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Indepth Arts News:
"After Hiroshima: Nuclear Imaginaries"
2005-07-25 until 2005-09-24
Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
London, ,
USA United States of America
After Hiroshima: Nuclear Imaginaries curated by Siumee Keelan presents the
work of three artists from Japan: Kanemaru Kazuia, Mutsumi Tsuda and Keiji
Usami, and from England: Alexis Hunter, Jacqueline Morreau, Mircea Roman and
Tolleck Winner. Alongside their work is the installation Peace Tent created
by young people (from Positive Activities for Young People, Ealing Youth and
Connexions Service) working with the artist Eric Fong, and the ‘mail art’
work of 111 artists from 25 countries exploring current visions of nuclear
weapons in the 20th and 21st centuries, and in particular nuclear fictions
since 1991. The exhibition also presents Crane Project consisting of
thousands of paper cranes sent by individuals and organizations from around
the world as a symbol of their commitment to world peace.
After Hiroshima: Nuclear Imaginaries is timed to commemorate the 60th
anniversary of this tragic time of man’s inhumanity to man and when the USA
used Japan to test the power of a newly created weapon of mass destruction.
The date was 6 August 1945 when the ‘Little Boy’ containing Uranium 235 was
dropped over Hiroshima. The second bomb ‘Fat Man’ containing plutonium 239
was used on Nagasaki. Nuclear consciousness has proliferated in the arts
since the atomic attack on Japan, becoming a visual culture of global
dimensions, incorporated science-fiction dystopian narratives of destruction
and fall-out in comics, cartoons, multi-media, performance, painting,
sculpture, graphic design photography and film. The symbolic order of the
nuclear age has undergone recent transformation with the arrival of new
narratives and metaphors of nuclear threat since the Cold War and with the
new fictions involving 'War on Terror', rogue atomic states, depleted
uranium, and dirty bombs. A global threat, with local affects, has motivated
new aesthetic responses to a new culture of annihilation, and plotting the
boundary between nuclear fiction and reality in narratives of heroism and
nihilism, resignation and resistance, paranoia and paralysis. The works in
After Hiroshima: Nuclear Imaginaries exemplify this current surge of
interest.
EVENTS at the Brunei Gallery
Screenings of Educational Videos
1. Atomic Bomb Survivors Uncensored, a non profit film for use solely for
education by Tania Mathias. www.hiroshimauncensored.org
2. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, told by Liv Ullmann, solo guitar
music by George Winston, illustrated by Ed Young, Story by Elenor Goerr and
Directed by George Levenson
Artist Painting on Site (from 11July to 24 September 2005 - at specific
times)
Presents an opportunity for the public to meet and discuss with the artist
Alexis Hunter as she creates in the Brunei Gallery Nuclear Daemon on canvas.
Saturday 6th August 2005
A day of events at the Brunei Gallery to mark the 60th Anniversary of the
bombing of Hiroshima with Dr Sato from Three Wheels performing a peace
ceremony and groups of Japanese musicians organised by Ms Shino Arisawa
performing from 2pm on the Japanese Roof Garden at the Gallery. Within the
exhibition itself there will be an origami workshop where artists will help
the public to make paper cranes.
Friday 23rd September 2005 – Round table discussion at the Brunei Gallery
with the curator Siumee Keelan and invited speakers
Saturday 24th September 2005 - One-day symposium on Visual Culture and
Nuclearisation at the Brunei Theatre, The School of African and Oriental
Studies.
Further information at www.afterhiroshima.org
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