Poster of the Week

No Nukes in the Pacific
by Pam Debenham

The original idea for this poster was inspired by an American friend who collects antique Hawaiian shirts telling me that the rarest shirt from the 1950s was one with a design of a bomb blast. The shirt was produced in celebration of the United States doing atmospheric testing on Bikini Atoll. This seemed so contradictory I thought it was worth reinventing the idea in the context of protest. This poster was one I produced in the early 1980s dealing with continual armaments build-up by the super­powers and nuclear testing in the Pacific. Like many Australians, I feel an affinity for the coastal landscape of our country and the sense of our close proximity to our Pacific Island neighbors. The voice of the individual protester is conveyed through the visual map of the shirt.

Artwork © 1984 Pam Debenham