Procession

This painting depicts the international Navy fleet sailing past the Gallipoli peninsula before dawn on 25 April 2015, with Imbros in the background. Artist David Jolly was commissioned by the Memorial to attend the centenary Anzac Day Dawn Service at Gallipoli and create a series of paintings in response. Jolly works by photographing and recording places and events and then selecting moments and details that convey the larger story. In this case, he explored Gallipoli for several days, taking photographs, short film and sound recordings and drawing key sites on the Peninsula. The seven paintings present moments from between the afternoon of 24 April and the conclusion of the Dawn Service, when the crowds left the commemorative site.

This painting is the fourth of those moments. The fleet was comprised of Australian, New Zealand, Turkish, British and French naval vessels, and were positioned off Anzac Cove to be visible where the naval ships were during the 1915 landing - only of course the Turkish Navy is no longer the enemy.