Hunterston B
NOT
November 2024
When an object is backlit, its form is both illuminated and revealed (a mobile phone or computer screen), darkened and dramatised (a movie monster or Rembrandt’s The Night Watch). Such impulses are contradictory, highlighting a simultaneous desire for darkness and light, the effects rendered through human manipulation with a deliberate if at times disguised intent.
Uranium glass (mixed with harmless levels of sodium diuranate for its yellow-green colouring) and neon tubing (glass-held gasses light-activated by electric currents) are alive with such opposing impulses. Their forms radiate intensity, as if lit from within, but the motives behind them are ulterior, having been transformed into subliminal vessels of advertising and art. As Caitlin Casey recently observed of NOT’s work: ‘The uneasy fluorescent glow of uranium glass is a reminder that our pursuit of scientific discovery can also lead to our downfall.’
Indeed, what are the post-human impacts of these material manipulations? Installation works such as the china syndrome II, activated bamboo I & II act similarly as cautionary tales, warning us how something which spends much of its time underground (bamboo) can burst with noxious energy when conditions become unchecked, not unlike a nuclear spill.
At the heart of Hunterston B is glass – now, ironically, being celebrated by the UN, for its environmentally sustainable and life-affirming properties (scientists are currently utilising glass as a way to stabilise nuclear waste through a process of vitrification). By contrast, Hunterston B reveals an artistic medium that is more contradictory and volatile: a material made of molten form through cooling, harnessing fragility and strength, darkness and light.
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