BLACK MIST BURNT COUNT is an exhibition which commemorates the British Atomic tests at Maralinga in remote outback Australia in the nineteen fifties. As the first survey exhibition of its kind it brings together artworks by Australian artists from the last seven decades including World War 2 modernists, contemporary artists born in the nineteen fifties, artists of the protest movement of the late nineteen seventies/eighties, Aboriginal artists from the nineties onwards, a younger generation born nineteen seventies and after (Gen X and Y).
The story of the Black Mist is retold through the works of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists. The exhibition title refers to it whilst ‘burnt country’ refers the atomic blast score and melting the earth.
The story of the ‘black mist’ has been thoroughly investigated and documented in the 1984 ROYAL COMMISSION (McLelland Commission) into the British Nuclear Tests. While its occurrence in 1952, as a result of the first atomic test at Emu Field has been testified by both Aboriginal witnesses and white land owners in the region, the phenomenon has never been explained scientifically.
All pics by Ben Apfelbaum (c).
