Turbulent Terrain: Manifestations of the Sublime in Contemporary Art
Charles Green & Lyndall Brown

Charles Green and Lyndell Brown have worked in collaboration since 1989. Brown has a PhD from the University of New South Wales and Green has a PhD from the University of Melbourne where he is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art. In early 2007 they were Australian Official War Artists, working on location for the Australian War Memorial with the Australian Defense forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf.

View from Chinook, Helmand Province, Afghanistan (2007) depicts harsh mountainous and desert landscape, the site of ongoing battles between US and British troops and the Taliban, through the narrow aperture of a military helicopter’s windscreen. Disappearing into the distance, the towering spine of jagged mountain ranges amid the vast arid surrounds is also the Taliban's opium-producing heartland, and shelters large numbers of Taliban militia. In addition to the sense of awe inspired by the topography, there is the lurking threat of fundamentalist militia and suicide fighters hidden in caves.

In several ways View from Chinook resembles a key Romantic painting associated with interpretations of the sublime, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer in a sea of fog. We survey the landscape from an elevated position, the mountains stretching away to the horizon. However, in place of Friedrich’s lone surveyor on a rocky ledge, the viewer in the image is positioned inside the safety of a Chinook armoured helicopter, a potent symbol of the strength of Western military forces.

In Iraqi Man Walking Beside Road, View from Armoured Vehicle, Iraq 2007, the sublime desert landscape and the sublime object of the military machine are again connected, and standing in our place perhaps, is a lone Iraqi man, dwarfed by both the landscape stretching to infinity and the machinery of warfare relentlessly rolling by. Framed within the narrow viewing aperture of armoured transport vehicles, both images evoke a sense of claustrophobia. The dark borders distance us from the sublime landscape beyond, but also implicate us within the sublime object of military machinery.

Charles Green and Lyndell Brown are represented by Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

Image: Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, View from Chinook, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2007, digital colour photograph, inkjet print on rag paper, 111.5 x 151.5cm. Courtesy the artists and Arc One Gallery