AIR: Yhonnie Scarce
Yhonnie Scarce
Kokatha and Nukunu peoples
Australia b.1973
Cloud Chamber 2020
Glass
760 x 350cm
Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria
Cloud Chamber 2020 is based upon the form of a rising atomic cloud after a devastating nuclear blast. Hand-blown yam shapes in glass hang in the air like inverted raindrops capturing the light. Whereas clouds usually signal rain on Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce’s desert Country in South Australia, this unsettled cumulus suggests something less welcome — a toxic plume raining poison on the land.
Yhonnie Scarce’s Cloud Chamber 2020, installed for ‘Air’, April 2023 / Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria / © Yhonnie Scarce / Photograph: J Ruckli, QAGOMA
Cloud Chamber was conceived as a memorial in response to the British nuclear tests conducted at Maralinga, South Australia, between 1953 and 1963. Drawing on historical photographs, Scarce communicates the virulent force of the airborne radiation which had a devastating impact on her people.
The glass yams refer to traditional bush foods that could no longer sustain Aboriginal communities in the scarred earth of the bombs’ aftermath. Suspended and inert, they bear a haunting resemblance to brutalised organs.
Work installed at GOMA for 'Air' (l–r): Rachel Mounsey's ‘Mallacoota fires in the sky’ series (detail) and Thu Van Tran's Rainbow herbicides 2018 / Collection: QAGOMA; and Yhonnie Scarce's Cloud Chamber 2020 / Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville / © The artists / Photograph: M Campbell, QAGOMA
Scarce’s use of glass connects vitally to Country. Silica in the desert sand, melted by the intense heat of the blasts, turned to glass. Heated and shaped by the artist’s breath, this is a medium she returns to frequently, finding in its lightness, clarity and transparency the qualities necessary for truth-telling.
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