Deadly Gold

Deadly Gold is a site specific work, which was designed for Geddes Gallery at 5 Caledonian Road in King’s Cross. Two boxes of books about nuclear war were relocated from Hausman’s radical bookshop, based over the road. The books – published between 1950 and 1990 during the Cold War  – were individual selected and given on loan by the shop. Categorised according to 17 different sub-classifications – including nuclear disarmament, women and peace, pacifism, the arms trade and the Iraq War – they offer a printed history of radical critiques of liberalism, capitalism and the arms race.

The installation invites the audience to question the ownership of the books, and asks how our understanding of the books might be renewed or transformed through a gallery context.  The titles and cover images address our fears, both then and now, about a growing global capacity for nuclear destruction.  The original nuclear image – a fallout uniting past documents with future anxieties – has endured over 50 years of anti-war writing.