Lustre- Australian Artists in Greece & Crete
May 14, 2026
Steve was part of a selected group of Australian artists who travelled to Greece and Crete in 2025, following in the footsteps of WW2 Australian Lustre Force troops. The artwork will form a travelling exhibition to five venues, opening in Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney 20 May 2026.
The artists were accompanied by War Memorial Historian Brad Manera, Robert Linnegar and Art Critic Christopher Allen. The participating artists are: Rodney Pople, Joanna Logue, Amanda Penrose Hart, Alan Jones, Riste Andrievski, Angeliki Androutsopoulos, Michelle Hiscock, Deidre Bean, Natalie O’Connor, Michael Bradfield and Euan Macleod.
Lustre is a exhibition that explores the Allied campaigns in Greece and Crete in 1941 through the works of contemporary artists who walked in their footsteps last year.
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.
ANZAC Memorial Hyde Park Sydney 20 May 2026
Mudgee Regional Art Gallery 24 July 2026 – 20 September 2026
Rocky Hill Memorial, Goulburn 15 October 2026 – 31 March 2027
Gosford Regional Art Gallery 15 April 2027 – 30 May 2027
Hellenic Museum, Melbourne 2027 dates TBC