Ian Howard studied art at a time when the only challenge to the dominance of figurative painting was the formalist doctrines of abstraction. When he graduated in 1968 these concerns seemed trivial with Australia’s unfolding involvement
in the Vietnam War. In response, Howard began making life-sized impressions of military hardware by taping large rolls of paper directly over these machines and making crayon rubbings of the structures beneath.

The 'Enola Gay' was the B-29 Super Fortress US bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Howard presents an ominous ‘shadow’ of the machine that carried the most destructive bomb
in world history.