Bombhead, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, until 17 June; Bombs Away: Militarization, conservation, and ecological restoration by David G. Havlick, University of Chicago Press
NUCLEAR apocalypse, a threat that only a few years ago seemed to have passed into history, is back at the forefront of our minds. Suddenly, the Vancouver Art Gallery鈥檚 latest exhibition, Bombhead, is more timely than curator John O鈥橞rian could have imagined when he began planning it two years ago.
O鈥橞rian, a former art historian at the University of British Columbia in Canada, has curated an eclectic mixture of nuclear-themed art, drawn largely from the gallery鈥檚 permanent stores and his own personal collection, to remind us of our shared nuclear history.
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The exhibition space is divided into four areas: The Bomb, Fear, Document and Protest. Not surprisingly, the most wrenching works turn up in Fear. Here Nancy Spero鈥檚 five paintings, particularly Bomb and Victims, stand out for their hallucinatory depictions of mushroom clouds filigreed with human figures vomiting blood and bleeding from wounds. Betty Goodwin鈥檚 Rooted Like a Wedge offers nothing overtly nuclear, but her smudges of grey and tan, abstract at first glance, gradually reveal tortured human figures that build a powerful sense of pain and foreboding.
Other works are more cerebral. Andrea Pinheiro鈥檚 Bomb Book assembles the names of all 2450 nuclear detonations that have taken place since 1945, one per page. The resulting 12-volume set vividly illustrates the scale of nuclear testing. A collection of pamphlets from the 1960s shows bomb shelters and nuclear survival tips, and even, chillingly, includes one called Fun with the Atom. Then there is a series of images from Vancouver photographer Robert Keziere that captures the origins of Greenpeace, which started life in Vancouver as a protest against the US nuclear test on Amchitka Island, Alaska, in 1971.
The centrepiece of the show, however, is Bruce Conner鈥檚 film Crossroads. Wordlessly, it shows a 1946 US nuclear test explosion at Bikini Atoll and its mushroom cloud over and over and over again, in slow motion, from different angles until the viewer feels battered and overwhelmed.
The cloud lingers long after the film ends, an after-image reinforced by the inclusion of Conner鈥檚 other major work, Bombhead, a portrait of a military officer with a mushroom cloud where his head should be. That remembrance is an important counterpoint to the complacency that set in after the end of the cold war. 鈥淭he people I know have forgotten to be afraid of the arms race,鈥� says O鈥橞rian.
鈥淚f we forget these sites were once military, we may foster a blithe acceptance of them as wildlife havens鈥�
It is vital to remember other kinds of military legacies, too, as David Havlick鈥檚 book, Bombs Away, powerfully demonstrates. Havlick, a geographer at the University of Colorado, explores the conversion of old military sites into wildlife refuges.
He visits decommissioned military bases in the US, the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, and the 鈥淚ron Curtain Trail鈥�, a park running the length of the old Iron Curtain that divided eastern and western Europe.
It is easy to see the conversions as ecological success stories 鈥� and in many ways they are. But Havlick is adamant that this coat of green paint mustn鈥檛 obscure the sites鈥� uncomfortable histories and legacies, in many cases of unexploded ammunition, toxic chemicals and human displacement.
If we forget what these sites once were, he says, we may foster a 鈥渂lithe public acceptance of these places as havens for wildlife without examining or holding accountable the actions and institutions that produced such damaged landscapes鈥�. Like O鈥橞rian, Havlick鈥檚 aim is to nettle us out of an easy complacency about our military history and future. Sadly we may not need that nettling now.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he art of remembering鈥�
