Council Refuses Gallery Space for Gaza Names Installation
Shoalhaven Council in New South Wales has refused to let the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery in Nowra show Wall of Tears, an art installation that lists the names of children killed in Gaza. The work will now be shown at the Berry Uniting Church, a church in the town of Berry, from Thursday, 5 November, according to ArtNews.
The installation is by the artist Phil Buehler. It carries the names of 18,457 children killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 19 July 2025, according to ArtNews. Gaza is the Palestinian territory where the war between Israel and Hamas has been fought.
The Nowra exhibition was organised by Shoalhaven Friends of Palestine, a local group. It had been planned for the gallery, which is run by the council, the local government for the Shoalhaven area on the south coast. The council refused, and The Guardian reported that the decision was made on safety grounds.
A council spokesperson said the installation was judged to pose an unacceptable level of risk to gallery staff, visitors and tenants. The council also told organisers to look into hiring armed guards in case community conflict broke out. Organisers were advised not to advertise the exhibition, and the planned run was cut from eight days to three.
The work has been on display before. It was first shown publicly in New York on 29 January, the second anniversary of the death of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl whose death drew wide attention. In September it was displayed in front of Parliament House in Canberra, Australia's national capital. It has also toured Adelaide and Perth.
Organisers now have a new venue. The Berry Uniting Church will host the display, and the exhibition's reach will depend on how many people visit it during the shorter run. Neither the council nor the organisers have said what the Berry event will look like beyond the dates reported so far.
The story sits at the point where art, public space and grief for a large loss of life meet. A council has to weigh its duty to staff and visitors against a community group's wish to show a work in a public building. Buehler's installation asks visitors to read names, one after another, and the decision about where those names can be read has now moved from a gallery to a church hall.
