The Mycological Twist x Chaos Magic

Opening: 18:00-21:00, 15th August 2019
Exhibition: 16 August – 28 September 2019

​​​‘Ghost Camp 3’ took place in July this year, hosted by The Mycological Twist & Chaos Magic. This exhibition brings together documented contributions from the artists and researchers who joined the camp with readings, cooking sessions, troll stories, mushroom foraging and paper making.

Contributors: Eloïse Bonneviot, Anne de Boer, Natalie Hurst, Angela Chan (WORM), Theo Reeves-Evision, The Trees That Yield (Hannah Lees), Alex Lennox-Warburton, Alexander William Mobbs-Iles

Ghost Campers: Lea Collet, Wouter Van der Hallen, Alice Vodoz, Alexander Mobbs-Iles, Jack Lavender, Amy Matthews, Alex Lennox-Warburton, Joey Holder, Hannah Parikh, Theo Gilmour-Rees, Ryan Heath, Joseph Winsborrow.

Ghost Camps are communal camping moments where participants are invited to reimagine the traditional mythologies around the Left through workshops, readings and screenings. This year, a collaboration between The Mycological Twist and Chaos Magic, we gathered at the edge of Sherwood Forest near Nottingham.

Sherwood Forest is the home of the mythical Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give back to the poor – a testimony to the power of storytelling as a form of resistance. While later iterations added the trope of Marian and a noble affiliation, its origin speaks of a commoner with disdain for the highborns. The move to ‘tame’ Robin Hood character by painting it as a less controversial figure speaks volumes. The wood as a place where one withdraws from power is another notable character in this folk myth; it is a shelter that functions as an extension to the city. The proximity of the forest with Nottingham allows for a porosity, ideal for Robin Hood’s guerilla actions. The forest, thus, becomes a political agent intertwined with the fate of Nottingham’s citizens.

In this edition we wanted to look at the woods as a place where mythologies are built and easily imagined. Before Sherwood Forest gained fame through Robin Hood, the vikings used this forest as to meet and hold assemblies. Wandering the same landscape we imagine and explore the way mythological characters emerged from forests and plains, changing their characteristics through day and night.