Sculpture shares message of peace among survivors

Lutheran pastor Russell Bryant and other artists from remote Aboriginal communities on South Australia’s Far West Coast, have taken a message of peace to Japan.

The message was in the form of a bronze sculpture, which now stands in the Nagasaki’s Peace Park. The gift from the communities of Yalata, Oak Valley/Maralinga, whose land and people suffered from the British nuclear tests of the 1950s, represents the connection between Japanese and Australian atomic survivors.

The Australian delegation, which travelled to Japan in April, included Anangu artists and leaders Jeremy Le Bois (Maralinga Tjarutja Council) and Pastor Russell (Yalata Community Inc), as well as Deputy Mayor Josh Wilson from Fremantle Western Australia, the lead city of the Mayors for Peace Australia group.

Mayor Taue of Nagasaki City and other Japanese dignitaries and Hibakusha (atomic survivors), officially received the gift.

Titled The Tree of Life: Gift of Peace, the sculpture was inspired by last year’s 70^th anniversary commemorations of the atomic bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. It came about after a delegation including Pastor Russell visited the Peace Park last year as part of the anniversary.

‘There were sculptures from many places but there was nothing from Australia’, he said. The Yalata men’s sculpture group, of which Pastor Russell is a member, led the design and artwork of the sculpture.

The cast bronze work depicts a piti or dish, originally carved from wood, which is cradled by the branches of a local ‘cadja’ or Mallee tree. The piti, which has been used by Aboriginal people for carrying babies, food, and water, represents the gift of peace. The tree is the provider of life, safety and shelter, Pastor Russell said. The sculpture also represents the sharing of resources between families, communities and nations in the search for peace and harmony.

The sculpture venture has been part of a community arts project being run with remote Indigenous communities affected by the British nuclear tests. The project is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, and in 2015 was awarded the Graham F. Smith Foundation’s annual major grant prize.

Now Pastor Russell would like to see a peace sculpture in the Far West of SA to complete the links between the atomic survivors across two continents. This would be a means to engage the community and keep the story shared between generations, as well as to help people outside the local communities to recognise the legacies of the Australian-British testing. ‘Now we want to turn the eyes of the people who visit Maralinga from what happened there to peace’, he said.

For more information on the Yalata men’s sculpture project and the Nagasaki presentation, visit the Nuclear Futures webpage.