Bombs
Away
Curated by Sophie Jerram
12 June - 6 July, 2002
Richard Reddaway
Jo Randerson
Fiona Jack
Tony de Lautour
Megan Adams with Paul Redican
15 years after legislation was passed making New Zealand a nuclear-free
country, an exhibition that combines contemporary art with pro-nuclear
film footage, opens at The Physics Room, in Christchurch, on June
12th.
Bombs Away is an exhibition of five New Zealand artists who have
created work in response to films promoting the testing of atomic
bombs from pro-nuclear nations. The 15 year anniversary of the passing
of the Nuclear-Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act 1987
is June 8th.
In Bombs Away, visual artists Richard Reddaway, Fiona Jack and
Tony de Lautour, dancer Megan Adams with Paul Redican, and writer
Jo Randerson, each explore the pro-nuclear argument from the perspective
of one of the five original nuclear nations (US, Russia, China,
France, and the UK). Using official government atomic testing films
as a starting point, the artists take on the role of nuclear propagandist
in order that we might learn more about New Zealand's position as
a nuclear free country.
The government films include the UK's This little ship made in
1952, describing the sacrifice of the H.M.S. Plym, a ship that held
the bomb in its hold for the UK's first nuclear detonation explosion,
and France's 1995 film of Nuclear testing at Moruroa. Bombs Away
curator Sophie Jerram obtained the films from the Center for Land
Use Information in Los Angeles, and felt they would be compelling
viewing in a New Zealand context. "The testing films provide
an absorbing insight into the mindset of the nuclear nations",
Jerram says. "And in response to the films, the New Zealand
art works toy with messages that affirm the use of nuclear weapons,
resulting in a provocative display of nuclear imagery." The
new works in Bombs Away include painting, sculptural installations,
photographs and video. Dancer Megan Adams, in collaboration with
Paul Redican, has created on video, a contemporary Chinese comrade,
who, digitally cloned, dances as an army of tightly choreographed
soldiers in a countdown sequence (10, 9, 8...). In another work,
sculptor Richard Reddaway's luminous, brittle wax growths resemble
the coral of Moruroa atoll, and are pliable but unstable, unable
to hold their form after exposure to huge climatic changes.
Fiona Jack's Miasma series consists of large digitised images of
billowing grey clouds, they are beautiful, glossy smokescreens,
abstracted and ostensibly benign - until we understand that they
have been created by the combination of toxic chemicals. Tony de
Lautour's painting Monument, with its ubiquitous British Lion atop
a monument to death poses the question: where are our monuments
today?
Jo Randerson's Untitled presents a view of an entombed Russian
comrade, complete with bear, guidebook and vodka, seeking to place
himself on the world map, a man yet to secure his place in the world.
As an encased figure, behind a perspex box, he is now an object
of curiosity, a thing of the past, no longer the hero of 19th and
20th Century wars but a displaced figure, alone and somewhat unsure
of his responsibilities with the bomb.
Sophie Jerram says that the exhibition uncovers the smokescreens
of the pro-nuclear nations and challenges viewers to consider why
New Zealand is an anti-nuclear nation. "The perception of the
danger of nuclear war has shifted since the 1980s. The nuclear threat
is perceived to have been diverted since the Cold War, when it has
in fact increased, as an increasing number of countries have developed
or have access to, nuclear arms, as we are seeing in the India-Pakistan
conflict."
Jerram suggests that younger generations do not perceive the nuclear
threat with the same fear as past generations, and would be pushed
to explain the reasoning behind the anti-nuclear stance. "I
grew up accepting New Zealand's anti-nuclear ideology, without
understanding
its basis", Jerram writes in an introduction to Bombs
Away. "Bombs Away is an attempt to revisit the anti-nuclear
reasoning".
Bombs Away has been funded by the Peace and Disarmament Trust -
set up with funds provided by the French government after the sinking
of the Rainbow Warrior.
The exhibition is supported by the Centre
of Land Use Information Centre, the Stealth Foundation and the
Christchurch Peace
Foundation.
The Physics Room receives major funding from Creative New Zealand/Toi
Aotearoa.
Catalogue Launch & Public Forum:
CONSTRUCTING DEFENCE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC OPINION AND NUCLEAR IDEOLOGY IN NEW ZEALAND
7.30pm, Thursday June 20th, 2002
Speakers: Dr Kate Dewes, Commander Robert Green, Veronica Meduna
Centre
of Land Use Information Centre
Peace
Foundation
Bombs away:
the catalogue
Essays
Bombs
away by
David Lange
Living
without the bomb by
Sophie Jerram
Reviews, Essays & Articles
Bombs Away - exhibition offers chance for all to understand
Christchurch Citizen, June 17, 2002, p.22
Jaimee Astle
Interview with Sophie Jerran
<also available online via the Physics Room Archive>
Nuclear Politics on Show
The Press, July, 2002
Dorothee Pauli
‘Up the Arts’
Canta, June, 2002, p.28
Roger Schulbeuys
BOMBS AWAY! : Curated by Sophie Jerram
Essay by Jim Henley
In The Physics Room Annual 2002
ISBN# 0-9582359-1-0
Reviews : Wellington
Art New Zealand, Spring 2003; 108: p52-53
Lister, Aaron
Reviews 'Bombs Away' including 'Miasma' by Fiona Jack and 'No-one believes they are evil' by Richard Reddaway, Adam Art Gallery.
<also available online>
BOMBS AWAY! 2003 New Zealand tour.
Bombs Away opens Friday 4 July at the Adam
Art Gallery (Victoria University, Wellington)
The Bombs Away touring exhibition features additional works by
the artists Tony DeLatour and Jo Randerson, as well as the totally
new inclusion of International artist, Rainer Ganahl. Rainer is
an Austrian artist, whose work deals with recent world events,
focusing on mainstream propaganda and global terrorism. The inclusion
of Rainer in Bombs Away has injected an international dimension
and active context to the show, bringing the Bombs
Away exhibition to a new level.
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