George Gittoes
Upon entering the dark hall leading into George Gittoes’s exhibition Yellow House Sydney ’71 – Yellow House Jalalabad ’17, the visitor is greeted by a line of his strangely distorted puppet heads. In the dim light there is a sense of anticipation, as if spirits residing in the puppets urge the visitor forward. This is heightened by the bright lights in the exhibition space ahead, beckoning the visitor. A large painting Love is the Quest(2009-2017) is visible, shimmering with colour and streaks of spirited light. However, at the entrance to the gallery space, a smallish painting Mystical Abstract(1968-69), attracts attention. It is a highly patterned rendition of Eastern forms. It acts as a historical signifier in Gittoes’s oeuvre, linking his interest in mysticism across the decades to the recent paintings on show.
In late 2015 George Gittoes returned to Australia from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to receive the Sydney Peace Prize. While he was away from the Yellow House artists’ community in Jalalabad, which he and his partner Hellen Rose have set up, something happened that shifted his approach to his paintings. The event was the brutal death of an old Sufi Gittoes had welcomed into the Yellow House community. Sufis follow a mystical form of Islam, but in modern times they are largely in hiding, away from threats posed by Islamic extremists. While Gittoes was in Sydney the old Sufi ventured further afield and while playing his music and singing in a park, ISIS insurgents destroyed his harmonium, cut out his tongue and decapitated him.
At the opening of his exhibition Yellow House Sydney ’71 – Yellow House Jalalabad ’17, Gittoes explained that the Sufi’s brutal
George Gittoes, Love is Home, 2009-2017. Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist. Photographs Greg Weight.
George Gittoes, Sparkling Kadir (SUFI), 2015-2017. Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist. Photographs Greg Weight.
