Premio Combat Prize

Artwork description.
These paintings come from a series of works reminding us of the victims of war who are not engaged in fighting, but are there.
It is a homage to those war photographers and reporters who risk their lives in an effort to show the more fortunate and less involved societies, what is going on.
All these images have evolved from imagery taken by photographers killed in war.
The artwork for the contest is inspired by a photograph taken by Tea Kim Heang, of a young child with extreme burns to the right arm, reaching in pain, with that arm to touch his dead mother. The photographer, commonly known as ”Moonface” was killed later in the war.
Biography.
I had my first solo exhibition in 1969 at the age of 18 in a gallery in Melbourne.
Since then the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory and numerous regional public galleries throughout Australia and overseas, such as Berkeley and Arizona universities in the USA have acquired my work.
I studied art in Melbourne and country Victoria. In 1984 I travelled across Australia to the Northern Territory. I worked in Arnhem Land with tribal Aboriginal people for two and a half years.
In 1987, I relocated from Maningrida to Batchelor where I was the Art Lecturer at Batchelor College and in 1989 moved to Darwin and lectured in Sculpture and Drawing at Charles Darwin University (then Northern Territory University).
The close proximity of Indonesia to Darwin beckoned and Indonesia became a new place for me to work. There I found a people committed to life, religion, festival and art, an ideal environment for me as I have always used the human form as an integral and inspirational role in my work.
I continued to move north through Asia and Europe, working and exhibiting my work which has been included in contemporary art exhibitions in Indonesia, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, Italy, France, the UK, Austria and the United States.
This gave rise to the title of a book written about me - “Looking North. The Art of Geoff Todd.
Brief CV Geoff Todd.
Education:
Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts, Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education [later subsumed by Monash University]
Diploma in Fine Arts, Bendigo Institute of Technology [later subsumed by LaTrobe University]
Diploma in Technical Teaching, Hawthorn Institute of Technology [later subsumed by the University of Melbourne]
Selected Public Collections:
Alice Springs Art Foundation, Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
Australian Embassy & Official Residence, Jakarta, Indonesia.
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, Victoria.
Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre, Bundoora, Victoria.
Central Institute of Technology (CIT), Perth, Western Australia.
Centre For the Artist Book, Paddington, Queensland.
City of Blacktown, New South Wales.
City of Darebin Art Collection, Victoria.
Darwin Supreme Court, Northern Territory.
Darwin City Council, Northern Territory
LaTrobe Valley Arts Centre, Morwell, Victoria.
Mornington Peninsula Arts Centre (MPAC), Mornington, Victoria.
National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, Victoria (Michell Endowment).
National Library of Australia (NLA) Printed Australiana Collection, Canberra, ACT
New England Museum of Art, Armidale, New South Wales.
Northern Territory Museum of Arts & Sciences, Darwin, Northern Territory
Parliament House, Darwin, Northern Territory.
Shepparton Art Gallery, Shepparton. Vic.
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
University of Arizona (Library Special Collections), Tucson, USA.
University of California (Bancroft Library) at Berkeley, USA