Post by Australian War Memorial

Saddle up! This month’s #ArtPick comes from Reference Officer Miranda Robson, who has chosen Monique Auricchio’s Loading - a haunting and darkly humorous work reflecting on the horses transported for service in the Boer War and First World War. 🐴 "Finding this work in the collection was happenstance, related to research I was doing on the Australian Army Veterinary Corp (AAVC) in the First World War. This watercolour is part of a series from New South Wales artist Monique Auricchio titled ‘Absurdities of War’, which highlight the deliberate inclusion of animals as instruments of war and the absurd scenarios and solutions which arise. There is a second work from the series in the Memorial’s collection, Gas Mask 2, featuring a canine, but as an unapologetic ‘horse girl’ Loading is the piece which caught my interest. While there are many fantastic artworks in the Memorial’s collection representing horses and the work of the AAVC, the absolute absurdity of half-tonne animals being sling-loaded onto a ship, suspended mid-air like they are toys, juxtaposed by the watercolours’ earthy, eerie tones and opacity was particularly memorable to me. While sling-loading can be stressful, the two horses that Auricchio has depicted look calm, curious and perhaps a little confused on how they ended up there. Like all but one of the approximately 136,000 horses sent overseas from Australia over the duration of the First World War, these horses were destined to never return, either dying in service or being blocked from returning due to quarantine and transport restrictions. They are curiously traveling towards a future, at the behest of man, that they won’t return from. I find it both an incredibly moving and slightly humorous work, one that I have returned to time and again." Thanks, Miranda! For those interested in seeing more equine inspired artworks, view the more than 70 works featuring horses in the collection dating from the First World War: https://brnw.ch/21x3IFC 🔗