‘Soil’ Exhibition at Somerset House, London.
Last week (5/02/2025) I visited the new ‘Soil’ exhibition at Somerset House. I had seen it advertised on social media and was keen to get a ticket as soon as I could. The idea of soil fascinates me and has been considered in my research and art practice throughout studying nature and trees. In the past I have explored making work centred around the idea of soil and its properties making some exploratory work but I ended up being drawn back to trees and the wider sense of nature. But I think it is definitely something that I believe will be an important aspect as I continue to make work and explore nature more in depth. Soil is such an important part to have a healthy ecosystem. With my work with seeds and trees, I can’t really ignore the impact of soil and how some of my research will be geared towards this.
My work with soil also relates to my ideas when making work with roots. I think soil will always be featured in my work in one way or another and I was really excited to see this exhibition and see what inspiration could feed into my ongoing practice.
I came away from the exhibition really inspired by thinking about directly using soil in my drawings - how I could make inks and ceramics was particularly thought provoking and again, like my work now, how I can work in collaboration with nature to continue to make work, looking at this aspect of using soil.
Below are images of work I thought were interesting and some explanations and links I made to my own work. I also wrote some thoughts as I wandered around the exhibition which I have bullet-pointed below.
Figure 1. Gallaccio, A. (2001) Earth, my Likeness. [Direct Cast Bronze] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
This was a piece by Anya Gallaccio which was exciting to see as I have referred to her work in my research for my own practice, but I haven’t actually ever seen her work in real life. Her work in this exhibition was a selection of cast bronze potatoes. There were quite a few ceramic sculptures in this exhibition and it made me think of the clay frottages I have made. I have also begun to experiment with making clay imprints from seeds and other objects directly from nature. This was interesting to see and has inspired me to maybe continue developing this further and explore with further imprints. The work highlights permanence - the ‘specimens are frozen in time, sprouted but forever halted in their journey to planthood or decomposition.’ This idea of permanence is something I speak about in my work about recording an archive of that object in that moment in time. I see this in likeness to my frottage work and the clay imprints I began exploring with. This is something that I would definitely like to continue exploring. ‘Sculptured in bronze… they are also elevated from the apparently ordinary to a place of artistic celebration.’
Figure 2. Pearl, J. (2024) Oddkin. [ceramic] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Figure 3. Pearl, J. (2024) Oddkin. (close up) [ceramic] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
This was one of the first pieces at the start of the exhibition by artist Jo Pearl. A ceramic installation. ‘Pearl has dedicated much of her practice to shining a light on the awe-inspiring abundance, diversity and importance of life hidden in the ground. In this piece, she has created a world of organisms and creatures found in healthy, life-filled soil in clay.’ The name of the work relates to ‘Donna Harway’s coinage of the term ‘making oddkin’ which describes the need for novel combinations of and collaborations between humans and on-humans. Pearl’s strange characters are our ‘oddkin’, without whom there is no food or life on earth.’
I was also drawn to another work but Jo Pearl which was another ceramic piece on a smaller scale. I liked the organic forms she had created but also how they had no colour. It reminded me of bleached coral. It seemed like quite a raw piece compared to her ‘Oddkin’ installation.
Figure 4. Pearl, J. (2023) Unearthed Mycelium. [ceramic] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
One of the pieces in the exhibition caught my attention as it was a collaboration with Merlin Sheldrake. I read his book titled ‘Entangled’ so I was intrigued to spend some time with this work.
Figure 5. Corker-Marin, Q with Sheldrake, M. (2024) Fly Agaric I. [video installation] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
‘‘Marshmallow Laser Feast’ combines meticulous research with cutting-edge extended reality technology and a playful sensibility. ‘Fly Agaric I’ takes us on an underground dreamlike fungal journey, capturing the otherworldliness of mushroom species. The video is narrated by biologist Merlin Sheldrake and the work highlights the remarkable capacity of fungi to act as a bridge between below and above ground.’ This work was made with a collaboration of artists and specialists, but lead artist was Quentin Corker-Marin.
