Night and day

Lyndell Brown (b. 1961) and Charles Green (b. 1953), Melbourne-based artists who work collaboratively, were appointed as official war artists in 2007 to document Australia’s presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were attached to military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, and Afghanistan to record and interpret the training, logistical, and operational activities of Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel.
Brown and Green were subsequently commissioned in 2009 to document the national Welcome Home parade held in Canberra to mark the end of the ADF’s six-year-long contribution to the coalition forces in Iraq, which officially ended on 31 July 2009.
Night and day draws on the photographic archive the artists collected while they were embedded in Iraq, and their observation of the Welcome Home parade. Each panel is a complete work with a dominant image whose centre is partially concealed by a series of small pictures. These read like a story, layering references to the past and present using motifs drawn from ancient and contemporary culture.