We are constant witnesses to war: today we are witnesses to the conflicts in Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Somalia… as superpowers rush around looking for victims to bully. In Eyewitness Theo and I take what we’ve learnt from John Heartfield, Otto Dix and Bertolt Brecht and stir it together with what we’ve learnt from De Kooning, Cy Twombly, Motherwell and Rothko. The text is hand written, the pages are hand-painted and we use Rauschenberg’s transfer printing… so each of the thirteen copies are in a sense unique. This is the fourth book Theo Strasser and I have collaborated on: there’s The Use Of Ashes (1966), and Eyewitness; then two other books: Using Shadows (2005) and Rememberance (2009) made in collaboration with Robert Colvin. The Apocalypse is already here – and we’re living with it every day – we may not have noticed because it’s being doled out in installments.

The book acts out that line of Voltaire’s which says, if other worlds are inhabited, then the earth is the insane asylum of the universe. Eyewitness offers itself as a guide around the madhouse.

The book was part of the One Hundred exhibition at the State Library, NSW which featured 100 treasures from that library’s collection.