Voices for Veterans exhibition opens conversation over PTSD

Voices of Veterans, a veteran-led portrait series exploring the lived-experience of veterans with PTSD opens this week in Toowoomba.

Voices of Veterans 2022: Roger Marsh. Copyright: Michael Armstrong

Voices of Veterans, a veteran-led photographic exhibition by Mike Armstrong explores the experience of veterans living with PTSD, opens this weekend at the University of Southern Queensland.

The photos are confronting, dramatic, but also tinged with joy and playfulness as veterans cover themselves with molasses while artist and veteran Mike Armstrong captures their portrait.

For Highfields veteran and author Roger Marsh, whose portrait features in the exhibition, the experience was “more than what I expected”.

“I wasn’t in the greatest mental space, and I was still trying to process a whole lot of the stuff that had happened,” he said.

“Combat is a highly compressed experience, it’s a bit like a zip file, it’s all in there, but it’s jammed up, you can’t go anywhere with it.”

Roger Marsh is an author, archer, adventurer, and veteran from Toowoomba, and is one of the veterans Mike Armstrong worked with in his photographic exhibition Voices of Veterans. Picture: supplied

Growing up with a strong interest in both martial arts and visual art, the artist behind the images, Mr Armstrong, joined the military after he finished an art degree in painting.

“I’ve always been fascinated with this idea of the warrior poet,” he said.

“So I joined the military and ended up being in there for 23 years with deployments to East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Inspired by Ben Quilty’s Afghanistan Catalog, and wanting to see more art coming from within the military, he enrolled in an MA at the University of Southern Queensland.

Mr Armstrong said he wanted to tell veteran stories, combining his veteran life with his art life.

Doing so brought him to where he is today, standing among the 22 images on display at the UniSQ’s B Block Art Gallery.

Artist and veteran Michael Armstrong at his exhibition Voices of Veterans at UniSQ. Picture: Christine Schindler

The idea came to him when he was in hospital being diagnosed with PTSD and someone asked him what it felt like.

“It’s molasses, it’s this dark enveloping sticky mess that slows me down and slows my thoughts,” he said.

Curiosity led him to do a shoot with a willing volunteer, and the process, the mess of molasses, and the cleansing and healing experience of the shoot was “wonderful”, he said.

It “organically” grew from there with friends, or friends of friends, asking to be photographed, until he had a total of 75 images.

Both Mr Armstrong and Mr Marsh stressed the importance of not going through the process alone, and worked with their psychologists and therapists during the shoot to ensure they both had the support they needed.

“Give it a go, but don’t do it in isolation,” Mr Marsh said.

“There’s always there’s always an element of risk when you start to uncover the essence of a very difficult experience.”

In terms of the stigma and stereotypes associated with the disorder, being a veteran doesn’t mean you have PTSD, and it is not just veterans who have PTSD, Mr Armstrong said.

“Trauma is a human experience,” he said.

For him the highlight of the shoot was at the end, where the cleansing of the molasses is captured.

“It is that sense of relief and euphoria that these individuals have when they have cleansed the molasses off and they are just glowing with life again.”

The exhibition opens 6pm, Friday, March 1, 2024 at B Block Art Gallery, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba Campus.

Originally published as Voices for Veterans exhibition opens conversation over PTSD