Keystone Species Exhibition
KEYSTONE SPECIES brings together thirteen artists based at Proposition Studios in Bethnal Green, London whose work engages with the idea of keystone species: plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms whose presence shapes delicate processes that allow life to thrive through growth, decay, movement, and care. When these species disappear, entire systems can shift or collapse; when they flourish, abundance attains viability. The exhibition takes this ecological principle as a point of departure for reflecting on interdependence, responsibility, and the maintenance of planetary balance.
Across performance, painting, film, sculpture, writing, sound, and installation, the artists Owen Bennett, Jennifer Crouch, Alex Hincapié, Lisa Gornick, Jolene Liam, Zoë Marden, Fergus Polglase, Katherine Pogson, Olha Pryymak, Nina Ross, Nwakuba Udenze, Siena Venturino-Malcherczyk and tyroneisaacstuart approach the idea of keystone species in a multitude of tones.
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📍 Proposition Bethnal Green, 279 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 0EL
🗓️ 27 March - 27 June 2026
⏱️ Wednesday–Saturday, 12–7pm
🗓️ Private View - 6:30-8.30pm, 26 March 2026
When a keystone species disappears from an ecosystem, it can cause an effect called a ‘trophic cascade’. A trophic cascade is an ecological phenomenon relating to nourishment and thus metabolised energy through an ecosystem. ‘Trophism’ relates to the Greek word trophē, meaning "nourishment" or "food". In biology and ecology, it describes the interactions and mechanisms through which living entities absorb and metabolise the substances necessary for life. A trophic cascade occurs when the cycles affecting nutrition are disrupted and collapse. The loss of a keystone species triggers powerful, direct and indirect effects that ripple down through food webs, shifting and altering ecosystems and the physical environment across multiple levels.
The work I have made for this project was created through processes of enmeshment, entanglements, embroideries of threads, fibres and textiles, marking the complex ways in which we are embodied and embedded and relational. The smooshing and smashing together of fibres and textiles for this project indexes a practice of embedded enmeshment and interconnection. The cosmic power of weaving is latent in the work, and the physical acts that constructed it are enacted as a creative principle.
The pseudo/semi-wearable nature of the pieces on show was developed as an attempt to stimulate embodied empathy. While the perceptual experiences of other individual organisms are impossible for any other to directly experience, embodied empathy is a multi-sensory aspect of lived experience. The pieces on display do not make sense to us as functional garments but suggest wearability, and ask you to imagine/ consider/ invent ways to wear or inhabit these works. The bonnet, smocked ‘creatures’ and layered fabrics can envelop us and embed us in sensory experiences that explore interconnection.
