Yhonnie Scarce with David Burns

Yhonnie Scarce introduces her new work, The Near Breeder (2022) with David Burns, researcher in the historiographies of sites of nuclear colonialism.

Together they discuss the British Nuclear tests at Maralinga between 1956-63, then part of the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA), South Australia. Scarce shares the findings of her research through university archives at Birmingham, Oxford and Cambridge, including documents related to the scientific research of German physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, which led to the development of the atom bomb.

About the speakers

Yhonne Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Working with glass, she explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of the material – in particular, corresponding to the crystallisation of desert sand as a result of nuclear testing. In 2020, Scarce collaborated with Lisa Radford on editing The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives), part of A+A Online. Through commissioning and publishing, they generated discussion around the nuclear, memorialisation and the nation state.

David Burns’ practice spans photography, site specific sculpture and spatial intervention, in addition to curation and convening. For two decades, he has written and led transdisciplinary curricula in architecture, art and design in universities in the U.S., Australia and the U.K. From 2009-2015 Burns was the inaugural Director of Photography and Situated Media at the University of Technology Sydney and currently leads Media Studies at the Royal College of Art School of Architecture. He is a co-founder of the N curatorial collective and the Fiction Feeling Frame research collective.