Projects → Symbionts

Symbionts

2021 -

Lichen found on World War II ruins in the Shetland landscape

I am not an I
But a knotted growth forming Symbiont, outline.

We see lichens everywhere - even if we’re unaware of doing so. They delicately cover walls, buildings, rocks, trees, peat and soil. To human eyes they form a thin crust, but on a micro-level, lichens are complex growth forms with various layers of interwoven structures. Lichens sometimes nearly completely obscure the surfaces they live on in a meshwork of various species. Conspicuous yet mostly unnoticed, they form a crustose shell, an overlayer which encases, yet closely follows the contours of substrates below.

Growing very slowly and living very long (some estimated to be 9000 years old, the oldest living things) [1], lichens function on a level of existence very different from our own. Many processes and life cycles in nature are unseen by human eyes, existing across deep swathes of time or passing by in fractions of seconds. We cannot always see the overall arc, or the minute details of things, and so chaos seems to surround us.

Lichens spread and layer slowly in processes of forming crusts, powders, lobes and scales. Never a complete expression of form like the bloom of a flower, lichens are always in a process of formation – passing through form and formlessness. A flower’s bloom, decorative and short-lived, contrasts with lichens’ ongoing temporality, resisting figuration.

Lichens do not distinguish between ‘natural’ and human-made substrates. Here in Shetland, lichens can be found at the islands’ many World War II ruin-sites. Although I’ve spent many years visiting these sites, until very recently I had been almost totally unaware of lichen. I now see it everywhere in the Shetland landscape.

Lichens are not a single organism at all, but an association between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria. Lichens destabilise our dualistic outlook of the world, where things fit neatly into opposing groups and categories. Through new research, we are only just becoming aware of just how sentient, entangled and complex many organisms and ecologies are.

A drawing of a lichen is in this way a strange thing to attempt - the spread and complexity of lichen impossible to contain with simple drawn line on a piece of paper. But to me, drawing is in a similar way an unending process. When making work, a drawing can go in any number of directions, and even when considered ‘finished’ it seems to raise more questions about a subject than it answers. The lines, shapes, tones and colours in a drawing are interplaying elements which suggest traces of actions in the mind of the viewer. This can have different effects and meanings at different times – a drawing is not a fixed form, an image of frozen time, but a contemplative space set aside, always affected by change. Almost like drawing the idea of ‘surface’ itself, I am curious to explore drawing an organism that covers so extensively, but curiously remains hidden.

1.LAUNDON, Jack R. 1986. Lichens. Bucks: Shire Publications Ltd.
SIMMEL, Georg. 1965. ‘The Ruin’ (1911). In Kurt H. WOLFF (ed.). Essays on Sociology, Philosophy and Aesthetics

Images from site visits

EXHIBITION

Hidden Flowers Bloom Most Beautifully, 31st July to 27th August, Kafi 55, Dorfstr 22, 9055 Bühler, Switzerland and Mareel, Shetland.

These works were developed as part of the project ‘Hidden Flowers Bloom Most Beautifully’ with the Streunender Hund Collective.

A dialogue of contemporary art in rural places, the project and subsequent exhibition explored ‘making work beyond the perceived geographic limits of the art world, as seen from these two different locations’. 16 contemporary artists were Brough together; eight based in Shetland and eight based in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, a rural area in the east of Switzerland.

Featuring Paul Bloomer / Daniel Clark / Amy Gear / Aimee Labourne / Vivian Ross-Smith / Roxane Permar / Andrew Sutherland / Roseanne Watt / Caroline Baur / Florian Gugger / Martina Morger / Maria Nänny / Dorothea Rust / Harlis Schweizer / Birgit Widmer / Wassili Widmer.

The exhibition was supported by the Swiss Arts Council (Pro Helvetia), Creative Scotland and Shetland Arts with support from Swiss galleries and individuals.