Amy Ash (CA) and Alice McCabe (UK / AUS) have been collaborating on creative projects since 2017. Their collaborative work, under the moniker of Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes, looks to the characteristics, language, mythology and historical contexts of plants for guidance. With plants as their mentors, Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes translate plant wisdom through varied methodologies as a means to both disrupt systems and discuss difficult topics that resonate into the realm of human communities. Previous projects have focused on immigration, queer ecologies, and disrupting colonial histories.
Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes last worked together in 2019 through the Cultivar Residency, where they were hosted by @museumoftheflatearth on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, off the Atlantic Coast of Canada. The Museum of the Flat Earth is an offshoot of the absurdist conceptual platform, the Canadian Flat Earth Society, which was founded by Leo Ferrari, Alden Nowlan and Ray Fraser in the 70s. The Museum of the Flat Earth in Fogo Island, is run by Kay Burns who uses Flat Earth Theory as a playful curatorial platform and means of promoting critical thought, investigation and research in (and via) art.
During the Cultivar residency Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes created a series of works intended to open discussions on human travel, borders and boundaries. These range from interventions on local touristic signage, to performance and playful pedagogies. In each case, the work centres and translates plant community wisdom and ways of being in the hopes of generating new understandings of how we, as humans, organize ourselves and relate to one another.
Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes are delighted to continue the collaboration during a residency hosted by Plas Bodfa in Wales. Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes, is grateful for the dedicated time and space to pursue their work on another rural island, a site of in-betweenness that punctuates the Atlantic between the two artists’ respective homes. While rich in unique history, culture and character, these in-between land masses are also links in the chain of European-North American migration. For Alice McCabe and Amy Ash, two white artists, these locales are also important reminders of their respective positionality within the system of colonization, and present valuable sites for learning, reflection and action.
Plas Bodfa is a 100-year-old manor home transformed into a gallery, art space, and community activator that creates unique, inclusive, creative projects with roots on the Isle of Anglesey and branches throughout Wales and the world. Plas Bodfa aims to bring together people of different ages, knowledge bases, interests and backgrounds to share with each other, learn from each other’s experiences and create something new collectively.
Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes look forward to presenting both new and re-fathomed works at window 135, which is an active vitrine gallery and performance space in New Cross Gate, London, UK. Since opening in 2004, window 135 have developed a mandate of showing a new exhibition every week, highlighting exciting new works and practices.