School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, who helped me understand the place from a classical perspective and weave together the past and present. Lt Colonel (retired NZDF) Christopher Pugsley, historian, whose book Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story was a driving force in developing my understanding of the tragedy of the campaign from a military and human perspective. FAC Director Jim Cathcart for his enthusiasm for the project from the earliest days and curator Ric Spencer for his guidance in helping me focus on my own narrative. Major John Thurgar, ADF for his expert in-country advice and guidance. Major Lindsay Adams, ADF and Elanor Colston for helping me make initial contacts and develop an understanding for modern day Gallipoli. Chris Loudon, WA Genealogical Society for tirelessly tracking down individuals for the portrait pieces to occur. Robert Mitchell, Director, WA Army Museum for his advice and help. Meri Fatin, ABC and RTR presenter for her patient work in producing quality audio recording for the show from the padded cell! Artist Paul Uhlman for his support from the onset. The team at the Australian War Memorial; Ryan Johnston (Head of Art), Sally Cunningham (Assistant Curator), Stuart Bennington (Curator Official Records). Graham Edwards, State President WA RSL for kindly offering to open the exhibition. Sharon Harford, Centenary Program Manager, WA RSL for her work in helping me liase with the RSL. Cathy Driver, Department of Culture and the Arts for her help and advice. Gino and Anna Mastaglia. The descendants of the 11th Battalion, 1915 whose portraits appear in this exhibition for sharing with me the stories of their ancestors. These are William Flynn, Ryan Epps, Jeremy Hadfield, Libby Perkins, James Johnston, Cath Breen, Evan Thomas, John Darby, Annie Cranfield. Thanks to them and their families.

IN TURKEY AND THE UK Nicholas Sergi, Australian Consul Cannakale, for his help on the ground. Baris Kaya, Consular Assistant, Australian Consul Cannakale for his sourcing materials for me. David Bennett, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, for his kind help and advice on the monuments of the peninsula. Matt McKeon, Veterans Affairs Councillor, Australian Embassy, Ankara. Eric and Ozlem Goosens of Gallipoli Houses for advice, materials, good food and good company. My guides, Bulent Korkmaz and Guven Pinar for keeping me on the right path (and not always the beaten one). The villagers of Kocadere, Gallipoli for their assistance and good humour. Piraye Oflazer for her kindness. Brigadier Bill Sowry, Head Australian Defence Staff, Australian High Commission, London.

DEDICATION To my mother, Patricia Ann Vykopal, 1941–2014.

FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Fremantle Arts Centre would like to thank Lev Vykopal for his vision and for giving his time generously throughout the planning stages. FAC would also like to thank Robert Mitchell, Curator at the Army Museum of Western Australia for his time, tours and advice, Meri Fatin for her audio expertise, Dr Chris Mackie for his writing Christopher Pugsley expertise and the Department of Culture and the Arts for their ongoing support.

CREDITS All works courtesy of the artists Design Ash Pederick Photography Christine Tomás ©2015 Fremantle Arts Centre and the artist Fremantle Arts Centre, 1 Finnerty Street Fremantle, WA 6160

Fremantle Arts Centre is supported by the State Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts.

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ISBN: 978-0-9872930-5-3