Category: Art

On the 30th May 2024, The Australian Assange Campaign issued this press release

Shaun Gladwell, an Australian contemporary artist who works in the fields of painting, drawing, photography, moving image, performance, and extended reality, has been named as a Finalist in the Archibald Prize for his portrait of Julian Assange, titled ‘A spangled symbolist portrait of Julian Assange floating in reflection’.

Mr Gladwell describes this portrait as a protest against the political persecution, psychological torture and illegal incarceration of Julian Assange, who has deeply inspired Mr Gladwell both personally and professionally.

“Through overt and covert symbolic imagery, I aim to present the inhumane conditions in which my friend has lived for 12 years, while celebrating his achievements as an investigative journalist, publisher and spokesperson for free speech,” Mr Gladwell said.

Julian Assange is a Walkley Award winning journalist and publisher, who is being held in Belmarsh Prison while the United States pursues him over the material he published in 2010 on Wikileaks, which was provided by US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Those publications revealed war crimes, torture, assassinations, the list of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and the US rules for air strikes.

“Julian changed my world view 14 years ago. After returning from Afghanistan as Australia’s official war artist, I was deeply shocked by WikiLeaks’ 2010 video Collateral Murder,” adds Gladwell, who was an Archibald finalist in 2015 and unusually, is also a subject in this years’ Archibald exhibition in a portrait by David Griggs.

The Archibald requires at least one ‘live sitting’ with the subject – a very challenging prospect when the portrait subject is being held in a maximum-security prison in the United Kingdom. Mr Gladwell did visit Julian Assange in person in Belmarsh prison, and was further obstructed by the highly restrictive rules of prison entry, which prohibited him from bringing in any pencil, paper or any items for which he could sketch Julian.

On his visit to Belmarsh prison, Mr Gladwell says: “HMP Belmarsh didn’t allow me to bring anything except £25 for the canteen. When I was refused a pencil and paper, Julian suggested I sketch him with chocolate on a spare banknote, which I did.

“Despite the oppressive surroundings, it was wonderful to see Julian smile. He champions freedom, truth and peace. Let us now champion the freedom of this incredible human being. Julian famously states: ‘if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth’. It is a deeply profound statement that he practices at all costs,” says Gladwell.

Gabriel Shipton, Julian’s brother, says of Shaun’s portrait of Julian: “It means a lot to us that Shaun has been able to draw attention to Julian’s ongoing plight through art, which we are hoping will connect strongly with people’s sense of humanity, equity and hope.

It is easy for us all to revert back into our own normal lives as time passes on, but my brother still remains imprisoned in very harsh conditions with rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, after thirteen years. This has gone on long enough. Anthony Albanese needs to act now and with urgency to stop this extradition from occurring, by reaching a diplomatic solution whereby Julian can return home to Australia as soon as possible.”

Shaun Gladwell uses disciplines of human movement to investigate function and meaning within urban, natural, and extended reality environments. His oeuvre is considered an important contribution to the cataloguing and celebration of movement-based sub-cultures that have emerged within his generation. The artist has also been recognized for pioneering work with immersive, extended reality technologies. Gladwell contextualizes ‘the new’ by identifying parallels and patterns throughout the history of art, cultural production, and philosophy.

He represented Australia at the Venice Biennale (2009), and later that year was commissioned as Australia’s Official War Artist to work in Afghanistan alongside the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) — a multinational military mission founded in 2001. His works are held in important museum collections including, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Orange County Museum of Art, California; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Editor’s Note: Julian is an untried prisoner (and hence unconvicted) under the Mandella Rules (The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners). It is a national disgrace and diplomatic affront that an Australian Walkley awarded journalist and publisher should not be allowed a proper sitting for this event. Unconvicted prisoners are presumed to be innocent and shall be treated as such.

On the 13TH July 2022, The Peoples’ Dispatch interviewed Carlos Latuff, Political cartoonist, visual chronicler of barbarism.

