Join us at STEAMhouse for an in-person conversation between Fungal Materials Specialist Ashley Fontan and Artist Matt Gale.
Ashley and Matt will lead a holistic conversation around all things fungi-materials related discussing how fungi grow, how they interact with their environment, what’s happening across the mycelium design landscape, and how we can work with this incredible material when making art, architecture, homeware, interiors, and fashion.
Ashley is co-founder of Osmose Studio, Osmose Labs and Mykko. Matt is an artist and STEAMhouse member who trained as a biologist before studying Fine Art. His sculptural and installation work queers perceptions of what is natural or normal.
What is Materials Club?
Materials Club has been active as a community-led research group in Birmingham since 2019. Based at STEAMhouse and now in its fourth year, it has become a creative-led research space exploring questions related to our ecological future through deep material practices.
We support and cultivate projects that look to use materials in new, different, and sustaining ways. This includes working with waste, nature and within the values of circular design. We encourage collaboration and open conversation allowing new knowledge to be shared and developed collectively. This is a space to be inspired, learn, engage, and become part of a growing community.
Presented as part of the STEAMhouse Create Programme.
STEAMhouse is a space to experiment, test and develop new knowledge. At the project’s heart are five key principles – conversation, exploration, collaboration, openness and newness.
Since early 2018 the STEAMhouse Create programme has been powered by Birmingham City University, in partnership with Eastside Projects and funded by the European Regional Development Fund. It supports businesses, including self-employed, sole-trading artists, to test new ideas, prototype and make new products and services (which if you are an artist may be artworks) as well as explore the potential of digital technologies to help you collaborate and innovate.
Find out more HERE
