Exhibition: Conservation Practice

If ‘conservation’ was a material - what would its texture be?...What can feeling-through words in relation to their material processes reveal or expose?...How can physically processing these words inspire the creation of alternative terms?...
How do ‘conservation’, ‘preservation’, ‘fermentation’,‘decomposition’ feel-and-do differently?...

Come think-feel around this inquiry with Conservation Practice, an arc/live of material studies at Outhouse Gallery, a curiosity-cabinet-sized independent gallery space nestled in Brunswick Park, Camberwell Fri 25 - Sun 27 July.

Conservation Practice attends to concepts like ‘conservation’, ‘fermentation’ and ‘preservation’ through mattering and material object-making as a form of study. When words are materialised as processes, they perform their meanings and reveal other knowledges.

The inquiry takes flight from the realisation that in English and in England “conservation” and “conservatism” share the same etymological root and more often, the same sentiments and objectives - the pursuit of a static, unchanging, ossified state of being. It seeks to preserve and hold on in honour of history, heritage, tradition (whose, from when, to what purpose?...) whilst overlooking nature’s nature which is, inherently shapeshifting, morphing, moving, merging, nudging, transforming, agitating, leaking, collaborating, hybridising, migrating, travelling to-form-around- in dynamic relationship.

As it stands, England is one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet suffering chronic biodiversity loss, polluted waters and depleted soils. The conservation project in England has fundamentally failed in its own objective so how can radically aka going back to the root of what it means to ‘conserve’ offers strategies for renewal?

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Fri 25 - Sun 27 July - 12.00 - 4.00pm, Outhouse Gallery, Camberwell