Kathrin Böhm

COMPOST: For Future Use

15 September–16 October 2021

Open Wednesday–Saturday, 12-5pm

Compost is a unique collaborative exhibition that explores twenty years of artist Kathrin Böhm's practice. A cumulation of objects and methodologies fills the gallery space at The Showroom, opening up an invitation to contribute to a process of fertiliser-making: to sieve through, to assess, to archive, and to reformulate Kathrin's practice through making use of her methods of production; working one-to-one, collaboratively, and in public.

Kathrin Böhm is working on-site at The Showroom daily throughout Compost; and in a synthesis of spatial, visual, social and economic processes, the collective act of composting is organised around principles of usership, accessibility, and enacting modes of economic and cooperative sustainability; all guided by an urgent sense of discontinuing ‘business as usual’.

For Böhm, Compost in the form it takes at The Showroom has been in-the-making for many years, stemming from a deep desire to not just produce, but to process and to carefully consider what to do next: what to continue, what to leave behind, and the need for fundamental shifts grounded by an acknowledgment of our entangled interdependence.

There is a maximum capacity of ten visitors in the exhibition space at The Showroom at any one time to enable Covid-safe conditions.

A live programme of talks, workshops, and 1:1 drop-ins has been held at The Showroom and online. The programme is documented on the Compost website, compost.kathrinbohm.info, where it is also possible to watch recordings of past events.

Live Online Opening Event:

Compost opened with a live online event on Tuesday 15 June, 4.30-6pm GMT, in partnership with PARSE Journal, Gothenburg, for the interconnected launch of issue 13: On the Question of Exhibition. Click here to view the recording of the event in The Showroom Library online.

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To enable the process of composting at The Showroom, the space has been equipped with new, hybrid shelving and seating structures, which were designed for use on-site through conversations between Kathrin, The Showroom curatorial team, artists Adam Shield and Elliott Denny; and subsequently built in-situ by Shield and Denny, followed by further preparations and finishing touches with Paulina Michnowska. Almost all of the materials used have been repurposed from those that were readily available at The Showroom in May 2021; the material residue of past installations being put to new use.

The parallel digital space for Compost has been built in collaboration with designers An Endless Supply; and the digital life of Compost connecting activities at The Showroom to online publics has been enabled by Andy Jenkin. The design principles for the online site for Compost have been to carry forward and maintain the one-to-one nature of Böhm’s work, whilst testing out a set of appropriate tools for use to enable new ways of collectively making and sharing art digitally in pandemic times.

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Compost is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

The subtitle Kathrin Böhm: Turning the Heap was donated by artist Rosalie Schweiker.

Compost involves a partnership with Art360 Foundation, enabling a process of live archiving and an online event.

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Image: Kathrin Böhm, a compost (detail), tape on paper, 80x120cm, for Compost at The Showroom, 2021. Courtesy of the artist