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Mary Kavanagh is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge. Since 2005, Kavanagh has researched and documented activities and ephemera at historic and active nuclear sites: her current project Atomic Tourist: Trinity explores nuclear anxiety in the post-Cold War era through interviews with atomic pilgrims at the testing site of the world’s first atomic bomb. Recent explorations in glass, breath and drawing have further addressed the permeable body, vulnerable to imperceptible contaminants and atmospheric fallout.
Kavanagh's art practice is indexical and spatial. It engages a methodology that involves fieldwork, immersive (sensorial) investigation, documentation, collection, performative action and inscription. The places visited are often remote and may require special permissions to access: the work then emerges from navigating a divide between public and privileged zones of industry, knowledge and production. Attentive to residue, trace, dust and the vestiges of time, these sustained and itinerant investigations result in multi-faceted bodies of work, including installation, drawing, photography, video/film projects, book works.
Atomic Suite (2012) established her exploration of the psychosocial spaces shaped by the nuclear age, beginning with the legacies of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. An artist residency with the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah (where the crew trained to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) enabled direct access to historic sites, such as WWII hangars, bunkers, bombing ranges, munitions igloos, craters, etc., as well as opportunities to document contemporary combat training.
Kavanagh is the recipient of numerous grants, awards and residencies and her work has been exhibited in Canada, the U.S., Italy and Japan. She is a member of the Atomic Photographers Guild, an international collective of artists focused on rendering visible the nuclear age.
Image Credit:
Mary Kavanagh, Toxic Drift Triptych: C-4 detonation of Minuteman-I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Rocket Motor, United States Army, Utah Test and Training Range.
Contact:
Jarrett Duncan | jarrett.duncan@uleth.ca