I was intrigued by the next piece, ‘Earth Pigments’ by artist Julia Norton. It was a short video detailing how soil has been used by humans as a material of artistic representation and expression. I wanted to note down what was said in the video and I made some bullet points:
Core of our life
Core of the earth
Humbling - when you think about the power the earth has
Part of being a human is to hold something, get your hands on it, develop a relationship with it
What can I make with this? What stories can I tell with this?
Ochre pigment - what you get from the ground
First ever pigment to be used - red ochre - iron oxide - contains that life force
Figure 6. Hadjithomas, J and Joreige, K. (2018) Trilogies: Monastiraki. [series of 12 works on paper (photography, drawing and handwriting)] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
I was drawn to how these works are presented in the exhibition. It gave me an archival feel. I liked the use of text and recording of the details of each of the drawings and photographs. I draw a lot from photographs, even traces from the detailed bark photography that I take, so this was intriguing to me and made me consider how I might present work in this way. Using text also to explain the type of tree I have drawn and its qualities that drew me to it.
‘Since 2016, Hadjithomas and Joreige have been collecting core samples from Athens, Beirut and Paris… ‘Trilogies’ takes these samples as a starting point to explore how the material imprint lets both human actions and natural events produce varying historical narratives whilst acting as scientific markers of time.’
This work comes from a project called Unconformities which is an ongoing project.
A quote from Hadjithomas and Joreige “In a collapsed world, we felt the need to look at what is beneath our feet. We first started to be interested in the undergrounds, soils and subsoils of cities, when we stumbled upon drilling cores. In those cores, each city’s subterranean world is revealed and history materialises not as layers but as actions, a palimpsest of epochs and constant cycles of destruction and reconstruction of civilisations past and present…. Unconformities create a narrative of place out of ecological and planetary perturbations, thus addressing the unit of geological time which marks the lasting impact of human activity on the environment.”
Figure 7 (close up 1). Hadjithomas, J and Joreige, K. (2018) Trilogies: Monastiraki. [series of 12 works on paper (photography, drawing and handwriting)] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Figure 9. Whall, M. (2024) When Earth Speaks - Dirty Pricks. [Pinpricks on paper] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Figure 10 (close up 1). Whall, M. When Earth Speaks - Dirty Pricks. [Pinpricks on paper] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
At first I wasn’t overly keen on this piece but it actually made me reflect on my own labour intensive processes of drawing and how similar this process was. This piece is an abstract representation of a landscape. ‘Whall was invited to respond to the work of scientists collecting data from an upland soil sensor network…. Whall took a critical approach to create a series of durational drawings, employing pinpricks on paper. A months worth of pinpricks (data points) - 443,520 pricks - cover the surface of a 10m roll of paper. Her aim was to embody the data, explore its nature and repurpose it as material… Whall challenges perceptions of data, landscape and the evolving relationship we have with both.’
Each description of work in the exhibition, also had a quote from the artist about their work. Whall says “I live and work in west Wales where I engage in both solo and collaborative practices in my garden studio, in the mountains and in the theatre. In the studio, I am developing an ongoing meditative and labour-intensive series of durational drawings and sculptures based on hundreds of thousands of data points derived from scientific studies on natural phenomena such as sil, seeds, peat bogs and glaciers.” - this made me think about how my work is similar in terms of the labour intensive and meditative approaches to how I make work.
Kim Norton was an artist that had made work creating clay pots which she titled ‘Soil Library’.
Figure 11. Norton, K. (2017 - ongoing) Soil Library. [Porcelain, local soils, clay soils, earth materials] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Figure 12 (close up 1). Norton, K. (2017 - ongoing) Soil Library. [Porcelain, local soils, clay soils, earth materials] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Kim Norton trained as a ceramicist but has moved away from ‘formal design approaches and towards an exploratory, research-led relationship with clay that focuses on its materiality and its spatial, geographical and geological context. I thought about my work in relation this Norton’s in terms of collecting aspects of nature to work with back in the studio and also in relation to an ‘archiving’ process in the art practice. She collects soils from locations across the UK and Europe. ‘She mixes each sample with 100 grams of porcelain and fashions a simple pinch pot.’
