Artist Profile
Your friend the enemy

Stanley Palmer and his Gallipoli ties

As we near the launch of the Your Friend the Enemy, we look back to the personal links that inspired Your Friend the Enemy. 

Artist Stanley Palmer discusses his father’s close involvement with the Gallipoli Association, “the band of brothers, and that was it, they were bound forever”. It was stories like Palmer’s, which prompted other artists to consider their feelings towards the Anzac memory, initiating the Your Friend the Enemy artists trip to respond to the landscape of Gallipoli in 2014.

Accompanying the national touring exhibition, a Special Edition will be published, edited by John McDonald who accompanied the artists on the trip. Featuring essays by John McDonald, historian Brad Manera and writer James Compton, as well as features of the artists and their works, the book is a poignant reflection on the Anzac memory and a contemporary  response to the Gallipoli landscape today.