This print is part of a series by Michael Reed relating to civil conflicts and the profitable ‘business’ of warfare. One panel lists the fifty-four global civil conflicts that raged in 1996, another depicts a memorial to the innocent civilian victims caught up in the East Timor conflict.

Reed uses colour symbolically, with black and red representing death and violence, black on white suggesting truth (the first casualty of war) and blue emphasising his feelings of depression at the global situation.

Reed was born in Christchurch and studied at the University of Canterbury. His work is held in public and private collections in New Zealand and he exhibits regularly here and internationally.