Kim says “it has become ritualistic for me, when visiting new locations, to carry small bags and a marker pen with the intention of mindfully collecting a sample of local soil. It could be from an upturned tree, roadworks, or the edge of farmland… This process began in 2017 as a soil archive or material library that existed solely for my own reference, but as it increased in size it quickly became evident that what was emerging was an evolutionary piece of work, in which each object reveals a small part of place in relation to its geological topography.”
Another work I was drawn to, due to its use of natural materials in the physical work, was Diana Scherer. I liked her work particularly, as it touched on textile materials which is something that I find myself drawn to often. I think I am intrigued by the textures of textile work. ‘This textile captures the tactility and strength of plant roots. Scherer plays with boundaries of ‘natural’ and ‘manmade’ manipulating roots into their own digital artworks based on natural patterns such as honeycomb or cell structures. These works echo the complex root systems beneath our feet, where plants communicate… In this work red cabbage and car tracks are interlaced, reflecting the escalating prevalence of plastics in our soils and oceans, and the ways in which roots are growing and adapting with the manmade materials around them.’
Figure 14. Scherer, D. (2023) Hyper Rhizome. [Roots, soil, oat seeds, green mesh]. London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Figure 15 (close up 1). Scherer, D. (2023) Hyper Rhizome. [Roots, soil, oat seeds, green mesh]. London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Another artist I recognised the name of was Michael Landy. I am drawn to the intricate details of his ‘weed’ prints. Landy creates life-sized etchings of plants ‘whose hardiness allows them to thrive in inhospitable urban environments - so-called weeds… Landy’s work invites us to question the ways in which plants have been categorised by humans and to celebrate the adaptability and tenaciousness of species that have been underappreciated in British botanical history.’
Figure 16. Landy, M. (2002) Black Medick. [etching on paper] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
Another sculptural work that I was drawn to, and reminded me of my own clay imprint works (something that I want to explore more of) were the works by Agnieszka Kurant.
Figure 17. Kurant, A. (2016 - ongoing) A.A.I. System’s Negative. {Poured zinc] London: Somerset House. 23/01/2025 - 13/04/2025.
‘These casts were created in collaboration with entomologist Dr. Paul Bardunias by pouring liquid zinc into abandoned termite mounds found in the Namibian desert. Their forms resemble fossilized coral reefs and neural networks.’ Although I liked the process of making the work, I wasn’t keen about the solid shape. Thinking of neural networks I imagine something more fluid and not so ‘compact’.
Here are some other notes I made as I walked around the exhibition:
Looking around I find that I am drawn to the work that is made directly from working with nature - I never really realised this before but through the development of ideas and making in my own work, I realise how important this is for me and how I view it in others work
Beyond the Soil - video by Lei Vita Marasovich - they talk about offering back to the Earth. Its kind of like this idea of respect. If people struggle with the concept of spiritual ideas then surely its about respecting what the earth gives us. Without earth (AKA soil) we would not be able to eat. Obviously this idea of food is very different now as we don't go and pick our own food from a field or tree anymore but that is where our nutrition comes from
Ideas in continuing to make my own work: drawings of trees (small and large scale), seed drawings, prints, etchings etc, clay imprints, frottages
I need to polish up on my seed drawings - foraging and collecting is part of my practice - this goes hand in hand with foraging and explore making some prints.
Overall I got so much out of this exhibition and it really inspired me to continue to make drawings and explore making work directly working with nature even as I come to the end of this degree. I am really excited about where my practice can take me and hope to continue to visit exhibitions like this to keep my inspiration going!
