Seconds to Midnight

by Min Simans and Steve Warburton

Eighty years ago, the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki set a new precedent in modern warfare and human suffering.

Local artists Steve Warburton and Min Simans both have responded to the events with recent artworks, retelling the story.

By utilising symbolic and iconic imagery they have constructed multi-layered works in oil and photographic manipulation which seek to comprehend the unfathomable. Their works bear witness to a chapter in history that casts a long shadow upon us and poignantly remind us of the continuous existential threat humanity is facing.

About the Artists

Steven Warburton is an artist based in Emerald, Victoria, who has exhibited extensively throughout Melbourne and beyond since completing a Fine Arts degree at Monash University. His paintings and drawings are held in private and public collections across Australia and internationally.

Warburton's practice explores the complexities of a rapidly changing world, questioning how humanity is evolving or perhaps devolving in response to social and environmental shifts. Drawing inspiration from human history, the natural environment, and stories and photographs from his family's past, his work reflects on change, memory and the forces that shape our collective experience. Through evolving imagery and layered narratives, Warburton creates works that invite contemplation of both personal and universal transformations.

Mindaugas (Min) Simankevicius is a photo-painter and collagist whose practice operates at the intersection of image, memory, and cultural construction. Working through the appropriation, disruption, and reassembly of photographic material, he interrogates accepted narratives and the mechanisms through which meaning becomes fixed. His works seek to destabilise familiar readings, exposing the ambiguities, omissions, and assumptions embedded within collective memory.

Central to his practice is an exploration of inherited histories and the tension between personal and national identity. Born in Australia during the Cold War to Baltic parents displaced by Soviet occupation, Simankevicius occupies a position between cultures, histories, and systems of belonging. This dual perspective informs a body of work that examines migration, myth-making, ideological inheritance, and the continual rewriting of historical narratives.

Historical Context

‘Bomb’s away’ - at 8:15am on 6 August 1945 the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on the unexpecting city of Hiroshima. The destruction of the city was complete. Tens of thousands of people died instantly, many more in weeks and months to come.

Through acts of visual reconstruction, Simankevicius creates works that function as speculative propositions rather than conclusions, inviting viewers to reconsider established truths and engage with the instability of history, memory, and representation.

Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki forcing the Japanese Government to surrender and bringing about the end of WWII in the Pacific. These were the only times atomic weapons have ever been used.

Since 1945, over two thousand nuclear bombs have been tested globally, atmospherically and underground. Nine countries possess nuclear weapons that can destroy the world many times over: USA, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea.

Despite an interactional agreement to disarm expressed in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) and a United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2019) these states continue to maintain, diversify and modernise their nuclear arsenals.

Following WWII, the independent organisation Bulletin of Atomic Scientists invented the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic measure of the likelihood of human-made global catastrophe. As of 27 January this year, the clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight. The closest it has ever been.

Resources:
www.defconlevel.com

Take action:
www.icanw.org