Connected/ Breathe-In/ Becoming Probiotic/ Becoming Plastic

Connected are on display as part of the Wander_Land Exhibition, at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall. New sculpture exploring landscape and walking (and breathing) with members of the Royal Society of Sculptors.

Photo Credit Russell Sach
Photo Credit Russell Sach

“Jane Fox is attracted to an elemental engagement with matter. Her sculpture addresses the organic in more than shape…so we naturally turn to the facility in our thought and language to explain it through similarities – with tree-life, bone or stone; that is, with the matter upon which existence is built, grows and advances.”

Martin Holman takes a tour of Wander_Land, Art historian and writer. ‘Do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement.’ – Friedrich Nietszche.

Connected are prototype sculptures made with probiotic microbial cellulose. The cellulose for these sculpture was grown by a process of fermentation over 12-15 months.

The cellulose is visceral and moist. On removal from the fermentation culture it starts to change. With exposure to air and drying it becomes skin-like; translucent, taut, wrinkled, blistered, fragile or leather-like.

The Connected sculptures are evocative of human, animal and insect fragments; and microscopic forms. Bony, reminiscent of a ribcage, a pelvic girdle, a ball and socket joint and cross-species configurations.

Connected explores an intermingling of micro-plastics and microbial life across species. Do we absorb plastic as innocently as beneficial spores and microbes.

Jane Fox has an article published in Planet – The Welsh Internationalist magazine/ Welsh and International politics and culture called, ‘Becoming Probiotic – Health, ecology and our second brain’ ISSN 0048-4288. This 2023 edition marks the NHS at 75.


Wander_Land Exhibition

https://www.exploreartproject.com/explore-art/wander_land-exhibtion-july2023

https://janefoxartist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Wander_Land-The-artists-introduce-their-work-1.pdf

https://janefoxartist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Wander_Land-Your-Guide-to-Wander-Land.pdf

https://janefoxartist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Martin-Holman.pdf