About Persona

 

Persona is a commemorative project raising awareness of the cultural and creative engagements of Australian contemporary veteran artists.  The project took shape in 2017 with the chance meeting of ANVAM founder, Tanja Johnston, and professional photographer, Michael Christofas. Tanja and Michael brought their interests in showcasing who veteran artists are together to form Persona.

Persona honours living and recent/contemporary Australian service personnel who form the veteran arts community. It aims to provide a glimpse and insight into current and ex-serving veteran artists and their persona as artists and creatives.

The concept for the project was developed across multiple media to commemorate recent/contemporary service personnel, to inform and increase public awareness of their service, and sacrifice and highlight lived experiences both during and post service.

Having developed the concept, a DVA Saluting Their Service grant was awarded to deliver Persona nationally in a range of complementary formats including an exhibition, an online digital showcase and supporting publication.

At the invitation of the Victorian Veterans Minister the exhibition component was held during March 2022 in the Queens Hall of the Victorian Parliament House. The exhibition consisted of 12 large photographic display panels and was the first exhibition in Parliament following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expanding on the exhibition, an online digital showcase of 44 veteran artists portraits with accompanying narratives takes the exhibition Australia wide to create broad national public awareness. This medium for showcasing veteran artists enables a broader national and international audience to engage in the cultural activity, and experience the exhibition and connect with the stories of service and sacrifice of service personnel, in particular veterans in the veteran arts community.

The final element is the curated publication.  This component is a commemorative cultural record and legacy document showcasing the diversity and richness of the Australian veteran arts community at a point in time.

The Persona project will continue to evolve from these initial elements into an enduring project showcasing the veteran arts community. Veteran artists have long been part of the broader Australian community. They are our story tellers and creatives who inspire us. Their work will continue to live on as a legacy for future generations.

Behind Persona

  • A shared vision to create a greater understanding of the relevance arts engagement plays in the lives of each individual and the insights into an ever growing veteran arts community, Persona seeks to highlight the creativity of many veterans who we have had great privilege to know and build connections with across time, generations and creative endeavours.

    Through an invitation, each artist joined this project with grace, generosity, curiosity and creative inquiry. The team operated with sensitivity, representing each artist in their own words and creative spaces. Each portrait captures an artist’s story at a point in time. A visual legacy of arts engagement and opportunity.

    My own connections to the veteran arts community have been a catalyst for Persona’s inspiration and I am honoured to have been able to support the honest documentation of these lived experiences for future generations.

    Tanja Johnston

  • When ANVAM invited me to be part of the Persona project, I knew that my intellectual life had been leading to this. I had lived with three generations of veterans, through WW1 and WW2 and Vietnam. My university studies had been in Literature and Drama. Yet all of my experience and studies didn’t prepare me for my emotional engagement with the project. I learned the power that my art form, story telling, holds for both the narrator and the reader.

    When I was confronted by painful or gentle or humorous or fascinating stories, they spoke directly to my heart. I am excited at the prospect of sharing them.

    Take these stories to your own heart and listen deeply to, and be excited by, the veterans’ reminiscences. Be grateful for their Service and for their Art - just as I have been.

    Gabriel Holmes

  • What started as a personal interest in understanding more about an artist, has evolved into a series of environmental portraits and a body of work that I feel has a deep connection with the subject, an understanding of their career in the Australian Defence Force, and an appreciation of their arts practice.

    Persona has enabled me to establish networks and friendships that I otherwise wouldn’t have found myself exposed to. It has also produced artistic collaborations which has seen my own work evolve as an image creator and artist.

    For me, I didn’t just want to turn up and take a photograph of someone I barely knew. I wanted to find out more about each individual as a person, an artist and their career in the Army, Navy or Airforce. It was a deep dive into lived experiences from people that were happy to share and entrust in me their story.

    The portraits you see are the end product. However, that’s only part of the bigger picture. After I was introduced to each veteran artist, there may have been days, months and in many cases, well over a year, before I pulled out my camera to capture their image. A lot of learning and reflection can happen in that time. I hope you enjoy my honest captures of these incredible service men and women.

    Michael Christofas