About this Artwork
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Not all stories in encyclopaedias get a one page illustration so ‘Looting a City of Treasure’ must be special to be deemed worthy. It is extraordinary that as a child you see a picture of Alexander the Great looting a Persian city and you are encouraged to feel that this is a positive thing. I have juxtaposed two source materials in my artwork. The black pencil is an engraving from the 2nd century BC of Alexander the Great’s 331BC invasion of the Persian Empire. The coloured pencil is a 13 year old boy named Abd al-Rahman’s drawing of the invasion of his village in Dafur Sudan in 2005. Two thousand three hundred years separate the source materials. Nothing has changed. If the survivors of the murder and looting in Sudan or in Persia were asked what they thought about the invaders, I am confident that they would not describe them as ‘great’.

About Julian

I was born in Geelong and live in Melbourne, Australia. In the early 1980s I completed an
Arts degree with a major in Philosophy. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I began doing
art which has from the beginning included both oil painting and mixed media assemblage.
Since 2014 I have mainly focussed on wooden sculpture and assemblage with occasional
detours into conceptual territory. I was one of the founding members of 69 Smith St artist-run Gallery in Fitzroy in 1998. I currently volunteer at Yarra Sculpture Gallery. Over the last
six years I have been a fnalist and very occasional winner in various art prizes including The
Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, The Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Prize, The Substation Contemporary Art prize, The incinerator Art Award and the Yering Sculpture Exhibition and Awards. As I said, sculpture has been my focus of late but I would not be surprised if I return to painting in the future.

Link to Julian’s Art Aviso profile HERE

Julian was provided with the following page from Newnes’ Pictorial Knowledge Encyclopedia:

Volume 2
The Romance of History
Looting a city of treasure