Kate Foster – Peat Proceedings
Participant of Our Living Soil
Kate Foster is a Scottish artist who did a residency at the World Soil Museum in Wageningen in the run-up to Our Living Soil. In her work, she has developed an ecological artistic practice to embed her practice and research in peatland restoration projects. For example, in February 2022, she organised a series of Peat Exchanges at the World Soil Museum, conversations in which a specific type of peatland is the subject of her artistic response to it. For Our Living Soil, she is developing an installation and public project in which peatlands in the low and high countries are connected.
Kate Foster has been working since 2016 on a long-term project on peatlands, collaborating with environmental projects as a creative practitioner and working outside of the traditional art space. During 2022, she is resident in the World Soil Museum in Wageningen, aiming to stimulate dialogue about the values of wetlands. Kate’s work continues to connect Dutch and Scottish peatland themes at the World Soil Congress in Glasgow and the Scottish peatland restoration project Peatland Connections. In collaboration they will produce a creative documentation of the Congress to extend and widen the conversations beyond the event itself. This reiteration of the congress will be available online, as will ongoing drawings from the World Soil Museum collections and Wageningen University’s research. Her drawings and installations presented here act as props for dialogue narrating relations of people to peatlands.
Peatland Figures, a portable exhibit using found materials, consists of drawings that create shadows. Each drawing symbolises a different human connection to peatlands: the figures articulate activities that have played a part in creating today’s landscapes.
Packaged Peat reflects on how much peat has disappeared from the Dutch landscape – but reappears as an imported horticultural product.
Kate Foster’s programme for Our Living Soil includes these activities.
Workshop: Future Gardening with Peat Free Soil
Join us for a collaborative exploration on how potting soil relates to peatlands and how we want to tell this through (better) stories! The workshop Future Gardening takes place on July 16th, 2022 is a collaboration with the youth-led collective RE-PEAT.
Reiteration of the World Soil Congress
At the World Soil Congress in Glasgow in August, Kate will join socioecological artist Kerry Morrison and soil scientist Anna Basley who work to restore peatlands and peatland connections at the Crichton Carbon Centre in Galloway, Scotland. They will reflect on the scientific themes they encounter and start the process of widening the conversations by documenting Congress proceedings using sketchbooks, diagrams, texts and conversation. Afterwards, Kate will continue to develop these themes working in the World Soil Museum collections.
You can follow this work online via this QR code or through the Peatcultures website.
