1987 Like Gold in the Furnace

Like Gold in the Furnace was a slide-tape work made in response to the Sizewell B Public Inquiry: Report, a public inquiry into the proposal to construct a nuclear power station at Sizewell, Suffolk. “The application of a value of life at £ one million suggests that it would be difficult to justify spending more than £ three million to reduce further the risks to workers at Sizewell B [...]” The work’s title comes from Wisdom of Solomon 3: 1 – 9: “Like gold in the furnace he tried them and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.”

“Dreamworks—the (un)structured model of dreams— is explored as a form within which to subject rational discourse, particularly that of Nuclear Technology, to (il)logical analysis;—as a means to re-present what is apocryphal in such discourses, and what we repress as individuals in relation to them.”

Text by Monica Ross for Dreamworks publication, Chisenhale gallery, London where the work was first performed; it was continuously revised for performances at “A Week of Performance Art,” Central St Martins School of Art, London; “State of the Nation,” Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry; Red Herring Studios, Brighton and the Leadmill, Sheffield.