For the French people, poppies are a wildflower. The scarlet flowers of the Flanders poppy signal the end of the school year and the beginning of the summer, much as do our jacarandas. Nicole Sylvestre's installation of ceramic poppies, Poppy Field, at the Queensland Art Gallery, stemmed from her realisation of the very different cultural interpretations the poppies of her native Flanders have in Australia.
Though blue cornflowers are as common in Flanders as the blood red poppies (the French actually remember the Australian soldiers by the cornflower) it was the traditional association of poppies with oblivion and death, and their long history in English pastoral poetry, that made them an obvious choice for a commemorative symbol after World War I. The most popular poem in English of the period was John McRae's "In Flanders Fields", where " ... poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row ."'
In time for Anzac Day, Sylvestre 's red ceramic poppies were mounted on wire stems and "planted" in a field of turf in the Gallery's sculpture courtyard. Initially, a pleasantly poetic image was conveyed, the red and green posing no immediate challenge to the viewer. The juxtaposition, however, of Anzac Day, of the visual elements of the work, and of its nature as an artwork, implanted the sense of reflection which the artist had envisaged.
In the last 200 years Australians have been involved in ten wars2, a war every 20 years Gallipoli being the most famous. Does it come as a surprise, then, to learn that poppies also symbolise fantastic extravagance? For every soldier who dies, how many more are hurt, and how many women and men sorrow at home? What