The cartoonist Carlos Latuff produced a series of illustrations in support of Julian Assange as well as many others depicting some of the key revelations of his organization Wikileaks

The campaign to free Julian Assange has intensified in recent weeks following the decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to approve the extradition request from the United States. The WikiLeaks co-founder and publisher has been held in Belmarsh high-security prison for the past three and a half years, stuck in an illegal limbo, while he undergoes extradition proceedings in the UK. The US seeks to try Assange under 18 different charges, 17 of which are under the infamous Espionage Act, and together hold a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

The persecution of Julian Assange by the US and its allies has been met with strong backlash from progressive forces across the world. Press freedom groups and campaigns such as Article 19, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), International Federation of Journalists, Don’t Extradite Assange, and others have been fighting for Julian Assange’s release and amnesty since the start of the persecution against him. People’s movements and trade unions part of the International Peoples’ Assembly such as the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG), the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and others have also taken to the streets and social media to mobilize their support to Julian Assange and defend the right to tell the truth about crimes of imperialism.

The support to Assange has not only come from civil society. Prominent politicians from across the world have also challenged the actions of the US government with regards to Assange and the precedent it sets regarding press freedom globally.

On July 6, the German parliament voted in favor of a petition condemning “in the strongest possible terms the psychological torture of journalist Julian Assange and the associated attack on press freedom in Germany and Europe.” In the same week, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated in one of his morning addresses that he would discuss the case of Julian Assange with his US counterpart Joe Biden during his visit to Washington DC on July 12 and declared “If (Assange) is brought to the United States and he is condemned to a maximum sentence to die in prison, we must start a campaign to tear down the Statue of Liberty that the French gave them…because it is no longer a symbol of freedom.”

These words inspired political cartoonist from Brazil, Carlos Latuff to express his solidarity to his friend and colleague, Julian Assange, once again. He drew the famous Statue of Liberty telling US President Joe Biden to “drop the charges” and “Free Assange now!”

Peoples Dispatch spoke to the world renowned cartoonist about why he made the design and why he stands in solidarity with Assange.

Peoples Dispatch: What motivated you to create this image?

Carlos Latuff: I was motivated by solidarity with the great journalist [Julian Assange] whom I had the great satisfaction of meeting in London in 2012.

PD: You have been following Julian Assange’s case for a while. Why do you think it is so important to defend him and why did you go to the Ecuadorian Embassy to speak with him?

CL: I made many cartoons for the WikiLeaks website that he created. The investigative journalism of Assange brought to light the war crimes of the US in Iraq and WikiLeaks with its “leaks” has exposed issues that different governments in the world do not want the public to know. Defending Assange is defending the freedom of expression and of press. I wanted to show my support to him personally. I was invited to an event in London in 2012 and I took the opportunity to visit him in the Ecuadorian Embassy. It was a good chat and I made a design for him then and there. It was an emotional meeting that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

PD: What does Julian’s case represent for the world and especially to the journalists, cartoonists, and artists? How can more people contribute to the international struggle in defense of Assange?

CL: Assange not only represents journalists and activists but also artists that confront the fear of repression and censorship through the lines that they draw. All artists who are in some way aware of what Assange represents should join the struggle for his freedom.

Read original article in Peoples’ Dispatch website

Other works by Carlos

Dwayne Booth (a.k.a., Mr. Fish) is a cartoonist, freelance writer and ScheerPost regular who has been published in many reputable and prestigious magazines, journals and newspapers. He has also written novels, screenplays, short fiction and cultural criticism collections, and several volumes of political cartoons.

Free The Press

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Death And Assange

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Assange

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More by Mr Fish on
ClownCrack

On the 10th February 2022, the Australian Broadcasting Commission news service posted this article.

An online auction of digital art has raised more than $US52 million ($72 million) worth of cryptocurrency to help fund WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal defence, the winning bid coming from a group of supporters who had pooled their money.

Australian-born [and Australian citizen] Assange is battling extradition from Britain to the United States where authorities want him to face trial on 18 criminal charges including breaking a [US] spying law, after WikiLeaks began to publish thousands of [US] secret classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010.

Last month, Assange, who remains in a London prison, was given the chance to challenge approval of his extradition at Britain’s highest court.

The Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to hear his case.

Crypto art collaboration

Assange collaborated with a crypto artist known as Pak to sell a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) called Censored in an online auction from February 7-9 to raise funds to support his case.

