“…The narrative ends in the rubble and it is left to us to create the counter-narrative. There is something empty in the sky. The writer tries to give memory, tenderness and meaning to all that howling space.”1
Earlier this year noted publisher Louise Adler posed the question: ‘Why does writing matter in the age of the image? When we are inundated by images of despair, disenfranchisement and deracination, why do words carry so much significance?’.2 She went on to exalt the power of literary writing, over and above that of visual art, to respond adequately to the current age of anxiety and uncertainty. Raising significant questions, such as whether literature should continue to explore the notion of human inhumanity, or whether writers can afford not to examine society’s darkest places, Adler concluded that the writer’s brief is to ‘bring understanding to bear on the fear to which we must either capitulate or resist’. The issues raised were significant, yet she was wrong in presuming that visual artists are unable to respond to such dark places with as much power, passion and moral insight as writers.
Perhaps Adler had not seen Victoria Lynn’s exhibition ‘Regarding Fear and Hope’, which provided ample evidence of artists grappling with the grave moral and political issues of today. The exhibition assembled the work of eleven Australian and international artists whose interests intersect strongly with politics, although not the vacuous often party politics reported daily in the Australian press which tends to focus on the personal and the trivial. Rather, these artists are concerned with some of the most significant global issues pervading the world today—profound religious and political anxieties and conflicts (notably