Decontaminate the Discarded: Rewiring the Web
Presented at Mycelium Studios, Brunswick East
In 2023, Mycelium Studios artists and agitators came together for Decontaminate the Discarded: Rewiring the Web as part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Contemporary Festival—an interdisciplinary exhibition that asked how art and design might participate in the regeneration of culture.
The exhibition drew inspiration from the mycelial network—the hidden fungal webs that recycle organic matter, restore ecosystems, and connect life underground. As Paul Stamets has said, “Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet and the vanguard species in habitat restoration.” This became a guiding metaphor for artists working at the edge of cultural repair: breaking down what no longer serves us, re-using the waste of extractive systems, and finding ways to weave fragmented threads of community and culture back together.
The works presented by artists across industrial design, jewellery, and community arts explored questions such as:
What drives the disconnection that impacts our mental health?
What fuels mass consumption and planetary destruction?
How might waste be reintroduced into cycles of life, art, and craft?
How can communities reconnect, reinvigorate lost skills, and step toward a regenerative future?
The exhibition opened with a public program that included a poetry, a participatory weaving workshop, and live music to encourage collective flow and connection.
Decontaminate the Discarded was more than an exhibition—it was a call to see art-making as a form of ecological and cultural composting. It demonstrated how creative practice can help metabolise the discarded, rewire our social fabric, and cultivate a more regenerative future.