NFTs are a kind of crypto asset that uses blockchain to record the ownership status of digital files such as images, videos and even items within online games.

The centrepiece of the auction was an NFT artwork, Clock, that displays the number of days Assange has been imprisoned in white text on a black background. It updates each day.

The Clock NFT fetched 16,593 of the cryptocurrency ether, a sum worth around $72 million.

It was bought by a group of more than 10,000 Assange supporters called AssangeDAO.

A Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is a sort of online community which allows members to pool their money and use blockchain-based tokens to vote on decisions about how the group is run.

Proceeds from the sale of Clock will go to support Assange’s legal defence.

“In less than one week, we have shown that decentralised and distributed peoples can band together to fight injustice.”

Another member of the AssangeDAO team, Amir Taaki, told Reuters: “The AssangeDAO represents a Rubicon that’s been crossed”.

The auction also allowed supporters to create their own NFTs, choosing an amount to pay and typing in a short message which gets turned into an image showing the words struck through, as though censored.

Supporters raised more than 671 ether ($A2.9 million) in this way, creating 29,766 “censored” messages, with the proceeds going to pro-freedom organisations chosen by Mr Assange and Pak.

NFTs surged in popularity last year, leaving many people baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items which do not physically exist and which anyone can view for free.

But NFT enthusiasts say their value comes from their social status or origin story. Others see them as a way to bet on the development of “Web3”, or the Metaverse.

In December last year, more than 28,000 people bought items in an NFT sale by Pak which fetched $127.8 million in total.

Read original article in ABC news
and many articles including Art News, Wired and Fortune

On the first of February 2022, Cumulo White posted to Twitter a series of images showing support for Assange in cities around the world.

London

London remembers Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks. One of a series of virtual transatlantic illuminations on the eve of the Lunar New Year. #FreeAssange, #GuantanamoBay pic.twitter.com/ZUElkgN3oX

— Cumulo White (@CumuloWhite) February 1, 2022

Melbourne

Cities showing support for Julian :

Amsterdam
Brussels
Copenhagen 
Dublin 
Frankfurt 
Geneva
Helsinki
London
Madrid
Melbourne
Milan 
Munich
New York 
Oslo 
Paris
Stockholm 
Sydney 
Toronto
Townsville
Vienna
Washington
Winninpeg  

On the 2nd June artist Ai Weiwei posted on Ope Ed in Art Net that has been circulating on various major news services

The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei says he’s hypocritically been removed from a British exhibition because he chose to design a piece that addressed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s incarceration in a London prison.

‘One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’ is a flowery way of saying actions can be interpreted differently, depending on your viewpoint.

It’s a scenario acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has often encountered and, unfortunately, is in again.

He fled his homeland for being deemed too controversial for the state’s strict censorship. He’s recounted how he was arrested, beaten by Chinese police, placed under house arrest and then imprisoned for tax evasion.

On his release, he described being subjected to psychological torture, being detained in a tiny room with constant light and two guards never more than 30 inches away, even when he used the bathroom.

In 2019, he fled to Berlin, but didn’t stay long, “I don’t like a state or culture that so obeys authority”, he declared, adding: “They would say in Germany you have to speak German. They deeply don’t like foreigners.” READ MOREPhoto of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei posing as drowned refugee child Aylan Kurdi sparks controversy

He now resides in the picturesque city of Cambridge in the east of England. So it was understandable when last year The Great Big Art Exhibition asked a world famous artist, who called the UK home, to take part.

However, Weiwei is no longer part of the project despite his reputation being used to draw attention to it. 

Why?

Because he wanted to feature in the exhibition a postcard with the image of Julian Assange’s treadmill. The WikiLeaks founder used it for exercise during his almost seven-year spell in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, where he’d sought refuge. 

The exhibition hopes to encourage Britons to make art and display it in their windows, a tonic to beat the gloom of the pandemic. Weiwei opted for his contribution to be a Postcard for Political Prisoners, which members of the public could send to political prisoners around the world, their addresses supplied by Amnesty.

Although people could send it to themselves to display in their own window if they wished.

Weiwei wanted to inspire them to engage in art-activism, a practise that has made him globally admired.

