George Gittoes Artist

Established Australian Artist & Documentary Film Maker

Enquiries: hello@spudlane.com.au

Dr George Gittoes AM is a major Australian artist, filmmaker, and photographer. For the last fifty years he has traveled around the world to war zones, battle fields, and notorious conflicts. From the killing fields of Bosnia, to the brutal massacres of Rwanda; from Afghanistan to Ukraine, Gittoes has witnessed the best and worst of humanity.

Gittoes has been described variously as a pop artist, a figurative artist, a modernist and a post modernist. Ultimately he is a documenter. Through drawing, painting, filmmaking and the written and spoken word he reflects and tells the stories of what he has seen and experienced.

Dead Russian (Ukraine) by George Gittoes
Dead Russian (Ukraine), George Gittoes 2023, Oil on canvas, 184x250cm (Image courtesy of the artist)

Twice winner of the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1992 and 1995, Gittoes also won the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1993, and was a finalist in the Sulman Art Prize in 2016. In 2015 he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in recognition of his life’s work and its innovative and creative approach to peace building.

George Gittoes in Jalalabad
Love City Jalalabad, 2013, Still (Image courtesy of Unicorn Films)

A critically acclaimed filmmaker, Gittoes’ feature-length documentaries include the Miscreants of Taliwood shot in the tribal belt of Pakistan from 2007-09, Love City Jalalabad which premiered at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival, and Snow Monkey an epic portrait of daily life in Jalalabad that was released at the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival. Last year George and his partner Hellen Rose spent four months in Ukraine, making their newest documentary film Ukrainistan Artist War which premiered at the 2023 Salem Film Fest at the Peabody Essex Museum in Boston, US.

Gittoes’ work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the state galleries of Queensland, NSW and NT, the Powerhouse Museum, and regional galleries throughout Australia, as well as private and public collections in Australia, Germany, US, Canada, UK, Switzerland and China.

Image of the artist courtesy of Spud Lane Studios

Exhibition History, Films and Awards

Selected Exhibitions

George Gittoes: On Being There, Regional touring exhibition, Australia (2020-21)
I Witness, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney (2014)
Beauty in the Face of Everything, Art Equity, Sydney (2013)
Witness to War, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, US (2011)
Descendance, Berlin, Germany (2010)
The Time: A Season in Pakistan, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney (2008)
A Season in New York / A Season in Baghdad, Travelling exhibition organised by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Australia (2006)
No Exit: A Tale of Two Cities. George Gittoes in New York and Baghdad, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney (2004)
No Exit, Aveiro, Portugal (2003)
Night Vision, University of Michigan, US (2002)
Across the Lines, Sana’a & Aden, Yemen (2002)
Lives in the Balance, Retrospective in Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa (2001)
Minefields, Russia and the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland (2000)
World Diary, Travelling exhibition organised by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Australia (2000-01)
Innenseite, Kassel, Germany (1997)
The Realism of Peace, National touring show sponsored by Museum and Art Gallery of NT, Darwin (1995)
Drawing on Peace, United Nations, New York, US (1994)
Heavy Industry, National regional exhibition tour organised by Broken Hill City Art Gallery, Australia (1991-94)
Crows Over Canefields, Manila, Philippines (1990)