Mycelium Book is a special display of Chilean artist Rodrigo Arteaga’s new artwork edition Mycelium Book, presented in the Reading Room on Level Two at Arnolfini.
Chilean artist Rodrigo Arteaga was in residence in Bristol in Summer 2022 to create a new commissioned sculpture, Fallen Tree, for our exhibition Forest: Wake this Ground.
Fallen Tree was made from an ash tree found in Leigh Woods, with support from Forestry England. The work explored what it would look like if we could see underground as the tree begins to rot, decompose and become assimilated by mycelium. Mycelium is a network of fungal threads that connect the roots of plants and trees into a giant web able to communicate and share resources.
Following this commission, Arteaga undertook a residency with the Centre for Print Research (CFPR) at UWE Bristol. He worked in collaboration with researchers at the CFPR to use mycelium to produce non-human drawings, photographic images and sculptures. Arteaga experimented in ways to observe the underworld that exists beyond our senses. The resulting edition, Mycelium Book, is presented here.
Rodrigo Arteaga, born in 1988, lives and works in Valparaíso, Chile. His practice moves between installation, sculpture, drawing and sound and deals with the complex relationship between nature, culture and representation.
