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Mike Parr’s etchings of the late 1980s and 1990s dismantled the tradition of self portraiture [60]. Parr draws his own face on the etching plate, distorting and transforming it with violent and aggressive mark making. He treats the plates like he does with his own body in his self mutilating performance art. However, whilst Parr exploits the violent nature of etching in his prints, they are primarily self portraits. His more political work has tended to occur in his performance installations.

61A. George Gittoes. The captured gun. 1998. Etching and aquatint, 45 x 40 cm.

61B. George Gittoes. Descendence. 2009. Etching,

By contrast, George Gittoes (b 1944) exploits the violent nature of etching as the medium to create powerful prints based on the violence of war. In The captured gun

(1988) [61A] he captures with frenzied etched marks the rawness and brutality of the

conflict in Nicaragua in the 1990s, which he personally witnessed.

Descendence (2009) [61B] is a nightmarish vision of a bomb shelter like tunnel in which

dead bodies are scattered. Gittoes has created a vision of a limbo land of death in which winged mutilated bodies try to ascend the purgatory of their surroundings. It hauntingly echoes the nightmarish scenes in Goya’s Los Caprichos etchings.

62A. Gordon Bennett. Penetration.1994. Etching, lift ground and aquatint, 78.6 x 59.6 cm.

62B. Gordon Bennett. Terra Nullius (As far as the eye can see). 1993. Etching, 20 x 29.4 cm.

Two more recent politically oriented artists are Gordon Bennett (b.1955) and Neil Emmerson. Indigenous artist Gordon Bennett’s printmaking in the 1990s explored Australia’s colonial past, including issues associated with the dominant role that white, western culture has played in constructing the social culture of the nation [62B].In the print titled Penetration (1994) [62A], Bennett combines both traditional Aboriginal and Western art styles in an image that recalls the violence of invasion.

63A. Neil Emmerson. I was his..I. 2005 Etching, 25 x 20 cm.

63B. Neil Emmerson. I was his…II. 2005. Etching, 25 x 20 cm.

Neil Emmerson (b.1956) has taken the well known and controversial media image of an anonymous victim of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and used it in his etching series titled I was his…(2005) [63A, 63B]. The words of the title resonate with some of the pessimistic words used by Goya in the Disasters of War prints. Emmerson’s title leaves us thinking of what torture the victim might have had to endure; perhaps it was sexual abuse, known to have occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison of horrors.

The Wollongong-born artist Michael Callaghan (1952-2012) came to prominence during the mid-1970s as a member of the Earthworks Poster Collective and as the founder of the Redback Graphix workshop in 1979.

64. Michael Callaghan. Earthworks Poster Collective, Give Fraser the Razor, 1977. Screen print, four stencils, printed on cream wove lithographic paper, 68.2 x 53.2 cm.

His screen printed poster of the 1970s titled Give Fraser The Razor 1977 [64] shows the head of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser with a cut throat razor precariously placed at his throat, as if ready to slash. The supporting text is loaded against Fraser and his right wing government’s policies.

65A. Michael Callaghan. Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2009. Digital print, Canson Photographique Archival 310 gsm, 140 x 111 cm.

65B. Michael Callaghan. Suicide Bomber? 2009/10. Digital print on Canson Photographique Archival 310 gsrn, 140 x 111 cm.

In his more recent work Callaghan moved from screen printing to digital technology, exampled in his prints titled Operation Iraqi Freedom 2009 [65A] and Suicide Bomber?

2009-10 [65B]. In creating these prints Callaghan employed English and Arabic text, media slogans, flags, bombers, blood splatters and borrowed photographic imagery to communicate the realities of the war in Iraq and the potential threat of terrorist suicide attacks.

The long tradition of the print as a medium for disseminating social and political commentary continues. In a recent exhibition51, the works of Australian artists Peter Lyssiotis (b.1949), Theo Strasser (b.1956) and Guiseppe Romeo (b.1958) rekindled the memory and legacy of the disastrous September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.

66A. Peter Lyssiotis & Theo Strasser. Burning Tower, Untitled #1-5, 2011, Synthetic polymer paint and ink on giclee print, 73.5 x 102 cm (each)

In the exhibition Lyssiotis and Strasser collaborated on the work Burning Tower 2011

[66A]; a vertical assemblage of five images in which the top panel shows the figure of a

falling man. The falling man appears again in the bottom panel but as a negative, like an x-ray. This terrible image reminds us of the choice made by some people trapped in the burning towers in order to escape a fiery death.

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66B. Peter Lyssiotis & Theo Strasser. Eyewitness Tower, detail: Dog Eat Dog, 2009. Lithograph and synthetic polymer paint on paper, 74.2 x 102 cm.

Their other collaboration, titled Dog Eats Dog 2009 [66B], features an American dollar note covered with aggressive splattered marks juxtaposed against the words Dog Eats Dog and an explosive looking black splash. It is an image that provokes thoughts on the power of capitalism, death and corruption.