About the project:

Fruiting Body explores the poetic sympathies between gothic architecture and contemporary biodesign.

A gothic pinnacle, sculpted out of unfired, oyster mushroom-innoculated clay, sits in a vitrine. Over the course of the three-week exhibition, the fungi dispersed throughout the sculpture begin to grow. Their breath fogs up the glass and they weave a delicate fuzz of mycellium strands across the surface of their home.

Where the architects of gothic revivalism saw advantages in the emergent, decentralised and non-rationalised approach of gothic architecture, the biodesigners of today find inspiration in the emergent, decentralised and non-rationalised qualities of biological systems.

An architectural element, with vegetal form, rendered in earth, inhabited by fungi.

Gallery:

Attributions:

Sculpting by Jack Handscombe.

With space, support and materials from Powderhall Bronze.

Commissioned for the Talbot Rice Gallery's inaugural student exhibition, Trading Zone 2018, with curation by James Clegg.

Inspired by the work of architectural historian Lars Spuybroek, whose book The Sympathy of Things drew links between Victorian architecture and contemporary digital design.