















From tour of Maralinga Atomic Testing Grounds, South Australia, 2024
Photographic and video archive
During a three-day tour of the former British atomic bomb test site in the Maralinga-Tjarutja lands of South Australia, Mary Kavanagh created a photographic and video archive documenting the experience.
Located in the remote area to the northwest of Ceduna, visitors stay at the original historic military base built in the 1950s to house the atomic workers.

From solo exhibition: Dust to Dust
The Art Gallery at Casa, Lethbridge, Alberta
7 November 2024 - 11 January 2025
Inkjet prints on Ilford Cotton Rag mounted on Aluminum Panels, 24” x 48” x 1” (x7)
From 1952 to 1963, the British government, with the active participation of the Australian government [1], conducted 12 major nuclear weapons tests and up to 600 minor “dirty” trials in the South Australian outback and off the West Australian coast. Radioactive contamination from the tests was detected across much of the continent. At the time and for decades afterwards, the authorities denied, ignored, and covered up the health dangers for the test workers and for the displaced and affected Indigenous communities. Much of the traditional lands used for the blasts remains radioactive and off limits to this day.
In May 2024, Mary Kavanagh travelled to Maralinga-Tjarutja and toured the 100 square mile testing range where seven atomic bombs were exploded within the much larger militarized territory of the Great Victoria Desert. These highly destructive ground, air, and tower bursts displaced the traditional Anangu people, and were kept hidden from the public. At each of the seven test sites she photographed the sky above. Clouds and skies are often associated with the transcendent, with abstraction and expression, but are here grounded by events tied to a place of historical and lingering violence, raising questions of site specificity in the era of radioactive fallout and toxic drift. In this instance, atmosphere is perceived as both fixed and transient.
Nuclear Weapons Tests at Maralinga, South Australia | Photographed 09-10 May 2024
One Tree, Operation Buffalo 12.9 kt yield (Tower), 170, 27 Sep 1956
Marcoo, Operation Buffalo 1.4 kt yield (Ground-level), 1630, 04 Oct 1956
Kite, Operation Buffalo 2.9 kt yield (Airdrop), 1427, 11 Oct 1956
Breakaway, Operation Buffalo 10.8 kt yield (Tower), 0005, 22 Oct 1956
Tadje, Operation Antler 0.93 kt yield (Tower), 1425, 14 Sep 1957
Biak, Operation Antler 5.67 kt yield (Tower), 1000, 25 Sep 1957
Taranaki, Operation Antler 26.6 kt yield (Balloon), 1615, 09 Oct 1957
1. Canada, suggested in the late 1940s as a possible test location for British bombs, was a more logical ally in nuclear weapons development having already established military partnerships with the U.S and the U.K. Like Australia, and in contrast to the U.K., it had large swathes of lightly populated territory. The British surveyed seven sites in Canada for proposed nuclear weapons testing, but when the Canadians learned that at least 12 major tests were planned that would severely contaminate the land, they declined to participate. In 1950, Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee approached his Australian counterpart, Robert Menzies, who eagerly agreed to a deal. (Elizabeth Tynan, Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story, Sydney: UNWP, 2016)