May 30th, 2024 – June 30, 2024 | Island Mountain Arts Public Gallery
Mulch is a material used to enrich soil. It is an insulator, an enricher. It assists in both growth and decay. It is a slow entanglement of nutrients, a layer of protection, a threshold between the world and the world within.
MULCH is an arts collective composed of friends and collaborators across so-called Canada. We seek to explore art through collaborative and land-based practices, allowing for fragmented ideas to be a part of a continuous cycle of decay and rebirth.
MULCH Collective is made up of Jules Cundari, Rahel Elias, Mona Fani, Mary Fisher, Isaac Forsland, Sarah Genge, and Jasper Wrinch, among many others.
ABOUT MULCH MULCH MULCH
MULCHMULCHMULCH is MULCH Collective’s first experience collaborating and exhibiting work together. The works presented are the result of a year-long endeavour to establish an artistic network of collaboration and cooperation, in an effort to support, degenerate, entangle, repurpose, and enrich each other’s works and practices. While the artworks that makes up MULCHMULCHMULCH are as disparate as the artists, encompassing a multitude of media, techniques, and geographic locations, the exhibition is centred on the ethos of growth and decay, of cyclical regeneration and degeneration, of beginnings merging with ends in both theme and practice. Each piece has been produced in response to another, piling onto or deconstructing imagery, ideas, and materials. Using ecological processes of decomposition, mutation, and chaos as a guide to the practice of each artist, MULCH aims for collective vision of mutual care and creativity. MULCHMULCHMULCH is an expression of how the many fragments of individual artistic lives can feed off one another and coexist in a mutually-enriching symbiosis. We seep into the mulch around us, are sheltered by it, and feed from it. We let each leaf, each chip, each scrap of material imbue its richness upon every other. We wallow in the mire and are enlivened by it.
Instagram: mulch_collective
About THE Artists
Jules Cundari (she/her) is an artist and eco-art educator based in Victoria, BC. Currently working as a farmer and market manager for a 10-acre organic farm, she is passionate about regenerative agriculture and acts of food sovereignty that result in ecological and community-based resilience. Her practice investigates curiosities of ethnobotany and reciprocity through a lens of emotional, ritualistic, and rhythmic embodiment. Site-specific research influences the materiality of her work, often gravitating toward further understanding the layered ecologies we are a part of.
Instagram: julescundari
Rahel Elias (she/her) is a multimedia artist who specializes in ceramics and documentary photography. She creates images and clay sculptures in order to better understand her relationship with her body through the exploration of the black human form. She investigates intersectional-identity, alienation, and otherness by drawing from memory and observation. By using manipulation and distortion in her works, she hopes to explore the way black identities have been imagined, invented, and shaped through societal interpretation. Rahel currently works in her ceramic studio, based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada.
Instagram: joyouslyobserving
Mona Fani (she/her) is a Persian-Canadian multi-media artist with a focus on analog practices in photography and visual design. Her practice is rooted in patience and observation. She is interested in the vulnerable moments lived by or left behind in the human experience. As a witness to the world around her, Mona collages textured layers in her design and photography practice — capturing curious moments in the everyday. She is based on unceded lands belonging to the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations; also known as Vancouver, bc.
Instagram: yourgurlmona
Mary Fisher (they/them) is a sculptor, drawer, bookmaker, and installation artist who works with mediums including metals and fibers to make moveable and interactive sculptures. Their work explores themes of intimacy, memory, and loss evoking emotive and sensorial experiences. Fisher’s current work encourages engagement and reflection through play structures and memories of childhood. Fisher is currently exploring these ideas and growing their studio practice at OCAD University’s BFA in Sculpture and Installation program in Toronto, Canada. Outside of the institution, they are the founder of draw_club — a collective that acts as a place to be in conversation and creation with emerging artists in the city, and mostly, is a place to play.
Instagram: hot_cross_buns__
Isaac Forsland (he/him) is an emerging multidisciplinary artist and video-centric freelancer. With a primary focus on Super8 and 16mm film, his artistic practice centres around the use of found footage, eco-developing, and direct animation techniques. He was born on Treaty 7 land, the traditional territory of the Blackfoot, Tsuu T’ina and Stoney Nakoda. He currently works on the unceded traditional and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Instagram: isaacforsland
Sarah Genge (they/she) is an emerging independent filmmaker working in documentary and music video production. Their interests include exploring the natural absurdity that permeates everyday life, blurring the line between film and visual art, and creating community-based film projects. They currently work on the unceded traditional and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Instagram: alligatorsoupfilms
Jasper Wrinch (he/him) is a text and sound-based artist working on Nex̱wlélex̱m and the unceded territory of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. His work aims to crystallize the often opaque, overwhelming and contradictory feelings surrounding social and environmental change into hyper-detailed and immersive textual and sonic experiences.
Instagram: jasperwrinch
Special Thanks
This exhibition would not have been possible without the support of the Wells_Barkerville Community Forest, the Province of BC, and all the artist’s work to hang that show!