Current Issue of Crux Australis: Issue No. 129

The most recent issue of Crux Australis is No. 129 [Volume 32/1] issued for the period January - March 2019.

The contents are:

SUMMARY

For sound commercial and legal reasons, The Australian National Flag Association in 2017 adopted a brandmark, surveyed here primarily from a design perspective.  Ironically looking very much like a new flag, it still reflects the original and continuing ANFA enthusiasm for the national flag as defined and provided for under Flags Act 1953.

The ambiguity of a tricolour on a recent Australian stamp issue recalling the 1918 Armistice draws further discussion, as does evidence of the Red Ensign used as a national flag in the same era.  Focus on the national flag also reminds that both Australia and New Zealand have a third, white, ensign – cue for the quiz on other white flags currently or previously used around the world. 

In an age where fake facting is an industry, it is the flag that exposes misleading advertising by Flight Centre travel agency.  The 51-star US flag at Vice-President Pence’s meeting with the EU and also displayed at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Invictus Games demonstrates sheer carelessness, shared by designers of the illegible slogan-flag at the same Games.  A crudely-made Ugandan car flag featured on a Hollywood pawnbroker’s 2015 promo, and stated to be worth “a million dollars”, raises its own questions. 

In the first of two parts is the story of self-determination and flag suppressed in the evolution of Greater Indonesia.  That patriotism and solidarity is something more than group conformity is reflected through the medium of Art, as in portrayals of the Stars and Stripes.  Twisted patriotism in a nation that has produced too many Westerns and a Dear Leader who likes to play High Noon every noon gets the gun.  Magazine covers are also an art-form: TIME uses flag images to call out the obscenity of complacency, the one star left on the bough standing for Hope – the very point of the enigmatic white flag with a golden stripe that flouts every convention of flag design. The edition opens with an unusual cover: it ends with the related flag trip.

Commentary by Tony Burton