'Interbeing relates to the whole planet is one giant , living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis
Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddhist Monk 1926-2022)
This series of gallery-based works take a more-than-human perspective on our planet's complex biodiversity. They explore the Interbeing between trees, fungi and lichens offering a window into these extraordinary and often invisible environments by playing with scale. They tell visual fabulas (stories) from a non-human perspective informed by recent research (see below) about how complex this symbiosis actually is. These fabulas celebrate this, whilst noting what might be lost given today's climate and environmental crises.
Much of the tree imagery is of Wistman's Wood: one of the UK's last remaining upland ancient woodlands. The lichen-clad oaks are stunted due to living in a challenging upland environment for centuries, but even long-lived trees aren't always agile enough to adjust to the rapidly rising temperatures. The wood is also a contested managed landscape - and how conservation or preservation might or might not be applied to specific biodiversities.
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Each work is inspired by a quote from a contemporary expert in fungi, biodiversity, mycelium, moss or forestry - often this expertise overlaps. They include Merlin Sheldrake, Suzanne Simard, Trevor Goward, Paul Stamets, Peter Wohlleben and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
‘Lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture’ (Trevor Goward)
This small 3D work was created for London's Kingsgate Gallery. It involves double-sided digitally printed images combining extreme close up images of lichen with a life-size fungi.
It relates to the symbiotic relationship between both species. A lichen isn’t a single organism, it is a web that links fungi and algae. Lichen and fungi are symbionts.
Dimensions: 10cm x 10cm x 1cm
'Whilst lichen are often referred to as being as being “immortal" plants, returning to life with a few drops of water and surviving several space missions, they are also indicators of the global changing climate and air pollution, acting as biomonitors. They can live for thousands of years.
Merlin Sheldrake
‘Trees of the same species support each other unconditionally’ (Peter Wohlleben)
This work is a cut out paper filigree of double-sided images of oak trees and mycelium networks. The latter is often referred to as the wood wide web as the mycelial network provides nutrients and allows trees to support each other in fighting predators. It is suspended from a an actual lichen-clad tree branch inserted directly into the wall
Paper is of course, processed tree pulp. The work is suspended from an actual tree branch covered with lichen
Dimensions: 34 cm high x 38cm wide x 17cm deep
‘Lichens are living riddles forcing us to question where one organism stops and another begins’ (Merlin Sheldrake)
This work combines a tree branches with digital paper prints of lichen and fungi. It forms a large scale screen connected by magnets that can traverse a space
The specific families of fungi associated with lichens are the Ascomycota (cup and flask shaped fungi) and the Basidiomycota families of fungi.
The magnets conjoining the lichen and fungi means that this is a highly mutable work that can respond to the specific space. It aims to visualise the dynamic and unstoppable qualities that these organisms embody.
The dimensions are variable.
'It may be rare for wood to escape fungal attention: it is common for fungi to escape ours' (Merlin Sheldrake)
This work explores the Interbeing (interconnection) between trees and stack fungi – Turkeytail fungus (Trametes versicolor). The latter live symbiotically on trees – hence the title. Fungi are both connected and disconnected from trees as they are epiphytes, sitting on the tree’s bark without harming it, yet Turkeytail fungus decomposes the tree’s dead wood. So, this work explores how long-lived trees such as oaks can be simultaneously alive and dead.
It also questions how historical European optical framings such as fore-ground, middle-ground and back-ground operate in arboreal arenas. Forests often elude these “grounds” given that the human eye cannot traverse them easily.
Instead, this work creates a non-perspective based fabula (story) literally and metaphorically foregrounding the fungi’s role in a woodland or forest ecology. It also aims to blur time by implying how dynamic even an ancient oak woodland is through the arrangement of the “dancing” cut-out trees in the “middle-ground”.
Dimensions: 100cm wide x 45cm high x 25cm deep.
The mushroom is the visible top of something deep and elaborate, like a thick lace tablecloth. Knitted into the forest floor'
Suzanne Simard
‘If you were a tiny organism in a forest’s floor, you would be enmeshed in a carnival of activity…’ (Paul Stamets)
This work is a fabula (story) about how trees, fungi and lichen interconnect. It plays with scale – literally fore-grounding the much smaller lichen and fungi to make apparent this carnival of activity. The work can be presented on a bespoke honeycomb cardboard shelf
Dimensions 32cm x 23 cm (not including shelf)
'Gradually, the observer realises that these organisms are connected to each other, not linearly, but in
a net-like, entangled fabric'
Alexander Von Humboldt (Scientist and Explorer 1769-1856)
‘Mycelium is the neurological network of nature’ (Paul Stamets)
This work references both Paul Stamet’s and Suzanne Simards’s research into the key role that mycelium plays in Interbeing. It literally binds a forest together – when we walk there, we walk on a mesh of roots and mycelium. This work aims to make this visible as fungi are the tangible (if brief) emergence of the network’s fruits. It is difficult to imagine the scale of this. To cite Peter Wohlleben, ‘a single mycelium fungus can span an entire forest covering many square miles’
The mushrooms emerging from the mycelium are Wood Mushrooms (Agaricus silvicola)
Dimensions: 50cm wide x 35 cm high x 20 cm deep
A note on being as ethical as possible
The materials used are often sourced from trees: be they paper (double-sided digital prints), recycled honeycomb cardboard, paper tape or tree prunings/storm felled tree branches. The latter include actual lichen.
Magnets and steel wire/pins are used to connect each work’s components together. The magnets are metaphors for the ways that trees, fungi, mycelium and lichen bond together creating networks. It also means that each work can be reconfigured in different ways.
Many of the works/boxes can be flat packed, meaning that they are light and easily transportable and don’t require expensive or wasteful travelling cases.
‘If forests did offer up prayers, I suspect that they would give thanks to the mosses’. (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
Wistman’s Wood supports many rare mosses. Robin Wall Kimmerer says that mosses are the unsung heroes of a forest, despite being so little generally known that only a few of them have been given common names.
This work relates to the role that mosses play in supporting trees by holding water in both the air by raising the area’s humidity and holding rainfall close to their bark as ‘stemflow’. This moisture also supports fungi, which in turn support the trees via the mycelium network , which also distributes water between trees.
Dimensions: 50cm wide x 35 cm high x 20cm deep