FURTHER INFORMATION

THE FILM        'THE TRACKER'.................

Peter & David Gulpilil on the film set

Purchase your copy of the book 

For the special price of A$25 (plus postage)

 by contacting Peter direct 

 
The book describes the paintings used in the film and 

the process taken to produce the final canvases.
Peter's involvement in the film is explained hereunder.

Peter was commissioned by Internationally acclaimed Australian Film Producer/Director, Rolf de Heer, (www.vertigoproductions.com.au) to paint 14 Canvases which appear in his award winning feature movie THE TRACKER, which had its World Premiere as the opening film of the "Shedding Light" program for the Adelaide Festival of Arts 2002.  It was also the opening film for  the 51st Melbourne International Film Festival and was invited to participate in the 59th Venice Film Festival and other international Film Festivals.

Peter spent one month in March 2001 at Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in northern South Australia where he painted Location Studies, did thumbnail sketches, drawings and coloured images, to gain the feel for the land, characters and story of the film. After his return to Adelaide he viewed the rushes doing more small pencil and watercolour sketches which he and Rolf would discuss prior to Peter painting the Final Colour Studies. These were again discussed before Peter painted the Final Canvasses which were filmed, then edited into the movie as static scenes.

The book, "PETER COAD Paintings and Drawings for the Film THE TRACKER" , explains the whole process and journey that Peter took to arrive at these 14 Canvases.  It also gives his inner thoughts and the reasoning behind them. (Copies are available by contacting Peter directly using the Contact Details page or by ordering it through bookshops as well as Galleries who exhibit Peter's work).

THE MOVIE is about the Fanatic (Gary Sweet), a government trooper, who leads two white men, the Follower (Damon Gameau), an unseasoned trooper, and the Veteran (Grant Page), an experienced fighter. On horseback they follow an Aboriginal, the Tracker (David Gulpilil), searching for traces of the Fugitive (Noel Wilton), an Aboriginal accused of murdering a white woman. Massacre and murder follow. Clear cut notions of truth and justice are subverted and the question becomes not one of - will the Fugitive be caught, but what is black and what is white and who is leading whom?

Excerpts from a few of the numerous reviews on the movie:

De Heer's use of Coad's paintings adds an uncanny power to the film, strangely making the violence more meaningful, more tragic, taking away any notion that's it's only a movie.  ....It's actually a film that's important not to miss... Margaret Pomeranz - The Movie Show

Another brilliant aspect is the use of art.  Artist Peter Coad was commissioned to paint 14 landscape and figurative works for inclusion in the film, a first for an Australian Film.  The paintings are used ingeniously to display violence in the film, a method that works to both soften the impact of the actions, and also make them so much more powerful.  The works are melded beautifully into the landscape of the film, using dramatic and bold colour to depict the shocking and harsh nature of the land.....The Tracker is a socially important film in the history of Australia....Belinda Yench - The Blurb

The film's mythic point of view is evocatively underlined by the substitution of illustrations for live action whenever violence erupts.  These stylised images by the Australian artist Peter Coad create an aesthetic distance from the cruelty, lending the atrocities the stature of events in a historical mural that freezes the past into an eternal present.... Stephen Holden - The New York Times

But here, and in the further bloody incidents that occur as the tension mounts, de Heer avoids voyeuristically dwelling on the violence, by illustrating these dramas with painted images (by the Australian artist Peter Coad).  This lends them a mythic quality, as though they were descriptions of events, passed down from generation to generation, finally to find expression in popular art....   Roderick Conway Morris - International Herald Tribune

These are the kind of devices that could appear as contrived, but here they work.  The end result is something deceptively simple and potent....Rebort - jofilm U.K.

The interstitial artwork by Peter Coad is not just a novel trick of independent filmmaking, it's an empathetic attack on the mind, jolting you out of your screen-fed complacency so that you have to think about what you're seeing....Craig - bscene

AUSTRALIAN BIRTHS CERTIFICATES - YEAR OF THE OUTBACK 2002

An innovative idea by Val Edyvean, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Adelaide, South Australia was to request Peter to paint two works for use on Birth Certificates to commemorate the Year of the Outback in 2002 and add them to the ongoing range of Commemorative Birth Certificates.  In Peter's style, they portray the dramatic scenery and vibrant colours of the Australian Landscape and are a piece of art along with a lasting memory of a child's birth.  They can also be requested and used for anyone of any age as a memorable gift.  For further details see http://www.ocba.sa.gov.au/bdm/forms.html

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