PROVENANCE
Paul & Kerry Barber Collection Fine New Zealand & European Art, International Art Centre 29/07/2004

ILLUSTRATED
Contemporary New Zealand Art 4 by Elizabeth Caughey and John Gow 2002 Catalogue John Leech & Gow Langsford, 2002

EXHIBITED
2002 Catalogue John Leech & Gow Langsford, 10 September - 5 October 2002

Since his first exhibition at Auckland's Ikon Gallery in 1963, Binney maintained the integrity of his precise realist style.

Typically his images include the flattened forms of native birds above rolling hills. Conservationist issues are often part of the subtext of much of his painting. Equally his work has often displayed a political conscience.

EII | Exocet was painted in response to the Falklands War. In 1982 the new military government of Argentina committed an act of unprovoked aggression by invading the Falkland Islands. Diplomatic talks failed to resolve the issue and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched a military task force to attempt to return the Falklands to British rule. In May of that year the dispute intensified when the British Navy sunk the 185 metre Argentinean cruiser ARA General Belgrano resulting in a loss of over 300 lives, totalling just over half of Argentine military deaths in the war. Shortly afterwards the HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentine Exocet missile sinking the Type 42 guided missile destroyer and resulting in the loss of forty British navy sailors. Within EII / Exocet the inverted head of the Queen is depicted in an upside down world from which a triangle of white light or perhaps reason, is shown pouring onto a sea of blue. Below this is a map of the Falkland Islands. It is an ambiguous image but one which nonetheless evokes the polarity of the two governments and the conflict that was a result of failed diplomacy.