Lustre is a new temporary exhibition that explores the Allied campaigns in Greece and Crete in 1941 through the works of contemporary artists who walked in their footsteps in 2025.
Lustre Force was the code name for the combined Australian, New Zealand and British army units deployed to protect Greece from Nazi attack in 1941. The Allied defence of Greece was overwhelmed in three and a half weeks in April 1941 and in May, Crete fell to a Nazi airborne invasion in just ten days.
To record those heroic but doomed campaigns, Australia and New Zealand sent war artists and a photographer.
Eighty-five years later, artists from Australia and New Zealand retraced their footsteps, walking the battlefields and visiting the cemeteries where the men and women of Lustre Force and their German foe lie.
Lustre showcases the impressions they made of the impact of that journey. Some of the images show that the land and its people have recovered over time; others reveal that some scars take longer to fade.
The exhibition opens on 15 May 2026 and is in the Memorial’s Auditorium on the Lower Floor. The Memorial is open every day, 9am to 5pm. Please note that access to the exhibition is dependent on the Auditorium’s use for education and other programs, so we encourage you to call the Memorial in advance on (02) 8262 2900.
Entry is free
Artists: Amanda Penrose Hart, Euan Mcleoud, Joanna Logue, Alan Daniel Jones, Deirdre Bean, Riste Andrievski, Angelika Androutsopolous, Michael Bradfield, Michelle Hiscock, Steve Lopes, Natalie OConnor and Rodney Pople
Historian: Brad Manera, the Senior Historian and Curator of the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney
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