Jo Burzynska
Hyphal Space

18 October – 11 November 2023

Hyphal Space is a multisensory meditation on mycelial knowledge at a time of environmental and existential crises. Ideas branch into different zones, fusing with each other, and their audience, through human-hyphal interfaces. Understandings are transmitted via sensory interactions and active collaboration with the mycelium that forms and inspires the fungi-fabricated, sonic, scented, and tactile works of this exhibition. Hyphal Space invites the formation of symbiotic relationships between local fungal and human communities. These connections both highlight practical solutions to current environmental issues, and suggest more collaborative, non-binary, and non-territorial ways of thinking, sensing and being in an undivided and undivisible world.

Dr Jo Burzynska is a multimedia artist-researcher, and writer. Her initial practice in sound spans sonic art to multisensory installations, regularly using her own field recordings. With a background as a wine writer, her work in both areas has converged in the production of works that often combine sound, taste, touch, and the scents she often distills herself. She is actively engaged in research into sensory interactions and their creative application, pioneering a practice she calls crossmodal art. This research has been informed by collaborations with psychologists, sensory scientists and anthropologists, and was the focus of her practice-led doctoral art research at UNSW Art & Design. She is currently interested in exploring the different connections and understandings that can be made between people, culture, nature, and place through a focus on embodied and nonvisual sensory knowledge and aesthetics.

Images by Ardit Hoxha