When: Saturday 14 October, 11am–3.30pm
Where: Primary Garden (outdoors, some sheltered areas)
Booking: Limited places. Book here.
Are you curious about fungi and keen to learn more about how to cultivate them? Would you like to be able to grow your own mushrooms at home? The ‘Dirty Cultures’ workshop will be led by Matt Gale who will introduce you to all of the stages of fungi cultivation.
Matt received a grant from Arts Council England in 2021 to develop his project culturing native fungi species from tissue samples collected from the wild. He will talk about the basic stages of cultivation, answer your questions and share his experiences, including how ‘Dirty Cultures’* arose from sterile culturing. We'll be using waste materials collected locally and as part of the workshop and explore how fungi break down waste and contribute to creating healthy soil. The workshop will culminate in working together to create a range of Dirty Cultures that will be installed in the Primary garden. You will also have the option to take some away with you to try growing fungi at home.
This workshop is designed for adults with no previous experience of working with fungi.
A communal lunch featuring mushrooms is included, please let us know about any dietry requirements when booking.
*'Dirty Cultures’ refers to Matt’s method of growing fungi from wild mycelium, outdoors – rather than in sterile conditions indoor.
Photo: Matt Gale
Matt Gale is a British born artist who grew up in Southern California and trained as a biologist before completing a MA Fine Art in 2017. He makes sculpture and installation that queers perceptions of what is natural or normal, frequently exploring hybrid state and entanglement.
He was awarded the Gertrude Aston Bowater Bequest prize for his MA exhibition & the work was included in the first Coventry Biennial. In 2018, he won the RBSA Next Wave prize, followed by his first solo show at Asylum Gallery & was shortlisted for the Hippodrome 120 Pangaea Sculpture Award in 2019. His installation, Soma, created through residencies with Stryx Gallery & Eastside Projects was selected by the International Curators Forum & New Art West Midlands for inclusion in the 2019 Coventry Biennial. Exhibitions in 2020 include Queer Art(ists) Now at Archive Gallery, London & Queer Contemporaries, curated by Short Supply, at Air Gallery, Manchester. His work appears in Un//Titled: An Anthology of Queer Contemporary Art and was featured in the Clifford Chance London Pride exhibition in 2021. He was awarded a DYCP from Arts Council England in 2021 to develop research into cloning wild fungi for sculptural materials. Hybrids featured as part of his collaboration with Canadian artist, Rajni Perera’s Traveller at Eastside Projects in June 2022.
Access
This event will take place outdoors, all areas have level access. See out Visit Us page for more information. In the event of rain, we will use a sheltered areas. Please contact rebecca@weareprimary.org or with any questions or access needs.