Material Nuclear Culture

Submitted by ele on
Tudor Rose, William Morris, 1883. Courtesy Devonport Naval Heritage.
Tudor Rose, William Morris, 1883. Courtesy Devonport Naval Heritage.

Material Nuclear Culture
KARST Gallery, Plymouth
18 June - 14 August 2016
Roundtable: Saturday 18 June
Artists: James Acord, Thomson & Craighead, Erika Kobayashi, David Mabb, Susan Schuppli and Kota Takeuchi.
The exhibition is a partnership between KARST and Arts Catalyst, curated by Ele Carpenter.

Material Nuclear Culture is an exhibition exploring the material traces and cultural legacy of nuclear powered submarines in the UK, within the international discourse of deep time aesthetics and memory. The exhibition highlights the complexity of archiving the cultural legacy of submarine heritage within a wider discussion of how comprehend the deep time challenges of radioactive waste storage.

Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson’s new film, Courageous, follows the material surfaces of a nuclear submarine. Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead’s, Temporary Index, is a digital artwork that counts down decay rates of entombed radioactive waste sites around the world. David Mabb’s new sculptural series, A Provisional Memorial to Nuclear Disarmament, draws on the Royal Navy’s love of William Morris fabric and Morris’s revolutionary politics. Susan Schuppli’s audio work Sound of Sand, investigates the poetics of sonar surveillance.

The exhibition will situate these new works alongside works by Japanese artists investigating the deep time memory over generations. Erika Kobayashi’s ‘Half Life’ calendar maps the intergenerational timescales of radiation between Europe and Japan, through the decay rate of Raduim. Artist Kota Takeuchi will present his work ‘Take Stone Monuments Twice’ revisiting monuments along the Tohoku coast of Japan. The artwork reflects on the tensions between monuments of the past and markers for the future.

This year will mark the end of the Royal Navy fifteen-year public consultation on how to dismantle British nuclear submarines, and where to store the reactor vessels. The Submarine Dismantling Project Advisory Group is the first MOD public consultation with expert advisors, NGO’s and statutory agencies that represent a range of experience and political concerns. The exhibition takes place in the spirit of the advisory group and their commitment to an open and frank discussion about the issues of nuclear dismantling and radioactive waste management.

Material Nuclear Culture: Roundtable Discussion
Saturday 18th June
KARST Gallery, Plymouth
10am – 3.30pm

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/material-nuclear-culture-roundtable-ticke...

A discussion about art and nuclear culture will take place in the center of the Material Nuclear Culture exhibition bringing together artists, submariners, and members of the Submarine Dismantling Project Advisory Group (SDP-AG), and NsubF Nuclear Submarine Forum in the Southeast. Participants include: Les Netherton, chair of the SDP-AG; Mark Portman, WO1, Royal Navy (Submarines); Carien Kremer, Curator, William Morris Gallery; artists: Nick Crowe, David Mabb, Kota Takeuchi, Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead.

The discussion will take place around a reconstruction of James Acord’s roundtable that he built in his Hanford studio, USA 1999, to bring together environmentalists and people from the nuclear industry to discuss the clean up of the Hanford site.

Partners
The Material Nuclear Culture exhibition is produced by KARST and Arts Catalyst, curated by Ele Carpenter with support from: Arts Council England, Goldsmiths College University of London, University of Westminster, Sasakawa Foundation, and Bildmuseet Sweden. The research and development of the exhibition was also supported by AHRC, npo S-Air and the Daiwa Foundation.
http://karst.org.uk/