Opening Night - Art & Activism in the Nuclear Age / The Promise of Housing

Opening night: Thursday 7 April, 6-8 pm

Exhibition period: 7 April - 14 May 2022

CovidSafe Venue: Tin Sheds Gallery, 148 City Rd, Darlington NSW 2008

Art & Activism in the Nuclear Age

Curated by Yasuko Claremont

The exhibition Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age takes place more than 75 years after the nuclear catastrophe caused by the US atomic bombing of the Japanese civilian populations in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki in August 1945. Over the subsequent decades, reactions to these and many other nuclear atrocities have spurred a wide range of resistance, protest, documentation and artistic expressions. The exhibition draws on this deep history of commentary to bring attention back to the continued threat of nuclear war, unmitigated expansion in the use of nuclear technology, nuclear accidents and the impacts of nuclear testing. The crisis in Ukraine is another terrible reminder of the nuclear knife-edge on which the world is precariously balanced.

The works on display cross several generations of artists, individuals, communities and organisations from Japan, Australia and the Pacific. Major works include a full-size replica of the Hiroshima Panel ‘Fire’ (1950) by Iri and Toshi Maruki, rarely seen outside of Japan;  a powerful series of paintings by women from Yalata, ‘Life Lifted into the Sky’, representing the impact of British nuclear testing at Maralinga, South Australia, on First Nations Australians, and Sydney based artist, Merilyn Fairskye’s photographic series ‘Plant Life (Chernobyl)’.

The exhibition aims to encourage viewers to reflect on the potency of both art and activism, to overcome popular complacency, to arouse empathy for the victims, incite resistance to the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to force us to ask the momentous questions: What have we done? What can we do now?

Exhibition Team: Paul Brown, Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski, Roman Rosenbaum

This exhibition was assisted by the Australian-Japan Foundation and University of Sydney Chancellor Committee's Grant.

The Promise of Housing

Miriam Charlie

The exhibition presents Yanyuwa Garrwa elder Miriam Charlie’s 2019 photographic series, ‘The Promise of Housing’. Also named ‘Li Bardawu (The Houses)’, or ‘My Country No Home, Still Waiting’, the collection showcases portraits of First Nations residents and their houses in the gulf town of Borroloola in the Northern Territory.

Building on her 2015 portrait series, ‘My Country No Home’, Charlie’s polaroids represent the housing in Borroloola’s town camps and the residents who must endure broken things while waiting for necessary repairs and new houses. As Charlie states, ‘The Polaroids are like a family photo album but they show the broken things in people’s houses. We have to wait to have these things fixed. Things are broken while we wait for new houses. It’s that waiting business. You’ve got to wait so long.’

Charlie’s photography is complemented in the exhibition by historical materials curated by the Housing for Health Incubator from various archives. The archival materials situate Charlie’s project in a longer history of settler state infrastructural neglect, and as the latest in consistent efforts made by town camp residents to demand sustained attention to housing provision and infrastructural maintenance.

This exhibition was made possible with assistance from Housing for Health Incubator, University of Sydney, Arts NT, Department of Tourism, Arts, and Culture, NT Government - Emerging Artist Grant 2019

Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this exhibition and images on this webpage may contain the images of people who have passed away. 

For gallery talks and events please visit our events web page.

For further details on this exhibition and on the 2022 Tin Sheds Gallery program please visit the gallery website.  

Cover image (left): 1945.08.10 Nagasaki, photo by Yosuke Yamahata, 1945. Courtesy Shogo Yamahata 

Cover image (right): Borroloola sheeting team on single room huts, Image courtesy of the National Archives of Australia. NAA: E460, 1986/82

Image (detail): Maralinga, Mima Smart and Rita Bryant, 2016. Courtesy the artists and Yalata Womens Centre

Image (detail): Borroloola sheeting team on single room huts, Image courtesy of the National Archives of Australia. NAA: E460, 1986/82