An exhibition honouring our World War I diggers, Immortals, featuring the work of Castlemaine artist Clayton Tremlett opened at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance on Saturday.
The exhibition, which previously featured at the Soldiers Memorial Institute in Bendigo in 2022 and Central Goldfields Art Gallery in Maryborough in 2023, celebrates and connects a shared history for regional communities and brings together a portrait study of the faces of 66 Digger memorials throughout Victoria.
Through his comparative portrait study of the Digger memorials, Tremlett provides us with an opportunity to focus on cenotaphs to fallen soldiers in World War I.
Tremlett told the Express the latest exhibition was the third and final iteration of the project, which had spanned six years.
“The first exhibition of 46 portraits was at the Soldiers Memorial Institute in Bendigo in May 2022,” Tremlett said.
“The Maryborough exhibition featured 54 Digger memorials and the latest exhibition at the shrine features all 66.
“The images are on display in a space underground at the shrine and the final result is pretty amazing.”
The artist and restoration expert said there was a myth that the Digger memorials were mass-produced and his research set out to dispel this.
Tremlett enjoyed the opportunity to visit communities all over regional Victoria and document each monument depicted in the exhibition.
With most of the monuments facing east, the artist was often onsite at sunrise to capture images of the faces of the Diggers in these memorials in the light of the rising sun.
The result of Tremlett’s extensive research shows that each Digger Cenotaph is a unique individual and not just mass-produced generic faces.
Each memorial was fund-raised for and installed as a result of grassroots movements by local communities to honour those ‘volunteers’ who served and paid the ultimate price. Many feature the names of the dead and also those who enlisted.
Local community members can catch an Artist’s Talk with Tremlett at the Shrine of Remembrance on Wednesday October 16 at 11am.
To book, or for more information about the exhibition, visit www.shrine.org.au/immortals
The exhibition runs until April 13, 2025.
