By Tracy Sorensen
SYDNEY — Garema Circuit doesn't exist in old street directories. It's a large new cul-de-sac in the heart of light industrial Kingsgrove, in Sydney's southern suburbs — a road that looks much smaller on the map in the new Gregory's than in real life.
In real life, what looked like a 10 or 15 minute walk from the station became 40 minutes of attempted short cuts through factory car parks, only to be met by blokes saying (with relish) it was all blocked off, you have to take the long way round. By the time I arrived at State Wide Office Furniture at number 6, I was looking forward to a warm place out of the wind, somewhere to collect myself and put new batteries in the tape recorder.
Instead, I was shown downstairs into a cold grey concrete cellar, where Marija Zrno was sitting on a milk crate surrounded by her paintings of the devastating war in Croatia.
Zrno's June 7-12 exhibition, "War Correspondent", was an impassioned recreation of the emotional intensity of war. Her work featured slashes of reds and oranges depicting burning roofs set against cold greys and whites of sky and snow. The paintings were contained in huge heavy frames (by Tugomir Balog) made from old beams and fences. Overlapping black and white photographs of rubble and bodies lined one wall.
The decision to set up in the cellar of a furniture factory was partly to do with the fact that it was an easy place to assemble an exhibition quickly (the factory is owned by a Croatian businessman), and the concrete walls were good for hanging the heavy frames. But the fact that it was an ordinary setting, in an area where people lived and worked, became important in itself.
"I think it kind of fits in. I don't like, and never have liked, this pompous 'art for art's sake' idea, particularly under these circumstances. I think it's a contradiction in terms", said Zrno. A quarter of the money raised by the exhibition will go to a fund for Croatian children. Zrno sees her work not simply as art but as documentation, as evidence of a culture under siege.
Zrno was born in Bosnia-Hercegovina and migrated to Australia with her family as a child. She spent a year based until February in Zagreb, where she worked seven days a week as a translator and publicist for the Croatian cause. At night, she painted some of the smaller works in her exhibition.
Zrno spent three days in Osijek while it was under attack by the Yugoslav and Serbian armies. "It was just incredible, how people function under those circumstances. Daily, buildings are burnt out, there's damage on the streets. The minute there is a lull, people get There is an attempt to try to provide some sort of normality for themselves."
Most of Zrno's paintings are of burning and damaged buildings, a symbol of the human suffering. "A lot of my paintings are of roofs, those old blackened beams, where everything is burnt out. It's to do with the symbol of a roof over your head, which means security and warmth ... It symbolises your whole sense of identity, where you belong, being brutalised."
Despite the ravages to Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Zrno remains positive about the future. "We'll have to put a lot into rebuilding. But I think, left alone, we will manage okay, and the people will experience a cultural, economic and spiritual renaissance. And then they'll have to worry about all the other problems the world faces as a whole ...
"It's a bit of a humorous thing, that Croatians are meant to be mad builders, we're in the building industry. I don't think it's through sheer accident, I think it's in our nature. It's because of the way we've lived: people have come along and torn things down, and we just keep rebuilding."
Zrno's paintings and Balog's frames are for sale. For more information, phone (02) 580 5335.