FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
James Rutherford 505-204-6034
Rosé Cohen 505-988-5188
http://www.tonypriceatomicartist.com
SWORDS
INTO PLOWSHARES / TONY PRICE : ATOMIC ART
SCULPTURE CREATED FROM COMPONENTS OF THE NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
UNITED NATIONS – GENERAL ASSEMBLY VISITORS’ LOBBY –
NEW YORK
MAY 2 – JUNE 9, 2005
An exhibition of 20 sculptures by Tony Price (1937-2000), created from
nuclear weapons salvage, will be on display at the United Nations from
May 2nd through June 9th in the South Gallery of the General Assembly
Visitors’ Lobby, located at 1st Avenue at 46th Street in New York.
Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 9:30 – 4:30, Saturday &
Sunday 10:00 – 4:30. This exhibition, originally displayed at
the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, is being presented in conjunction
with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference and the 60th
anniversary of the UN and is supported by New Agenda Coalition (NAC)
member nations Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, and
Egypt, and by Governor and Mrs. Bill Richardson and the New Mexico Department
of Cultural Affairs.
In the late 1960s, artist and counter-culture icon Tony Price settled
in New Mexico and discovered the Zia Salvage Yard at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory. He was inspired to use the detritus of the world’s
most advanced nuclear weapons program to create an art that spoke to
Man’s deeper instinct for peace. With grace and wit and brilliance
he fashioned the forms of nuclear destruction into icons of peace in
an eloquent appeal for sanity and survival. Out of the angry arsenals
of terror, Price created weapons of mass salvation and he called them
Atomic Art.
There is wit as well as prophecy in Price’s vision, and he uses
irony as a way of slipping past our guard. His creative process connects
Price to other artists of his generation, who also worked outside the
mainstream to address its ills. A redemptive art, using recycled found
objects, and appropriating the iconography and symbolism of native cultures
and world religions, Price’s Atomic Art makes us smile, and it
makes us think. It’s a potent combination.
//