High profile, award winning Australian artist, George Gittoes has been making the headlines for over thirty years. He was a founding artist of "The Yellow House", Sydney, a pioneer in the fields of holography, art and technology, photography as art, performance art, environmental theatre and has been internationally recognised for his art and film. His paintings and multi media installations have been exhibited in the USA, Germany, Russia, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Middle East, South Africa, and Australia.

In the course of his forty years of global wanderings, Gittoes has chronicled his unique artistic visions in diaries, film, photography, drawing, painting, and etchings. In his mature works, George Gittoes looks at the world and contemplates the forces of unity and division. 

This exhibition features previously unshown major oil works, from the artist’s studio, and a selection of smaller oils, and drawings where key Gittoes icons are explored  – the Night Vision character, artist self-portraits, the 'three cups of life' theme, and the few remaining works from  his 1998 China residency.

The Yellow House period oils (1970-71) are on themes of inner and outer contemplations/influences at that time on the twenty-year-old artist—his hero, Vincent Van Gogh—troubled by inner strife, enlightened by intense visual sensitivity, dedicating a life to art—and the Vietnam War: which troubled the artist’s generation deeply, and made them question war.

Most of the works Gittoes produced during his residency at 'The Beijing Art Academy' in 1998 were acquired at that time by international collectors. 

This is a timely exhibition of Gittoes’ paintings, which allow collectors to see the roots and meaning of the artist’s vision. It makes sense of his many journeys around the globe in search of subjects and  images, and his unique ability to understand metaphor, image, popular culture, and currents of change, to create significant works about our times.

Gabrielle Dalton
2007