This timely and superb exhibition is on until May 14. Don’t miss it. It’s free. Take the teenagers. Tell your friends.

First, what is the Tin Shed Gallery? It is not a tin shed. Perhaps it once was, as the gallery was started in 1969. Now, it is a beautiful large space with a pleasant outdoor patio on City Road at the University of Sydney. It is on a bus route and there is convenient parking behind, on Maze Crescent.

Why is this exhibition timely? Because Russia’s Putin invaded the Ukraine and he has hinted at using nuclear weapons if other countries try to stop the takeover. Is it the fifties all over again? The exhibition includes a timeline of the nuclear age. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much work has been done to keep the threat of mutual destruction under control. In 1996 the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed by 185 countries. In 2017 Australia’s International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Nobel Prize in recognition of its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons. ICAN got 122 nations to sign the treaty prohibiting such weapons. 

The invasion of Ukraine renewed concern not in regards to the use of nuclear weapons, but concerns about the Russian takeover of Ukraine’s 15 working nuclear power stations and  the defunct Chernobyl site. Judith Keene’s up-to-date chapter in the exhibition catalogue clearly sets out the concerns for these nuclear facilities in the conflict. 

There are three sections to the artworks displayed: the World War Two bombings, the tests in the Pacific and the tests in Australia. There are the photographs and the paintings of the aftermath of the bombs dropped on Japan. The eight panel “Fire” is 1.8m x 7.2m made with sumi ink, pigment and charcoal on paper. It evokes Michelangelo’s hell scene in ‘The Last Judgement’ – tortured naked bodies, fire, smoke, hopelessness. Yet, “Fire” is a beautiful work of art, a masterpiece of expressive realism.

Of the art from the nuclear tests in Australia, I particularly like Lin Onus’ ‘Maralinga’, created in 1990. It is a stature of a woman facing the wind laden with uranium from the bombs tested. She embraces her two children, holding them away from the wind. There are also colourful and expressive paintings and banners of the mushroom clouds on ochred landscapes by Yalata artists Mima Smart, Sharon Bryant and Missy Windlass. 

The third section is the art posters and paintings opposing the nuclear tests near and on Pacific Islands. These tests were conducted by England, America and France intermittently from 1946 to 1996. I particularly liked Wendy Black’s “Nuclear Free Pacific”. This colourful, Gauguin appropriation is a montage of the French artist’s islander paintings mixed with atomic bomb images.

The catalogue is excellent, well referenced, comprehensive and very readable. Roman Rosenbaum provides a comprehensive introduction. There is a second Judith Keene chapter about the ten nuclear power plant accidents, (NRX in Canada in 1952 to Fukushima in Japan in 2011). Dimity Hawkins’s chapter, Nuclear Vision’ speaks of the art by anti-nuclear activists. Yasuko Claremont’s chapter on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brings a personal context to topic. ‘The Unquiet Legacy of Nuclear Testing’ by Elizabeth Rechniewski leads us into the here and now.

On Saturday April 30,  2:30 to 4:00, Roman Rosenbaum will speak at the Tin Shed Gallery giving a contemporary perspective on the Japanese bombings.

On Saturday May 7 the Gallery will conduct a Zoom Symposium, 10am to 5pm, about the exhibition and the current state of nuclear treaties.

Many organisations and individuals came together to mount this exhibition, supported by the Australian-Japan Foundation and the University of Sydney.

The Tin Shed Gallery: free entry

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/02/18/tin-sheds-gallery-2022-season-.html

ICAN: https://www.icanw.org/