Without Dirt
April 2-18
Ella Belenky, Harun Morrison, Oona Wilkinson
The title references the flowering plant Aconite, also known as Wolfsbane, as a figure for a politics of interdependence. Without Dirt is the fourth exhibition in a series of shows that takes the flower as a point of departure. Aconite can take root without soil and is among the most toxic plants in the world. Despite its lethality, it has a long history within traditional medicinal systems, where it is handled only through careful and extensive preparation. It embodies ambivalence: care entangled with harm, and survival bound to risk.
The exhibition also reflects on how trio and small group shows carry an implicit structure of dialogue and trust, where artists work in proximity, responding to and supporting one another’s practices.
Through their research-led practices, Oona Wilkinson, Harun Morrison and Ella Belenky each approach precarity and positionality as intertwined conditions. Wilkinson’s work explores material systems of access and redistribution, examining how labour and value circulate beyond stable hierarchies. Belenky’s practice focuses on processes of translation and repair, asking how attention and adaptation shape both material and social infrastructures. Morrison’s works in this show engage with a set of encounters with different spaces and landscapes. Taken together, these approaches explore how life emerges between risk and resilience, using relationality as a way of thinking about and questioning collective futures.
Without Dirt is the fourth exhibition in a series that takes the flower as a point of departure. The title references Aconite as a figure for a politics of care. Also known as Wolfsbane, Aconite can take root without soil and is among the most toxic plants in the world. Despite its lethality, it has a long history within traditional medicinal systems, where it is handled only through careful and extensive preparation. It embodies ambivalence: care entangled with harm, and survival bound to risk. The exhibition also reflects on how duo and small group shows carry an implicit structure of dialogue and trust, where artists work in proximity, responding to and supporting one another’s practices.
The first exhibition in the series, Cryopreservation: Need Flowers Tomorrow? (2013), considered the suspended life of the flower in relation to futurity, preservation and delay. Its sardonic title responded to the speculative, end-of-days imaginaries circulating among tech entrepreneurs at the time. The second and third shows were, More News About Flowers (2023) and Even More News About Flowers (also 2023), returned to the flower through questions of reproduction, both botanical and image-based, borrowing its title from an essay by Walter Benjamin.
PV - April 2 2026
5-8pm
Division of Labour Holy Trinity, Cloudesley Square, London N1 0HN, UK c/o The Florence Trust - Tube: Angel / Bus No19 Islington Green