Mossibilities is 2 day workshop to explore the art and ecology of moss. Led by Lucy Dukes and Laura Melissa Williams the artists will share their excitement, passion and discoveries about this amazing plant species and what we can learn from it.

Their themes include radical interconnection and care, resilience, adaptability, mothering. They will explore how moss can teach us about reimagining/removing borders, and coexistence with other plants, insects and species.

Join us on this artist-led mini-residency where we will explore moss as a microcosm and tool for transformation, investigating ways of working with and learning from more-than-human species to create ecological art and speculative futures. An ideal experience for those who want to explore together how to be more creative in the natural world.

Book tickets

Friday 24- Saturday 25 May

At GroundWork Gallery, King’s Lynn, and environs

2 days’ experience, all materials provided

Costs for participants: £60 for two days / £40 for one day

Optional additional B&B overnight rate in GroundWork apartment (first come first served – limited capacity) :

Per room, per night = £98, or per person sharing room £40 each.

Bookings via mail@groundworkgallery.com

Or via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mossibilities-exploring-the-art-and-ecology-of-moss-tickets-877476384487

Workshop details :

Evolving over 450 million years ago, some of the first green things on land, mosses have survived every extinction event. Mosses embody collaborative and regenerative ways of existing in Long Time, they are a living challenge to the systems of extractivism which are fuelling the climate crisis. Together we will explore how we can creatively learn from and work with this ancient embodied knowledge.

Day 1,

Friday 24 May, 11-5

This mini-residency will explore questions around participatory ecological art, working site-specifically in and around Groundwork gallery. Beginning with a moss walk to learn from mosses in the immediate area, we’ll start shifting our perspectives to different scales and attuning ourselves to the environment, bridging the gap between inside and outside. We’ll introduce key ecological principles and concepts of moss logic through transdisciplinary practice including: embodied learning, sensory exploration, play, discussion, and a collaborative drawing session.

For those staying at the gallery there will be an evening screening/activity.

Day 2

Saturday 25 May, 11-5

On the second day we’ll take what we’ve been exploring outside on a creative field trip and spend the day making site-specifically in collaboration with the environment. This will be a practical making day where participants can follow what inspired them from the day before and will include an outdoor collaborative creative writing session, making speculative fictions/futures around moss. Together we’ll re-imagine and prototype alternative ways of existing in possible moss worlds. Join us to time travel with mosses to learn from the past and create collaborative speculative futures where we thrive through our mossy interconnections.

Creative activities include:

• Moss walk: getting to know mosses in our local environment
• Embodied mosses exercise: creating our own microclimate
• Sensory meditation
• Time travel with mosses
• Collaborative speculative fiction creating possible moss worlds: working with science fiction, possible worlds theory, speculative moss logic and radical care, we ask how we can reimagine our more-than-relationships to create just and equitable futures where all species thrive?
• Collaborative drawing and collage in the gallery
• Site specific more-than-human art practice in natural surroundings

Workshop aims:

To question our existing and intrinsic knowledge, logic and assumptions around nature / the natural world using moss as the focus.

To help people feel more connected with other living species, challenging existing logics.

To encourage people to imagine and dream how we might live better together in a more-than-human world.

Lucy & Laura Bios

Inspired by a shared passion for mosses, Lucy and Laura have been collaborating for the past year to create immersive workshops for artists and creatives to learn from these ancient embodied living systems. They have run them with Climate Emergency Network and Constructive Land exhibitions in the Lethaby Gallery, London and in Pierland Woods –  a restored ancient woodland in Kent. Mossibilities will be part of the London College of Fashion Undressed: Imagining Possibilities. In Summer 2024 we will be running a workshop at Science Gallery, London.

Lucy Jane MacAllister Dukes

‘I’ve been exploring how artistic practice can become “intra-actions” (Barad, 2007), revealing the entanglements between humans and more-than-humans in the Anthropocene. To me, everything is drawing, revealing mutually co-constitutive relationships in the universe across micro and macro scales. Each mark is an exploration in moment of spacetime, each material holding embodied knowledge.’

Lucy is a transdisciplinary artist and philosopher based in the UK. She gained her BSc in Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method from LSE (1st class hons, 2015-18), completed the Royal Drawing School Intensive (2019), then got her MA in Art & Science at Central Saint Martins, UAL (1st class hons, 2020-22). She has exhibited work, completed residencies and run workshops across the U.K. and Europe, from Dartington and Chelsea College, to Berlin and Athens. Lucy has taught on courses at CSM and ZHdK and collaborated with scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Iskratch Lab, QMUL and the Biophysical Sciences Institute.

The artist grew up drawing in her mother’s studio, which they still share. Lucy works site-specifically experimenting and collaborating across disciplines and species, with artists, scientists and more-than-humans. Recently she was awarded the AER Art for the Environment Residency with Groundwork Gallery and exhibited her work in The Ground Beneath Our Feet and is exhibiting in the current exhibition: Art for the Environment.

Laura Melissa Williams

I’ve been exploring how nature, ritual and play can help us connect more deeply to both human beings and other species across the living world. I am fascinated about how artists and creativity can break down or loosen barriers to accessing, enjoying or learning from nature: a form of active biomimicry enabled through the arts, sciences and our own imaginations.

Laura blends 20 years of experience in design, business and futures with explorations in art, nature, science and ritual. Her art practice is concept-driven and focuses on how we connect with each other, our urban and natural environments and other living species and ecological systems. She creates participatory art experiences blended with hand-crafted art pieces, including sculpture, painting and drawing and the written word. I work with these natural elements as conduits that challenge human notions of time and encourage long-term systemic thinking. While they hold different properties and meaning to each of us, I have chosen them because they are sensory: we can touch or feel them, are accessible and present in our lives and bring magic through our stories and dreams which touch us emotionally and help us imagine different ways of being and knowing.

Laura has a first class honours in Design for Industry and an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martins, UAL. Her art experiences have been seen in Wellcome Collection, Guerilla Science, the Lethaby Gallery and Kinetika (participatory community art experiences).

I am a member of the Wilderness Art Collective and Spilt Milk gallery (for artist mothers) and have been shortlisted for various art awards including the Maison/0 This Earth Award and the NPA NewPlaform.Art emerging artist award.

Laura Williams