On January 24th, 2025, Jess Holtaway visited The Nuclear Information Centre - a collection of artworks currently accessible at The Wilson Gallery in Cheltenham (until 22nd Feb 2025) and part of an artist-in-residence group exhibition entitled: '(un)told', also featuring work by Millie Elliott, Genaro Martinez Medina and Dominyka Vinčaitė – and interviewed its ‘director’ Nic Pehkonen.
The current, physical manifestation of the Nuclear Information Centre (NIC) provides opportunities for visitors to vote on where they would like the UK’s most hazardous radioactive waste to be buried. Upon entering the centre, visitors are presented with a series of installations inviting consideration of the apparatuses of control within and beyond nuclear energy industries. Nuclear waste burial charms, the design of Geological Disposal Facilities, audio fragments, interviews, mined materials – the NIC ensures that all visitors are equipped with clipboards and hand-outs, building knowledge through engagement with materials and sounds, generating a sense of transparency and care.
This artistic interpretation of the bureaucracy of containing and disposing of nuclear waste is the work of Gloucestershire-based, multi-disciplinary artist Nic Pehkonen. Nic, an employee of a major energy company, makes speculative work based on his research into the nuclear industries and emergent cultures surrounding nuclear technology. The Nuclear Information Centre actively fuses fact and fiction and, in this exhibition, focuses on the current site of Gloucestershire Airport, a place that, speculatively, could become a nuclear waste disposal location. Imagining this future for the site, Nic has created a body of work that explores questions relating to safety, democracy, censorship and archiving.
Speaking about the role of the artist in addressing contemporary ecological and political topics such as this, Nic reflects: “One of the mantras at [the energy company I work for] is to have a questioning attitude and it’s equally important for an artist to have a questioning attitude as well.” Narratives around nuclear technologies can shift and change over time, often in response to nuclear disasters and human energy demands. The complexity of the scientific and technological foundations of these debates can perhaps at times deter further interest. “It’s not a subject that many people have much knowledge of and it’s important to give people food for thought” says Nic. “In a lot of ways, it’s still quite a niche subject even though it’s potentially affecting all of us. I like to give people access into that. Certainly, in how I present work, I like to keep things relatively simple but allow people to form their own opinions about the subject.”
This is where the idea of the NIC fits in, as a model of an accessible visitor centre it speculates on the future of nuclear in an engaging way, using art as a storytelling device. The concept of ‘an information centre’ allows a degree of separation between Nic and NIC. For Nic, thoughtful engagement with the work itself is paramount, he wants to give viewers ‘food for thought’. “I don’t want to be didactic,” he emphasises.
The collection of ‘nuclear waste burial charms’, in ‘The Half-Life Afterlife’, speaks to this ‘storytelling’ approach. Relics of a fictional (but not unfeasible) future, these artefacts tell of an archaeological site in which uncertain, partially obscured stories of survival begin to emerge. “They piece together the stories of our nuclear past from an undisclosed future point in time,” explains Nic, “it’s a nod towards the idea of a museum exhibit, the importance that we give to cultural artefacts – the selectivity of them, which items become important culturally.’
The idea of ‘storytelling’ is central to the (un)told exhibition. Here are ‘stories waiting to be told, found or to emerge,’ describes Nic. The exhibition draws attention to the ways in which we construct our understanding, not just of the world around us, but of ourselves as individuals, how we create memories and foster sense of belonging. (un)told is on until Monday 3rd March 2025, free and open during the normal Wilson gallery opening hours.
