Mother and child

A woman cradling a child on the shoreline, while bent rods surround her, the ghost of a dog leaps over her and United Nations ships sail in the Gulf . Gittoes wrote of this image: 'One of the most heart rendering images of the bombing of Baghdad was that of a missile hit on a civilian air raid shelter. A vast hole was shown in the reinforced concrete of the sheltar, where the bomb had penetrated. Pieces of rio-rod were shown protruding, bent and trwisted by the impact of the explosion. This hole with its bent rod became the window for my image of a traditional arab woman with her child, held to her breast for protection. In one of the broadcasts I had glimpsed such a woman and had not been sure whether the child she was holding was dead or injured, the camera stayed on her for such a brief moment. She was veiled and wore black traditional clothing. The ghost of a 'dog of war' is seen jumping over her as in the nursery rhyme 'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candle stick'. Her motherly love is seen as the flame and the dog is the symbol of Jack-death jumping over the innocent civilian population like American stealth fighters. Out to sea the United Nations fleet can be seen'. One of a series of 24 etchings, the 'Empire State Suite', Gittoes produced during the build up to the Gulf War in 1990, printed at Studio One Printmaking Workshop, Canberra, 1991.