Currently exhibited at London’s Somerset House, ‘Soil: The World at Our Feet’ reimagines its subject as something radical, fruitful and celestial, writes Gareth Thompson.
Fly Agaric detail © Marshmallow Laser Feast
The burrow-like entrance to Soil: The World at Our Feet feels humid and subterranean. Drifting through an amber warmth you encounter yellow printed slogans such as, ‘That isn’t dirt you feel – it’s life.’ Then around the corner there’s a burst of what looks like astronomy photography, so it seems you’ve maybe taken a wrong turn.
Yet in their opening essay for this exhibition’s catalogue, Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy (aka The Land Gardeners) say their dream was to show soil’s connection to everything on this planet and beyond. It’s an apt remark, given how much of this presentation seems to visually link natural history with the astrophysical. The first display one encounters is Jo Pearl’s ‘Oddkin’, a hanging mobile of ceramic microscopic creatures, a reminder of childhood bedrooms adorned with starry decorations. It’s a fluttering work of art, a bacterial constellation.
Oddkin 2 by Jo Pearl © Elsa Pearl
Adjacent to Pearl’s work is Daro Montag’s wall of chromatic photos, ‘This Earth 6’. Montag placed soil samples in contact with moistened colour film, allowing microorganisms to leave traces behind. The results resemble some newfound solar system as seen through a kaleidoscope. In the same cave-like room is France Bourély’s ‘ARISTA’, made from electron microscope images of an ant, dung beetle and wood bug. With intimate details exposed in black and white, we see the spikes and tusks, hooks and hairs of these creatures who are both decomposers and distributors. Playful, fierce and mysterious, they resemble cosmic beasts mistakenly landed in our reality.
Elsewhere, the interactive ‘As Above, So Below’ experience has a galactic floor projection which mirrors a soil ecosystem. Perched nobly on plinths around it are three tactile ceramic seeds, each glowing with their own energy like strange meteorites. Then there’s ‘A Diversity Of Forms’ from Tim Cockerill and Elze Hesse, where macro images show bacterium in metal-contaminated soils. Like fluffy and floral sea creatures with an astral glow, each one is arrestingly beautiful. Consider also Ana Mendieta’s film ‘Birth (Gunpowder Works)’ of a female mud form whose womb erupts in smoke. Mendieta’s black and white footage resembles icy breaths on some squelchy sci-fi planet, in line with her view that artistic bonds unite her to the universe. By gorgeous contrast, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg offers us a bee’s-eye view of garden life in her pigment print ‘Pollinator Pathmaker’, a splashy explosion of wildflower joy.
ARISTA by France Bourély © David Parry / PA Media Assignments
Given the surplus of options, mycophiles will be like pigs among truffles at Soil. And after the success of Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life, he was an obvious fit for this event. In tandem with art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, he delivers a lyrical narration for their large screen film ‘Fly Agaric 1 – Poetics Of Soil’. Giant mushrooms appear like beatific totems, with a volcanic turbulence in their caps and stems. Clouds of fungal spores disperse like a million stars cast from their galaxy. Mycelium networks shine like strings of Christmas lights or lightning forks, a subsurface biosphere teeming with life and gilded filaments. In this mazy underworld are the buried webs and worms that hold soil together, circulate water and nutrients, break down dung and recycle decayed plant matter. Sheldrake’s voiceover offers drops of compassionate wisdom, yet is spoken with an otherworldly remoteness, distant and godlike. He adds a subtle hint to warring humans that plant life-forms will constantly invent new ways to live alongside each other.
Heading upstairs, Joya Berrow’s video installation of plants and fungi, ‘Where Two Kingdoms Meet’, depicts a gnarly temperate forest, a utopian emerald vision eerily devoid of humans. Cosmo Sheldrake’s soundtrack is a blend of the pastoral and primordial as it gurgles and chirps, but also bathes us in an ocean of consciousness. Other artists use forms of audio excavation to reveal this dark cosmos below us as a place of clatter and chatter. There’s a singing compost heap with its snapping static, the fizzing scurries of a cactus, and what could be a digitised Druidic chant to accompany Miranda Whall’s data from an upland soil sensor.
Pollinator Pathmaker © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd
A delve into history comes via the glass-caged ‘Iron Age Sword’, found in England’s marshy Fenland of peat and silt by archaeologists seeking an ancient river. Still visible after two thousand years is the detail in its wooden handle, but while the blade looks rusted and rustic, a little blunted now, it remains a deadly symbol. Given the location and backstory of its discovery, the sword fairly reeks of a distinct ‘folk-horror’ vibe. Stare too long at this ancient weapon and you might risk being possessed, or even pursued, by it.
There’s another aspect of preservation in ‘from earth: krita’ by herman de vries. For this display, the Dutch artist collected soil samples from Crete and rubbed them onto paper. With their shades of brown and slate, the slight variations of hue induce a Rothko-like meditative stillness.
Colour is also integral to Fatima Alaiwat’s earthy interconnected map, ‘Smellscape: Rhythms with Bokashi’. Alaiwat calls this piece a ‘smell score’ to reflect her practice of composting orange peels, driven by a passion for foraging and herbalism. Alaiwat’s autumn-toned artwork charts these sensory events in varied experiences including ‘zesty rot’, ‘preserved lemons’, ‘moist forest floor’, ‘pickled fungus’ and, curiously, ‘your arm after someone has squeezed it’.
Soil in Action by Wim van Egmond © David Parry / PA Media Assignments
Rounding off this vast and wide-ranging event is a sourdough baking experiment, plus a world ‘Map of Hope’ to reflect global soil pioneers. Before leaving, there’s an invitation to write and pin up your own idea for People’s Recipes To Save The Earth. One prominent note has a child’s big scrawl advising, ‘Exterminate Human Beings.’ Other suggestions include ‘write stories’, ‘being vegan being kind’, ‘no more factories’, ‘Dump Trump’. One contributor quotes the closing lines of Gary Snyder’s poem ‘For The Children’ where the great activist advises: ‘Stay together, Learn the flowers, Go light.’ This phrase leaves a poignant reminder that for all the connections made by fungal networks underground, only an increased kinship above our soil can heal the scars left by humanity’s misuse.
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Soil: The World at Our Feet is on display at Somerset House, London until 13th April 2025. Find more information here.