To mark the Centenary of Anzac, 100 Ballarat clients of financial group Crowe Horwath and Findex attended a special viewing of Melbourne artist George Petrou’s ‘Lost diggers of Vignacourt’ at The George Hotel on Wednesday night.
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Ballarat was just the second location to host Petrou’s deeply personal work, which opened in Melbourne last week and features 14 detailed portraits.
John Ives from Financial Index was the night's master of ceremonies and said it was an exciting opportunity for locals to view the unique exhibition.
“We invited 100 Ballarat clients to attend the private viewing to recognise the 100th year of the landing of Gallipoli,” he said.
“While there are no Ballarat soldiers in this exhibition, next week is the centenary of Lone Pine and Battle of the Nek and that has two local connections.
“There is a lot of Ballarat significance over the next couple of weeks and so we wanted to run this in conjunction with that.”
Among the crowd was local Tony Crocket, whose descendant was killed 100 years ago on Tuesday, which was acknowledged during official proceedings.
Speakers at the even included local Anzac author Gary Snowden and and Lambis Englezos AM, well known for his work at the Battle of Fromelles.
George Petrou also spoke of his paintings, which are based on a trove of photographs of Australian soldiers taken during WWI in Vignacourt by local photographer of the day Louis Thuillier.
The photographs were recently discovered in a French farm house by Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, whose television documentary on the find and book ‘The lost diggers’ received wide acclaim.
Coulthart found the original glass plates which were later bought to Australia after being purchased by Kerry Stokes and are now in the collection of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Artist Petrou, who has a special interest in world war one, was overwhelmed by a visit to the 2012 Australian War Memorial exhibition ‘Remember Me - The Lost Diggers of Vignacourt’.
The exhibition struck such a chord with him he was moved to use the images as a base to interpret the soldiers' facial expressions and gestures to tell their story on canvas.
Each image is accompanied by a biography and military record of the digger.
Following Wednesday night’s one-off private viewing in Ballarat, Petrou has plans to tour the exhibition around Australia.