From Nuclear Bombs to Nuclear Bullets

Co-exhibitors:

Carole Gallagher (US)

This exhibition at The Edge Gallery represented the culmination of a documentary project about the use and effects of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. These new generation of anti-tank shells were made from the waste products of the nuclear industry, yet were defined as a conventional firearms. The Edge gallery presented research suggesting that by current criteria they fit the definition of a chemical and radiological weapon. In Britain and America when DU is produced as a by-product of uranium enrichment it is classified as nuclear waste, yet as a weapon it becomes 'conventional'.

Operation Desert Storm was promoted as a 'clean' war on the allied side yet these highly toxic and radioactive 'nuclear bullets' were used by the British and American armies. The Gulf War was the first opportunity that the US and British forces had to test their DU weapons in combat conditions. They have contaminated Iraq's soil and water table with toxic and carcinogenic dust that will last 4,500million years. The dust released from these uranium tipped shells as they explode causes genetic damage and has been linked to rises in childhood cancers in Iraq since the Gulf War.

The exhibition included documentation of earlier research into the lasting effects of radiation in the form of Carole Gallaghers and Archive photographic material from the Nevada test bombings and the post-Hiroshima medical analyses.