My practice draws from site and is rooted in the ritual of daily walks and slow looking, desiring to explore the endless threads of connections between ecology and visual art. I am interested in collaborating directly with the natural world. Through an embodied practice, I use alternative photography processes, site-specific sculpture, growth, dance and moving image to facilitate a dialogue between the multiple perspectives within a landscape. This installation is a grow house of collaborative experiments with the aim to facilitate creative exchanges between Plants and Fungi while exploring ideas of distributed authorship.Working with nature as partner, we harness sun and water for fabrication. Wheatgrass roots grow into handmade moulds inspired by celebratory solar symbolism found on Bronze Age sun shields. Oyster mushroom mycelium is grown in simple shapes using waste packaging: offering the mycelium control over the shapes and forms they will choose to explore themselves. Greenhouse Studio is modelled on circular economy. Substrates like cardboard, sawdust and wool, typically seen as waste products, are used as catalysts for new growth of oyster mushrooms. The windowpanes were graciously donated by a local business. The sawdust from the timber cuts was mixed within the mycelium substrate. The wheatgrass is producing oxygen which is vital for the mycelium and the mycelium produces c02 which is vital the wheatgrass. Entering into the greenhouse, you become part of this living, circular ecosystem. With the aid of a microscope, a sample of the mycelium is on display, showing the rhizomatic hyphal threads, embodying the interconnectedness of all. Greenhouse Studio questions our conveyor-belt culture of consumption; offering an alternative: a personal, collaborative, sensory experience of slow design through growth. This installation is inspired by research in biomimicry, synthetic biology, and discourses surrounding conservation, natural resources and man-made wildness.
