Opening today, ‘Lustre: Contemporary Artists in Greece and Crete’ in the first venue at the Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park Sydney.
In 2025 Riste Andrievski, Angeliki Androutsopoulos, Deirdre Bean, Michael Bradfield, Michelle Hiscock, Alan Daniel Jones, Joanna Logue, Steve Lopes, Euan Macleod, Natalie O’Connor, Amanda Penrose Hart and Rodney Pople, travelled to Greece and Crete to respond to the related sites of Operation Lustre – the 1941 allied campaign withdrawing troops from Greece and Crete.
‘Lustre Force was the code name for the combined Australian, New Zealand and British army units deployed to protect Greece from Nazi attack in 1941.
The Allied defence of Greece was overwhelmed in three and a half weeks in April 1941 and in May, Crete fell to a Nazi airborne invasion in just ten days.
To record those heroic but doomed campaigns, Australia and New Zealand sent war artists and a photographer.
Eighty-five years later, artists from Australia and New Zealand retraced their footsteps, walking the battlefields and visiting the cemeteries where the men and women of Lustre Force and their German foe lie.
Lustre showcases the impressions they made of the impact of that journey. Some of the images show that the land and its people have recovered over time; others reveal that some scars take longer to fade’
– Brad Manera, Senior Curator and Historian, Anzac Memorial Hyde Park, Sydney and accompanying historian to Greece in 2025.
Displayed in the Anzac Memorial’s Auditorium, on the Lower Floor. The Memorial is open every day, 9am to 5pm.
We would like to acknowledge:
The Australian Embassy, Greece
Academy Travel @academytravelau
Eckersley’s Art Supplies @eckersleys
Michael Bradfield Photography @mbradfieldphoto
Nick Andriotakis, Secretary of the Joint Committee for the Commemoration of the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign
Vince Clark, Red Digital Cinema