Fruiting Bodies Collective: Rituals for Uneasy Species
Madeleine Collie, George Criddle, Brodie Ellis, Andrew Goodman, Zoë Scoglio, Adele Wilkes
5–15 Mar 2025
Hosting rituals and gatherings since 2023, Fruiting Bodies is a queer ecology collective which seeks to productively nurture and incomplete each others’ creative practices, finding resonances between ideas and ways of working, and collectively moving together with shared concerns and enthusiasms.
Over 10 days in March at Blindside, the collective will come together for Rituals for Uneasy Species. They invite the Blindside community to join them in playful, embodied, textual, material, ritual, divinatory and conversational practices as a way to locate us in time and space through moments of collective sense making, and to explore alternative forms of conviviality and being with the more-than-human.
This time will be punctuated by gatherings and practice-sharing as we think with other lifeforms (including blackberry and lichen) to help queer boundaries and minds. The gallery will feature a growing installation by collective members, and a program of events where members of the collective will share practices that explore ecology, queerness, neurodiversity, and coloniality through a reading on lichen, a workshop on dyeing with blackberry and an experimental sensory open studio day with incense making and divination. There will also be a space to read, rest, reflect and contribute to a growing collection of ‘loose-leaf’ works.
There will be 3 public events, each involving shared tea and exploring one “un-easy” species:
Rituals for Uneasy Species #1: Human
An open studio day of multisensory experimentation and ritual through collaborative material practices and inhabiting of shared space that considers relationships between the human and more-than-human. Members of the artist collective will share botanical tea, make incense from natural ingredients, draw, write, conduct tarot readings and other divinations, and so on, as a way of engaging with animism and ecology. Sensing, sense-making, and scent-making.
Saturday March 8th @ 1:00-6:00pm
Rituals for Uneasy Species #2: Lichen (in Collaboration with Queer Theory Reading Group)
This ritual is a collaboration with the Queer Theory Reading Group that meets monthly at Blindside, coordinated by Zoë Bastin. We will read and discuss the text “Queer Theory for Lichens” by David Griffiths, and discuss aspects of the Fruiting Bodies Collective artists’ practices in relation to the text. This will be followed by a dusk lichen hunt in the city.
For information on the Queer Theory Reading Group email Zoë at hello@zoebastin.com.
RSVPs are essential for this event. Link here.
Thursday 13th March @ 6:30-8:30pm
Rituals for Uneasy Species #3: Blackberry
Working with the blackberry plant, we invite others to join us in exploring generative/resistant practices through the languaging and processes of dyeing. We will use resist, Tataki and other dyeing techniques with blackberry leaves, berries and branches to open up messy conversation and embodied play around the complexity, relations and tensions of the coloniality of invasive weeds - and as explored through our own practices.
Limited Capacite - RSVPs are essential for this event. Link here.
Saturday 15th March @ 2:00-5:00pm
Over 10 days, Fruiting Bodies will come together for
Rituals for Uneasy Species. They invite the Blindside community to join them in emergent practices as a
way to locate ourselves in time and space through moments of collective sense making, and to explore
alternative forms of conviviality.
The collective will share practices that explore ecology, queerness, neurodiversity and coloniality through
two public gatherings (lichen, blackberry), an art installation, an experimental sensory open studio day, and
a space to read, rest, reflect and contribute to a growing collection of ‘loose-leaf’ works.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Madeleine Collie curates public moments, exhibitions and exchanges, with a commitment to curatorial encounters in the public realm. Her recent research explores the social worlds that emerge in relations with plants. Madeleine initiated the international Food Art Research Network in 2020 with support from Arts Council England. She continues to nurture the network as a platform for expanded research in which artists trace connections between ecosystem change and broader social, historical and political forces.
George Criddle is an Australian artist, writer and occasional curator with English heritage who currently teaches at La Trobe University. Since 2018, Criddle’s artworks have been process based, engaging socially and materially with history, family, land-use, and colonial silence. They completed a PhD in 2021 at Monash University having studied previously at Curtin University in Perth, and École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. They have served on the board of TCB Gallery and Kings Artist Run Gallery.
Brodie Ellis is an Australian multidisciplinary artist living and working on Djaara Country. She has held numerous exhibitions in commercial galleries and institutions, biennales and artist run spaces. Her art is held in public and private art collections including Bendigo Art Gallery, and MONA, Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart.
Andrew Goodman is an artist, writer, reading group facilitator and gardener interested in process philosophy, ecology, science fiction and histories of science. They are the Author of Gathering Ecologies (2018) and are currently writing a book on rewilding as a philosophical concept. They are a co-editor of the 3Ecologies imprint with Punctum books, and regularly collaborate with The Senselab/3Ecologies Institute, Montreal.
Zoë Scoglio is an artist and organiser of sicilian/calabrian/scottish/english descent living and working on unceded Djaara Country in Central Victoria. Zoe’s practice is often collaborative, participatory and playful, and has seen them work relationally with diverse people, places and spaces. They are interested in how creative and somatic praxis can open up possibilities for collective (un)learning, solidarities and emergent cultural forms. Past projects have included (co)hosting reading groups, workshops, performances, walks and events, as well as stepping back a while to listen and learn.