Jamie North

There’s this fable that describes the Earth’s position in space – more of a philosophical concern than an exercise in astrophysics. It’s often attributed to a challenger of Bertrand Russell (not to be confused with Russell Brand) – Russell (Bertrand), of course, accepting the empirical evidence of the heliocentric model of the solar system, where the Earth orbits the Sun. The naysayer proclaimed that the Earth, in fact, sat on the back of a giant turtle. When logic inevitably raised the question of what was under this turtle, ‘well, another giant turtle,’ was the response. In fact, it was turtles all the way down.

A variation of this tale sees the turtles replaced with rocks (you see where I’m going here?), but none (to my knowledge) of rock-like forms cast from mycelium.

Jamie North’s Hyphae is an amalgam of once living organisms, taking the form of anthropic rock. Its tendrils search the sky, like mycelia hyphae exploring their host. Rather than forming a singular column of infinite regress (like the turtles), mycelium comprises a network of thread-like hyphae (the stuff of the main body of a fungus) whose interconnectedness challenges the singular and centring tendencies we have when we seek to locate and categorise things.

In a similar affront to our fixed-filing ways, the sculpture figuratively collapses and turns in on itself – a feedback loop of the macro and micro with the larger form echoing the structure of the composition of its materials.

An infinity without the need for giant turtles.

ARTIST BIO

The work of Jamie North operates at the intersection of the natural and the human-made. His cast sculptures simultaneously invoke ideas of progress and collapse; industry and ruin; melancholy and triumph. The use of industrial materials and processes further blurs the disjunction between the naturally occurring and the anthropogenic.

A twisting fungal sculpture that looks like a rock, showing nature’s hidden networks and challenging how we usually organise things.