Visual Art / The Reckoning, Kate Stevens. At Platform by Canberra Contemporary, Manuka, to March 16. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

Kate Stevens, an artist from Braidwood, presents a collection of paintings exploring the effects of alleged war crimes by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan.

The exhibit focuses on the whistleblowers who risked everything to expose wrongdoing, and on the Afghan locations where civilians were allegedly killed.

In the small space these artworks tackle a big subject, perhaps one of the biggest subjects in the history of personnel and training in the Australian military forces, alleged war crimes.

There are three works titled The Mission (redacted). They have large blue panels painted over their landscape backgrounds. All with a clear reference to the redacted sections from the legal material in the ongoing case around the alleged war crimes. They are perhaps the most powerful and telling.

With 12 works in total, mostly paintings, it’s the drawings that hold the greatest depth. In Erasure 2025, pencil on paper, the frustration, the futility and maybe even shell shock is evident on the soldier’s face. It’s a stark and empty expression. There’s a genuine feeling for the tragedy and outcomes of this conflict captured in all the subjects faces. They look lost and out of place.

The light in all the painting set in Afghanistan, is bright and harsh. This adds to that sense of emptiness and desolation that the soldiers appear to be feeling.

In several works, there is an inclusion of that famous Ned Kelly image that Sidney Nolan created in his extensive series of artworks on the legend that is Ned Kelly. On first view, it seems that it could be just a tack on, or something added because of the popularity of Nolan’s Kelly series.

But after speaking to the artist, the Kelly iconography is meant to refer to the insignia that the Australian regiment had in Afghanistan, which was The Bushrangers. It is also meant to reference the people who spoke out against the alleged war crimes, as they were seen as rats hiding behind a mask.

It is a strong exhibition that not only captures its subject with honesty and strength, but the quality of each work may just see some of them placed in portrait or landscape painting prizes around Australia.

When a whole exhibition references a specific subject, it’s meant to capture the outcomes and emotions of its theme. These 12 artworks do that, yet the Afghanistan War, over its 20-year period, is an extensive issue, and it’s something that is still unravelling in the minds and hearts of many people and will keep on doing so for decades to come.