True lies...unless you use dna... Blood spilt in anti-war anger By DENNIS SCHULZ Wednesday 16 January 2002 When Ararat artist Geoff Todd decided to use his own blood as a painting medium, he was unprepared for the psychological result. Todd had chosen to paint in his blood to make a dramatic statement decrying Prime Minister John Howard's decision to become involved in the war in Afghanistan. But when the images began to take shape on his canvas, the blood/paint took on an intimate meaning that the artist never foresaw. "I was overcome by the fact that this was more serious than I intended," says Todd. "It has a sort of sacredness." The first of Todd's paintings, (to be catalogued as "artist's blood, acrylic medium and charcoal on canvas") are now complete, with two to be entered in the Dobell Prize for drawing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales later this year. They are works expressing the artist's outrage over the decision to commit troops to a foreign conflict. "It worries me that we were prepared to respond so aggressively, so quickly," says Todd. "I think Mr Howard's response was too quick. No one took a breath and I know that politicians at that level are allowed to take a breath." An artist of international repute, who is perhaps better known in Europe and South-East Asia than in his native Australia, Todd has never sidestepped controversy. At the opening of a 1996 Indonesian exhibition, a Todd drawing of a nude was ordered by police to be covered. The work was later shown at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Then, as Indonesia prepared to go to the polls in 1999, he produced a one-man show at the Museum Benteng Vredeberg in Yogyakarta depicting the turbulent life of revolutionary hero Diponegoro. Todd's work struck a chord with Indonesians who were searching for candidates of substance, epitomised by the 19th-century ascetic who nearly brought the colonial Dutch undone. The idea to use blood as a medium came to Todd, 51, while working at his studio/home in the old Terminus Hotel in Ararat. Angered by reports that the provenance of works by Aboriginal artists were being questioned by urban art dealers, Todd reasoned that the only way indigenous artists would be able to establish authorship was to provide blood samples on the back of their paintings that could then be DNA tested.MORE AT... http://theage.com.au/entertainment/2002/01/16/FFXVE7RPGWC.html