I highly recommend the Soil show at Somerset House near Waterloo in London. It finishes on 13 April 2025, so catch it if you are in London.
Theme: the little explored world under our feet. Inhabited, apparently, by around half the world's living organisms.
It is a big show, extending through room after subterranean room, including installation art, projections, sculptures, photography and more.
Many of the artists have explored how soil is affected by climate change and human induced environmental damage. Some evidence implies that the fittest survivors of extinction on our planet may be fungal organisms. Or maybe moss.
My favourites highlights:
Hyper Rhizome, 2003 by Diana Scherer.
A textile wall hanging, formed from grown plant roots and plastic car tracks.
A kind of blonde Dougal dog by Fernando Laposse (not sure of the title but he sometimes calls them 'dog bench').
Anguish inducing, wall sized video projection, of a dying mother horse. She is crumpled on the floor or a land fill site, kissing and trying to nurture her newly born foal.
A film by Maeve Brennan, called With Horses, 2023.
A series of photos of a couple in their late years. They stand in front of their bungalow and the photos reveal what they planted in front of it at different times in their lives. This couple were like a mirror image of my Gread Grandmother and Granddad. You can see one of the photos in this Guardian review.
The Sweetmans: A Country Cottage Calendar, 1974 by Ken Griffiths. He commented:
‘their pride and dignity are as much his subject as the land’.
Post 10 of 365
I've decided to commit to 365 days of social media continuity and publish 1 blog post per day for a year.
If you enjoy, learn from, share or benefit from any of the 365 please consider a donation to Macmillan Cancer Support.
A penny per post, 10p per post or even a pound: every little helps! Thank you.
Head over to my Just Giving Page for Macmillan Cancer Support