However, his idea was rejected.

However, his idea was rejected.

Weiwei claims that Sally Shaw, the director of Firstsite, who are leading the project, “seemed too afraid to give us a straight answer” and added: “I think the reason is related to Assange who has been incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London since his arrest on April 11, 2019, and that they don’t want to touch on a topic like Assange.”

Shaw has denied Weiwei’s claims: “The sending of a postcard takes us away from this intention. I must assure you, sincerely, that this is in no way a reflection of our appreciation of the idea itself, which is remarkable and profound, and equally our esteem for Weiwei and his work.”

Weiwei has managed to break a glass ceiling, his art is widely admired for the aesthetic and then also its deeper meanings – very few artists share that ability. To have someone like him involved would undoubtedly have elevated the credibility and sophistication of the project.

Weiwei said of the rejection: “I feel ashamed that nowadays all art does is whitewash. My artwork has once again proven how the art world is corrupt.”

Chris Shaw writes

As a country, we should be welcoming individuals like Weiwei but strictly adhering to consistency. It’s arrogant to shut down his work when it embarrasses our own transgressions, and that’s what the treatment of Assange is.

Sally Shaw was awarded an MBE in the The Queen’s Birthday Honours List only months ago for services to the Arts and yet decides to cancel Weiwei.

We’re a closed shop, but don’t like to admit it. And world-class hypocrites. Why else would we censor a globally recognised artist?

The message is clear; criticise those who it suits us and we’ll support you, but come looking for us and we’ll erase your platform.

Hypocrites? Nah, spineless cowards.

Read more in
Arts Net
The Guardian
RT News

On the 31st March 2021, Ruptly TV posted this Youtube video featuring Captain Borderline

The street art collective Captain Borderline has unveiled a mural in Berlin dedicated to Julian Assange on Tuesday.

The artwork aims to show support to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange and freedom of the press.

Assange faces charges of espionage and hacking government computers in the United States and is currently held in near-solitary confinement in London’s HMP Belmarsh.

Earlier in January, a UK judge ruled against the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to the US, citing concerns over his mental health and potential risk of suicide in the US prison system.

The US Justice Department, under the Joe Biden administration, is attempting to appeal the UK decision, and has confirmed its intention to have the WikiLeaks co-founder stand trial in the US.

See original posting on Ruptly TV and
alternate video at Captain Borderline and
further article in RT News and
announced on twitter 23rd March 2021 by the Defend Assange Campaign

New Berlin Mural dedicated to Julian Assange ‘Collateral Crucifixion’ | @shantisignl #Kreuzberg #StreetArt #FreeAssangeNOW pic.twitter.com/FPIyf2hqsW

— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) March 22, 2021

Limited edition prints available at Color Revolution

On the 27th March, video posted on Youtube supporting the lightning auction of art work by Pascal Boyart. 30% of proceeds to support Julian Assange

Dollars Assange is an original work by Pascal Boyart made of one hundred real $USD bills, ripped and glued on canvas. 

Pascal will send 30% of the sale to the Bitcoin address displayed at the bottom of the work to support Assange.

The pictured black floating frame is included with purchase.

Materials: Dollars bills ripped and glued on linen canvas

Dimensions: 50 x 65cm (19,685 x 25,5906”)

More from Pascal

Auction details including more images at Scarce City

On the 29th September, Artist Ai Weiwei talks on Julian Assange and A Free Press

Artist Ai Weiwei protests against Julian Assange's extradition pic.twitter.com/2hFkG8izGT

— The Sun (@TheSun) September 28, 2020

As Major Outlets Ignore Assange Extradition Hearing, Ai Weiwei Demands Freedom for WikiLeaks Founder

Artist and Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei staged a silent protest Monday outside the Old Bailey Court in London as critics pan the media for largely ignoring the extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose trial enters its fourth week of witness testimony.

“He truly represents a core value of why we are free—because we have freedom of the press,” Weiwei, a longtime supporter of Assange, said outside the courtroom.

“[Assange] is prepared to fight, but this is not fair to him,” he continued. “Free him, let him be a free man.”

…

Read full article in Common Dreams