In Cockatoo Island's cavernous power generation room, banks of switches and electrical dials line the walls, vast generators are bolted to the tessellated floor and dusty tools lie on benches, apparently undisturbed for decades.
It takes only a modest flight of fancy to imagine a manic Victor Frankenstein running up and down the gantry in a lightning storm, throwing levers to awaken his creation from slumber.And it could not be a a lot of good setting for a brand new installation from Yukinori Yanagi, a number one Japanese up to date creator whose work typically references the technological "monsters" created by humanity.
Suspended from the ceiling of the area is what seems to be a personality's eyeball, 2.5 metres in diameter.
Projected onto the attention, because it flicks disconcertingly round the area, ar pictures of nuclear tests within the Pacific. All the whereas, it's among massively amplified rumbling sounds recorded from the explosions.
The result of the work, Landscape With a watch, that is an element of the Sydney Biennale, is each eerie and compelling.
In distinction to the violent imaging he employs, 59-year-old Yanagi, WHO lives in urban center, could be a mild, quietly spoken man.
Speaking through associate degree interpreter, he's unwilling to elucidate his work too closely, preferring the viewer to succeed in their own conclusions.
"You could think of it like the eye of the god watching humans repeatedly doing nuclear weapons experiments," he says. "Repeating this violent activity."
Then he adds: "Nuclear fusion is like a man-made sun. Our technology is too close to god's creation."
Yanagi was born in Fukuoka in 1959 and went on to study in the US. The turbulence of world politics and, in particular, the vast changes in postwar Japan have had a great effect on his art.
He is perhaps best known for his work World Flag Ant Farm, which was recognised in the 1993 Venice Biennale. In the work, 49 Perspex boxes each contain national flags created from sand. A colony of ants travels between the boxes via clear tubes, gradually breaking down and mixing the flags.
"What is nation, what is a state, what is a border?" Yanagi asks.
Landscape With An Eye is one of three works Yanagi is installing on Cockatoo Island, all touching on the same, broad themes.
In the Rectifier Room, Absolute Dud is a steel replica of the Hiroshima bomb hung from the ceiling, providing "an ominous, physical reminder of the consequences of the misuse of power".
Meanwhile, Icarus Container, in the Turbine Hall, is a complex tunnel of shipping containers that represents "capitalism and global networks of distribution".
In the face of all this, does Yanagi find room for optimism?
"For myself I am optimistic, but for the world I think there is no hope," he says. "So people have to do something."
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