After the Yellow House finished, he established himself in Bundeena and since then has produced a large and varied output of drawings, paintings, films, and writings.
He has travelled to and worked in many regions of conflict, including the Philippines, Somalia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Bougainville, and South Africa.
Gittoes’ art similarly veered towards the political, and in the US he began the Hotel Kennedy Suite, inspired by opposition to the Vietnam War.
Returning to Australia in late 1969, a meeting with Martin Sharp led to the establishment of the Yellow House Artist Collective near Kings Cross, New South Wales.
For a time abandoning the politically driven art inspired by Joe Delaney, Gittoes produced a large series of photographs, drawings and paintings, eventually leading to a film, The Rainbow Way..
These images were abstract, using ideas drawn from both Islamic and Aboriginal art (in the latter case, especially the myth of the Rainbow Serpent),[1] but also created out of direct observation of the effects of light underwater.
[6] In this period, Gittoes was deeply affected by the death of his friend Ronaldo Cameron, a dancer who had been part of the TREE productions.
The first stop, in March 1993, was Somalia, where Australia had provided a battalion to the American-led Unified Task Force (UNITAF), which was trying on behalf of the United Nations (UN) to restore order to a country devastated by civil war, collapse of government, drought, and famine.
Gittoes documented activities of Australian signallers with UNTAC and painted Sanderson's portrait, but was also moved in particular by the stoic endurance of the many Cambodian victims of landmines.
What he saw made him doubt the official version that the massacre was the work of a lone gunman, reinforcing his belief in the need for the artist as independent witness and as an advocate for the innocent victims of conflict.
Also in 1994, Gittoes travelled privately to South Africa, to witness the transition to black majority rule and the election on April 27 of Nelson Mandela as president.
Gittoes’ visit to South Africa coincided with the outbreak in Rwanda of the most concentrated genocidal violence of the modern era.
The resulting UN operation, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), included an Australian medical contingent and associated security and support personnel.
Late on April 22 the Rwandan forces began a massacre, using rifles, machine guns, RPGs, bayonets, machetes, and possibly mortars.
It included ten large confronting 3 v 1.5 m paintings, employing what Gavin Fry describes as “a violent, gut-wrenching expressionism”, to depict the depths of violence and depravity reached at Kibeho; the floor was covered in rags, clothes, and plastic containers.
His work, no longer particularly concerned with the peacekeepers, now focused on the plight of refugees and ordinary people living in the midst of devastation.
Gittoes was working at home in his studio at Bundeena, on the coast south of Sydney, when the world suddenly changed on 11 September 2001.
By November 2001 the United States had invaded Afghanistan and overthrown the Taliban government, beginning a decade-and-a-half of war in the country.
The works, War on Terra, were rejected – for political reasons, Gittoes believed – but later exhibited at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne.
In a departure from his previous films, this one was a docudrama combining the drama and action of a Pashtun telemovie with documentary footage from the Taliban-controlled tribal belt.
In 2008 Gittoes moved into his Surry Hills studio with Performance Artist and Musician Hellen Rose (married October 14, 2019).
The State Library of NSW holds a significant collection of material related to Gittoes' work in Australia and overseas including artists diaries.
!”, and aims to provide “a safe space where artists from all mediums meet, work and create independently of the destructive forces that not only threatens their physical lives but their inner spirit.” It also provides “a ‘safe haven’ for women's arts and philosophy groups.” The Yellow House features a cinema, traveling tent circus, rainbow painting studios, Secret Garden Cafe and Rose Theatre outdoor stages.
Meanwhile, a new direction for Gittoes has been making Virtual Reality (VR) films, using a 360-degree camera, embracing the artistic possibilities of new technology in a way that harks back to his early work with holograms.
The VR films have been made in collaboration with partner Hellen Rose and with long-time assistant and righthand frontline camera man, Pakistani Waqar Alam.
This period saw two large scale art works created in South Side Chicago, 'Kill Kulture Amerika' and 'Renaissance Park' acquired by the Peabody Essex Museum Salem, Massachusetts.
Gittoes describes today's era comparing it with a time when US President John F Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King were assassinated.
Gittoes has travelled to many places for his art, including: Nicaragua, the Philippines, Somalia, Sinai, Southern Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Western Sahara, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, South Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Yemen, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Russia, Europe, UK, Bougainville, China, Taiwan, Tibet, Timor, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In the contemporary context, I go alone into a different kind of human wilderness – Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq – not to contemplate nature, but the basics of humanity..."Or, to put it more simply, “The whole world is my studio.”[14] Gittoes' service to Australia has been recognised by the award of Member of the Order of Australia (1997) "for service to art and international relations as an artist and photographer portraying the effects on the environment of war, international disasters and heavy industry".
A comprehensive public solo exhibition of his work, Witness to War, appeared at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, in April 2011.