Peace in Pieces

The frontispiece to the exhibition Peace in Pieces is a work on paper with elegant Japanese text that says, ‘I want you to know what happened in front of this child that day’. It is addressed ‘For the children and the people of the world’, from the Atomic Bomb Records Association, now the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima.

The text sits beside a black and white photograph of a child’s bandaged face looking at the camera. Her face is scarred by radiation burns and her gaze is unfocused and likely blind. These so-called “residual victims” lived with the stigma of the atomic bomb, not just on their minds and bodies, but with radiated social stigma.

Piece in Pieces honours the memory and tragedy of Hiroshima, watched over by the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and their descendants and allies – especially archivists, artists, photographers and poets, and the citizens who hold world-wide memorials on the 6 and 9 of August – to mark the date the US dropped two nuclear bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, as children walked to school. The hibakusha legacy continues to press to limit atomic weapons and to stop the escalating wars of annihilation and actions of impunity by heads of states.

Peace in Pieces is part of Peacework, a contemporary exhibition series, which follows I am a woman for peace (Sydney Trades Hall, March-April 2025) looking at Australian women’s protests for peace during the Cold War and the exhibition Forms of Censorship on the history of Australian artworld self-censorship about the “Question of Palestine” (The Cross Art Projects, 2024). Vigilante censorship shows a clear pattern of influence-peddling – one such example is the “IHRA definition” of antisemitism promoted to stifle any criticism of Israel’s apartheid system. Other definitions exist without a national carve-out, as do existing anti-discrimination laws.

• Sydney Trades Hall Atrium, 2 to 29 August 2025

• Opening: Thursday 7 August at 6 pm. Hosted by Hiroshima Day Committee (Sydney). Enter via 377 Sussex St

• Lunchtime Conversation: Thursday 28 August at 12 noon. Hosted by The Cross Art Projects. Enter via 377 Sussex StArtists: Safdar Ahmed, Lux Eterna, Fitri DK, Alex Gawronski, Dodi Irwandi, Thee Oo, Raquel Ormella, Wok the Rock

Prints: Hiroshima-Nagasaki print set (c.1974) and Hiroshima Day archive, International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, Lyn Hovey, Toni Robertson and Chips Mackinolty, Ralf Sawyer, Tin Sheds Workshop (c.1984), and more.

Partners: Jo Holder (The Cross Arts Projects), Neale Towart (Trades Hall Collection, Unions NSW) with Hiroshima Day Committee (Sydney)