Title: Looking for love II
Description: "JP Willis's artists' book reflects on US leaflet-drop and bombing campaigns in the American 'War on Terror' in Iraq. It forms part of a long-term body of work called Looking for Love, a series of artists' books and prints on paper and glass that overlays familiar images of weapons of war with the apparent beauties of Nature. Brooding, uncompromising, masculine, the iconography is a reminder of our cultural fascination with violence as mediated through television, film and the visual arts, as well as reminding us of the real stories that make the news. Willis's Lockheed Martin's F16 fighter planes are re-imagined as things of beauty, arrayed against the deep blue of a clear sky... The saturated pigments and slick screen-printed planes achieve the same aim: painting over what's really going on, literally 'making it look good'. The book's concertina format unfolds to reveal all the planes at once: each the same, but different. Without the camouflage patterns and visible signifiers of one side or the other it's hard to determine whose planes they are, whose 'side' they're on."--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website (viewed May 28, 2021).
Subjects: Iraq War, 2003-2011, American Aerial operations, F-16 (Jet fighter plane), Pictorial works, War in art, Violence, Bombings, In art, War and civilization, Visual literature, Specimens, Artists' books, Aerial Military operations, American
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, Australia
Time periods: 21st century