George Gittoes’ new book describes him as “equal parts artist and warrior”. In its pages you will read how he worked with Andy Warhol, dined with Fidel Castro, plotted with Julian Assange, was feted by Nelson Mandela, blessed by Mother Teresa and threatened to be beheaded by the Taliban.
You’ll never meet anyone tougher than me, they may look tough but they haven’t been through 40 wars and been imprisoned, tortured. I’m a soft person but I can endure a lot.
Don’t mistake George Gittoes for a hippie surfer because of his long hair. While he does surf, the lengthy locks are so he’s not mistaken for a CIA agent. Seriously.
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The 66-year-old artist spends several months a year unwinding with his partner Hellen Rose in their Werri Beach home, the rest of the year he’s in war zones.
Sitting in the lounge room the feature wall is home to a giant oil painting of a man dodging a bullet, titled ‘Staying Alive’. To the left near the window are sculptures with a resemblance to gargoyles and an ocean backdrop rolling through the front and side windows.
I asked George what he hoped his legacy would be.
“I already know what it is,” he said.
“My legacy is that I’m inspiring creative people to realise they can go into all kinds of situations - whether it’s in Australia or internationally - where they can sense social injustice and make a huge difference”
The artist, who has works hanging in the National Gallery of Australia, has released his memoir, Blood Mystic, which he believes is much more compelling than some of his contemporaries who have lived “safe lifestyles”.
“What I see this book as, is something where artists who have the same feelings as I’ve got - young creative people - can see they can have a very fulfilling life without trying to get into the Archibald Prize,” he said.
“If you work across a lot of different mediums and you do work which is relative to people, rather than paintings just for decoration, you can survive and you can have a very rewarding life … it’s less dangerous than getting in a studio and getting on drugs or alcohol and whatever else.”
He says this, despite the opening pages of his book showing a letter from the Taliban to the Australian High Commission in Islamabad, threatening his beheading if he returned to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In between projects George and Hellen continue their work at the Yellow House in Jalalabad, east of Kabul in Afghanistan.
Their work is dangerous and stressful, yet very rewarding.
The house is a “safe space” for all forms of artists in a country where art was outlawed by the Taliban for many years. It was created in 2011 and funded by the sale of George’s artworks.
Singer and performance artist Hellen hosts women’s workshops and teaches them drama, film-making and voice training amongst other things.
She is as lively and passionate as George, with a distinct electricity seen between the two.
“Hellen was the first woman to sing in Pashto [the Afghani language] on Afghan television, broke the way for all the other women,” George said.
“She could’ve had her head cut off when she came home but the whole of Jalalabad was celebrating because she was smart enough to sing their national song.”
Hellen added that she wanted to send a message that there is no shame in singing.
“I feel like that did more than dropping any bomb,” she said.
The Taliban has threatened George’s life a number of times, including cutting his face off because a simple beheading wasn’t enough. But he tells me his worst meetings have been turned around.
In one instance, the “Charles Manson of the Taliban” and his squad turned up one night and whisked him back to their compound to kill him, the situation ended in a feast and an apology.
Many Taliban family members arrived giving “eulogies” about how much they loved Baba George and what good he had done for the country (Baba meaning grandfather, of which he is affectionately known around the city).
“Then the moment came where we had to go outside where the execution box was, and the bad Taliban guy turned to me and said ‘I have to apologise, I had very bad thoughts about you and we had very bad intentions’,” George said.
“He personally decided to take us home and on the way back he turned to me and said ‘this is one of the most inspiring nights of my life’.”
George was then asked if he would speak to the Afghani frontline soldiers when back to inspire them not to kill, but to build a better country.
The Middle East is not the only challenging place George has wandered. Somalia, Cambodia, Rwanda, South Africa, Bosnia, Nicaragua and Iraq are also on his passport.
“It’s not a matter of me feeling so much I have a destiny, it’s just, right from the word go I wanted to go out and reach out to people,” he said.
George tells me of meeting a crack cocaine dealer, Willie T, when shooting his documentary Rampage in the Miami ghetto of Brownsville, aka Brown Sub, in 2006.
Willie T invited the film-maker back to his home to show off what a “clean operation” he had.
While the pair played chess, George asked him what he used to do before dealing drugs, “I was a roofer” came the reply.
“I said, ‘why don’t you take your squad’ - he had all these guys with guns and that - ‘this is hurricane city, you could make more money doing roofing than crack cocaine. I’ll help you put a business together’,” recounts George.
“I’ve saved the whole [gang] ...that’s kind of typical of my life, I don’t judge people.”
Changing people’s perception from rose-coloured glasses to the real grit underneath is not reserved for overseas.
George has a deep passion for the steel industry after being invited to be the artist in residence at Port Kembla in 1989, “becoming one with the steelworkers”.
He then embarked on more heavy industry projects with visits to other steelworks, mines, chemical plants and oil rigs.
He recalls painting on top of a coke oven at BlueScope, creating paintings so real you could “smell the sulphur”. Some of these belong to the permanent collection of the Wollongong Art Gallery.
Once he finishes filming a sequel to Rampage in coming months, George will focus on a new project documenting the steel industry in China.
He thinks it would be “interesting” for the world to see the conditions their workers are subjected to.
“I can’t understand why it’s been good for our government to export our jobs,” he said.
The topic is clearly something George feels strongly about, describing the government’s decision to outsource heavy industry as “unintelligible”.
However, George won’t be running for politics. He says he’s too old and he “wouldn’t be let in anyway”.
What he will do is continue trying to change the worst of the world with art, film and theatre with no retirement in sight.
As for fear, he only has one: to grow old and wander aimlessly along the beach or fossick in antique shops “waiting to die”.
“There’s all these people walking up and down the beach waiting to die, trying to find a new book to read or TV series to watch, and it’s terrifying, absolutely terrifying.”
Blood Mystic is released through Pan Macmillan Australia on October 25, 2016.