John Keane on Exploring Conflict Imagery in Art

John Keane: “The piece in the show was one of a series I did using imagery of the, the orange jumpsuit. Now, the jumpsuit had sort of cropped up in my work years before when I'd, I'd done some paintings about Guantanamo and I wanted to address the imagery coming out of Syria and the barbarous executions going on in the desert. It was an extraordinary, clever, theatrical piece of propaganda used by ISIS to use this hugely symbolic orange jumpsuit, which had become notorious through Guantanamo, turn it around and use it, ironically, in a way to torment the tormentors, uh in, in what was, you know, extremely successful propaganda that really did manage to, uh, capture, well, it sort of lodged a shard of fear really into, into the Western psyche.

Anyway, and in uh, the executions which, uh, I didn't want to address in any sort of graphic sort of visceral, voyeuristic way, but to allude to it and I hit on the idea of actually using a jumpsuit, but a jumpsuit without a person inside, and I'd, I basically bought a jumpsuit on eBay and photographed at various attitudes, which was suggestive of the attitudes of these wretched people who we saw paraded before us, before they were subsequently murdered. So that that was really the, the origin of. It felt intensely important to me that, that I needed to do this, but it's a fine line to walk, I think, to evoke and use this imagery to make it, you know, somehow potent, somehow powerful, but without just resorting to graphic horror. War, conflict and violence have been an abiding theme over, over the last sort of 25/30 years in my work. I suppose actually what, what I mean, having been in the Gulf War in 1991, I mean, looking back on it, there is a direct, direct line of consequence from, from that conflict to where we are now, which obviously you can only kind of chart that in, in retrospect. From time to time through the years, whilst I've also looked at other areas of conflict, the Middle East has, uh returned as a theme just because it's happening, and we are today where we are, it's a lot to do with where we were then. I think it's interesting, um, whilst art is not, doesn't have to, it's not documentary necessary, it is, it does represent a subjective individual’s view, it's somehow instructive that whenever you read a piece or, or, or watch a documentary about something so much of that is, well, so often they use some work of art to illustrate to, to lead you into something that it, that it is sort of seen through it, and you can say that with visual art, with poetry, with, with novels, with films as well, they somehow crystallise and isolate how people feel or felt about what was going on at the time and that enhances understanding. I always used to think what you know, even when I, as I was doing it, what is the point of doing this? What, what effect does it have? Uh, it never, you know, stopped a bullet in the barrel or anything like that. But the older I get, the more important I think that art is, the creative process in humanity having a conversation with itself and this is a very important aspect of human behaviour, is the way we treat one another, using violence for political, religious purposes, um and in the end, it does contribute to this ongoing conversation and for me, you know, living in the era that I do, the whole canon of work that has preceded me as an individual, that I've looked at and responded to and has affected and influenced me. I think yes, it is important, it's fundamental and it is very much identifies who we are and how we look at ourselves.”