Have fun-gi's ... King's Lynn exhibition celebrates mushrooms
GroundWork Gallery in Lynn, will be presenting an end-of-year exhibition from Friday, October 22 until Saturday, December 18.
Entitled Nature’s Mysterious Networks it is a timely one for the autumnal season.
It explores and celebrates mushrooms, mycelia and yeasts, some of the more mysterious growths in nature.
The exhibition is spectacular, dominated by Chris Drury’s magnificent floor to ceiling fungi installations and wall drawings and it is also experimental. Alongside Chris are five women artists bringing a whole series of innovations, experiments with growing cultures and remarkable results from fungal investigations.
The exhibition conveys how both mushrooms and mycelia are fascinating, evocative and useful.
Mushrooms possess very contrasting characteristics, as they can be delicious to eat and powerful sources of life for the earth but also represent the death knell for vulnerable plants and people.
The purpose of this exhibition is to encourage the public to appreciate more about the entire world of mushrooms above and below ground, and the deep connections that they share with the environment.
A number of artists are involved in the Lynn exhibition.
Internationally renowned environmentalist artist Chris Drury brings his fresh perspective with his dramatic installations of mushrooms, including the hallucinogenic psylocybins.
The hidden connections in nature become the main focus of his work, drawing from his deep knowledge. Chris Drury said: “Mushrooms can feed you, kill you or cure you. They are nature’s great recyclers”
Painter and biologist Alexandra Steiner paints a world of iridescent forms and patterns, revealing mysterious and hidden aspects of mushrooms and plants.
Her fascination for the micro macrocosmic worlds brought her to find and perfect a multi-layered way to paint it.
She said: “Life as we know it, we as we are, would simply not exist without fungi.”
Artist Myka Baum has a varied background and interests, but her main focus is nature and its many forms. Her work revolves around the concept of growth and decay, ultimately this research ends with nature becoming an image. With specific tools she’s able to record microbiology onto the photographic surface.
Artist, curator, performer and disability culture activist, Moira Williams is based in New York and prefers to be called a person with disabilities or eco-abilities.
Her project Lawnshrooming is an impressive collection of opinions, stories and images about mushrooms. Moira is often inspired by her grandparents journals about mushrooms, that she carries with her as a reminder of her roots.
Alison Counsell is a metalworker, jeweller and sculptor who lives on the borders of Sheffield.
Meditative walks are her way to get inspired, her imagination gets often entangled in the micro world that she calls a smaller natural universe.
The deep connection between tree barks and fungi is the main focus of her detailed and meticulous artwork.
Endlessly experimental, Rachel Horton-Kitchlew is a myco - materials researcher, artist and harpist. Her work focuses on sustainable alternative materials, circular materials system and expanding the appreciation and knowledge of fungi in the urban and natural environment. Urban Fungarium her online research project, is a compendium of her experiments and connections with others.
The gallery in Purfleet Street will be open from Wednesday to Saturday, 11am until 4pm.
There will be an online opening with Assembly Online, in collaboration with the Assembly House Trust, Norwich, on October 28 at 7.30pm
Further information about the GroundWork programme can be found here
