This is my new ‘Blackboard’, posted on the eve of Anzac Day, at Ciao Thyme in Balmain.
“A deceptively complex multi-layered malevolent/melancholy work of art. Great photo.” Stephen Ralph 25.4.2026
Stephen Ralph sent this message last night. That he should ascribe such qualities to the work is generous. That he sees ‘malevolence’ in the work suggests that he has identified an ambivalence to Anzac Day on my part, by my having brought new language to the day. In so doing I am interrogating the value of such a focus on war.
He was right.
I spoke to a neighbour in Balmain, an older man than me yesterday. “We were all pacifists. We grew up with maimed veterans on the street. The prospect of nuclear war was seemingly around the corner. We just took it for granted, that a pacifist outlook would remain unquestioned into the future.”
Twenty years ago I noticed younger people supporting their father’s involvement in the war, by attending Anzac Day Memorial services. This younger generation had misread the script. To have no future wars meant not celebrating past wars. We baby boomers had taken that as gospel.
We know that renewal reflexes are strong. Everything gets overturned.
Yesterday on Anzac Day, in Balmain , the streets were full. The queues lining up outside the pubs before opening ran around the block. The queues were made up of under thirty year-olds. They were waiting for two up and beer. There is no other day of the year where both activities are sanctioned simultaneously. They are given the license to get blind drunk and make currency unstable, all day long.
Is it coincidental that a new respect for veterans overlaps a new prospect of war? Is war the outcome of an appetite and acceptance of it? There is a new madness in the world that can only find venting in war.
Are we gearing ourselves for a sign me up mentality? How did our fathers get swept up, finally begins to make sense.
Stephen Ralph mentions a melancholy aspect in my blackboard. Does he mean the day itself brings sadness or that the sadness is imbued in the blackboard with the aura of night brought by the blackboard colour? The moon, the star, ‘the ember’ collude tot bring this effect.
Certainly there is a sadness in remembering Anzac Day.
‘Age shall not weary them’ suggests that age does inevitably weary all of us, who grow old. It speaks of the inevitability of decline even without the brutal punctuation that war brings.
Bringing new language to the day inevitably invites a different kind of reflection.
Culture famously has no impact of the course of history.
As Courtney at Ciao Thyme says, strangely nobody seems to notice The Blackboards.