Woomera – Field Recording: Liverpool Powerhouse

Yhonnie Scarce

27 Jun - 12 Sep 2026

Yhonnie Scarce’s exhibition Woomera – Field Recording is the outcome of the artist receiving The Blake Established Artist Residency at the 68th Blake Prize (2024). The exhibition features newly made work that uses flags as powerful symbols of identity, culture and history to bring attention to the ongoing impacts of nuclear testing that occurred in Maralinga, South Australia on Kokatha Country between 1952-63 and current weapon testing within the Woomera Prohibited Area, Kokatha Country.

‘Returning to my birthplace of Woomera in South Australia has become a pilgrimage. The Woomera base has, in many ways, shaped my art practice over the years. While the base itself continues to change, the history of the militarisation of my Kokatha Country remains ever present.

For me, creating a body of work that engages with ongoing weapons testing is essential—not only to address the desecration of land, but also to remember what has taken place within the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA).

I see flags as powerful symbols of identity, culture, and history—long used as markers of communication and belonging. Yet they also carry more complex histories, having at times functioned as instruments of colonisation and markers of military occupation. I have created a series of flags from photographs taken during my fieldwork in South Australia, incorporating archival images of nuclear fallout clouds from the Maralinga tests in South Australia undertaken by Britain with Australian Government approval from 1952 to 1963.’
– Yhonnie Scarce

Switch Gallery, Liverpool Powerhouse