Solarium

In a speculative scenario that complicates the promise of neoclassical virtue and technological utopia, Solarium marks Amélie Mckee’s debut solo exhibition at Plicnik Space Initiative in London. Curated by Kollektiv Collective, the exhibition brings together sculptures, found objects and spatial interventions in a site-specific, immersive installation. Staging how value, form and function change in relation to power over time, the exhibition challenges our relationship to the idea of progress.

Through material manipulations, Solarium considers how aesthetic frameworks galvanise forms of authority: from homogeneous culture to governmental bodies to art institutions. Marble, a signifier of wealth, is rendered as a soft-textured carpet, its individual sections misaligning into what looks like hazard warning stripes. Central to the exhibition space, two sculptural columns reference neoclassical architecture, commonly present in governmental buildings and museums to transmit authority. Dislocated onto the floor next to them, the Ionic column top is 3D-printed, its ancient character undermined by its deceptively light material. This recurring, deliberate artificiality suggests the extent to which said frameworks are themselves synthetic.

The metal design of the two columns is equally inspired by Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower, an unrealised project that intended to innovate wireless transmission. Borrowing a techno-utopian form, Mckee’s sculptures appear to harvest, transmit, or generate energy. As if a substitute for a power source, vintage uranium glass salad plates sit at the centre of the pillars. A byproduct of radium extraction, uranium glass became widely used in tableware and decorative objects in the 1920s–30s. Subsequently, its production rapidly declined as uranium supplies were restricted for nuclear weapons during the Cold War: a case of scientific research allegiance with the military-industrial complex. First home decor, then a war strategic asset, the history of uranium glass is a testament to how functional, symbolic and aesthetic roles shift with technological and socio-political development.

The fluorescence of the uranium glass is activated by the UV of the industrial insect lights installed in the space: their 365nm wavelength, at which insect vision is most responsive, is coincidentally the same one used to assess the purity of uranium glass. It similarly lights up the Monster energy drink – due to high riboflavin content – that fills the 1928 glass pin tray, known as “Girl in a Pool”, which floats above the floor-based column top. The hostility of an everyday appliance intended to kill, of the toxic-looking tableware and the glowing popular drink, goes hand in hand with the hostility embedded in the authoritarian co-opting of aesthetics.

The antagonistic scenography is contrasted with the soothing effects of the sound piece that emits winter storm ambience, echoing how the hard stone is made soft to walk on. The resulting setting is purposefully ambiguous, channelling the liminality of a display window, the sterility of a laboratory, and the surrealism of a simulation. In Solarium, all elements are at the mercy of context – referencing how systems of legitimacy are founded on contradictions.