Four Tellings: Reading a West Cumbrian minerology

Drawing together ideas from the ancient art of geomancy and the potential for self-revelation that The Tarot offers, Four Tellings is an imaginative unlocking of the divinatory powers of the minerology of West Cumbria. Taking into account the ongoing prospect of a deep geological repository for nuclear waste in the region, this minerology is bound together by Bentonite clay, a non-native material that would potentially form part of a geological containment system for radioactive substances. Bentonite clay is an essential part of the containment system at Onkalo in Finland, the site of the first deep geological repository in the world to be near completion and ready to receive radioactive materials. Bentonite clay can prevent water from reaching and corroding the cannisters that will contain radioactive materials and at the same time it can slow the movement of any radionuclides that may escape from these cannisters once they have been buried deep underground. The artwork seeks to find a voice for the more-than-human participants in this deep geological construction project, a system for re-mining materials that is designed to last in to a deep time future, spanning timescales that go beyond the human experience. It is an imagined conversation across time between minerals associated with the extractive history of West Cumbria, the resulting industrial waste of the present time and materials that are planned for use in the construction of future subterranean interventions into the West Cumbrian landscape.