BY LISA SARAMEL

Checkpoint is a series of life-sized depictions of armed soldiers, which were to be placed at various locations in Blacktown in November 2004. The “checkpoints for weapons of mass distraction” were intended to confront people with the contradictions of the war in Iraq, as they go about their daily lives.

Artist Zanny Begg was prevented from completing the installation by community law enforcement officers who told her that her work was “inappropriate” in the “climate of terrorism”.

“What happened to me is fairly minor in some ways, and under the Howard government there are going to be a lot of other attacks on people’s civil liberties”, Begg told the January 26 opening of the Checkpoint exhibition at Sydney’s Mori Gallery.

Mamdouh Habib’s Australian lawyer Stephen Hopper expressed his support at the opening: “Art, perhaps, is the expression of the consciousness of freedom, it should not be censored.”

The Placard Project will also feature in the exhibition. Proceeds from the sale of placards, contributed by various artists opposed to the war, will go to When the World Said No to War and Medicins Sans Frontieres.

Checkpoint and the Placard Project are at the Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street, Sydney, until February 12.

From Green Left Weekly, February 9, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

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