Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

Museum of Nuclear Waste

AA
View Discussion

Auckland

Nicholas Mangan
Black perils and pearls
Ed Grothus’ Doomsday Stones



22 August - 19 September 2009

Nick Mangan is a Melbourne sculptor and film-maker preoccupied with global politics and social/historical issues in the Pacific region. His short film at Gambia Castle presents the views of Edward Grothus (1923-2009), a machinist and technician who during the fifties and sixties was employed in the Los Alamos National Laboratory to aid the development of nuclear weapons. His work helped create bombs thirty times more powerful than those dropped on Japan in 1945. Grothus resigned in 1969 during the Vietnam War to become a peace activist.

Grothus died early this year of colon cancer, but Mangan’s film gives us a good look at his activities within the Museum of Nuclear Waste he set up in Los Alamos, and his attempts to erect in the township two ten metre tall, granite obelisks on Rosetta Stone-type bases bearing fifteen translations of a warning text. One metre wide, soccer ball-like granite spheres, showing the structures of nuclear fission, were to be placed on top of each column, and the obelisks’ sides bore anti-nuclear logos accompanied by aphorisms such as ‘one bomb is too many’, ‘always build; never destroy’ and ‘no one is secure unless everyone is secure.’

Mangan’s film is accessible and informative. I had never heard of Grothus and so I’m pleased I saw it. However it is a conservative approach to film usage and so very odd for Gambia Castle. It’s not particularly exciting in its use of the medium, but pragmatic. Out to save the human species from its own stupidity, so no interest in innovation. Educational.

 

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Olafur Eliasson, Life is lived along lines, 2009; Installation view: Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, 2024; Photo: David St George; Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin

Superb Eliasson

AUCKLAND ART GALLERY TOI O TAMAKI

Auckland

 

Olafur Eliasson
Your curious journey

 

7 December 2024 - 23 March 2025

JH
Jenny Holzer, STATEMENT - Truisms +, 2015, a four-sided vertical LED sign: with RGB diodes, stainless steel housing, robotic rotator and hoist, © 2015 Jenny Holzer, ARS. Photo: Collin LaFleche.

Holzer’s Cascading Truisms

AUCKLAND ART GALLERY TOI O TAMAKI

Auckland

 

Jenny Holzer
STATEMENT - Truisms +, 2015

Curated by Natasha Conland

 

27 March 2024 - 9 March 2025

JH
Gretchen Albrecht, Receptum, 1988, gouache and collage on paper, six panels, 2140 x 4700 mm (overall)

Collaging Albrecht

TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY GALLERY

Titirangi

 

Gretchen Albrecht
Liquid States


3 November 2024 - 2 February 2025

JH
Ralph Paine, À la Leibnitz, eight framed drawings of watercolour and pencil. Each 230 x 310 mm.

Paine as Fan Boy

CHARLES NINOW

Auckland

 

Ralph Paine
Leaves From a Pillow Book

 

December 5 - December 21, 2024