Panel Discussion

Intuitions for Soil

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Thu 30 Jan 2025

18.00 – 20.00

£12.00/£9.00 concessions

Screening Room

South Wing

Part of SOIL: The World at Our Feet

Bringing together an artist, regenerative grower, and writer featured in the exhibition, this panel discussion sinks into the personal philosophies which guide and nurture our relationships with soil, emphasizing the importance of active listening and care in fostering a deeper connection to the earth.

The panel also looks at soil as a living metaphor for time, transformation, and connection. Soil holds the past and future in constant interplay, cycling death into life, legacy into renewal. Unlike linear Western time, soil embodies poly-temporality, resonating with Indigenous heritages that honour the rhythms of land and seed. The speakers also bring unique insights into how soil archives history and shapes possibility through their own lineage and environment. Soil is slippery, like the present—unfixed and evolving. To “speak nearby” soil is to invite interpretation and collaboration, leaving space for new growth. From sand to technosoil, tending to soil means rethinking time and reimagining our place within it. How can we, as artists, growers, writers and audiences, build a revolutionary relationship with soil—one that transforms not just our practices, but how we live and grow?

This panel includes Lauren Gault, Poppy Okotcha and will be chaired by award-winning writer and contributor to the SOIL catalogue, Jennifer Kabat.

About Jennifer Kabat

Jennifer Kabat is a writer based in rural Upstate New York. She’s received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her criticism and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and the New School, New York. Her writing has been published by BOMB, frieze, McSweeney’s, Granta and the New York Times, and included in Best American Essays. She is the author of The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion (Milkweed Editions, 2024), and the forthcoming book Nightshining (Milkweed Editions, 2025).

About Poppy Okotcha

Poppy Okotcha is a trained horticulturist and regenerative grower, on a mission to inspire people to engage with and connect to the natural world.

With her joyful Instagram content, poppy teaches people how to grow and forage their own food, whilst living and eating consciously - for personal, community and planetary health. As a young black woman, Poppy also advocates for those who are underrepresented and marginalised in the world of horticulture and environmentalism.

Poppy’s successful modelling career began in 2014 (she has worked with brands like Vivienne Westwood and Chloe), but in 2016, exhausted by work and international travel, her focus turned to her garden - and to learning how to grow her own good quality, nutrient-dense, food. She began to think more deeply about the connection between healthy environments, healthy food, and, indeed, healthier (happier) people, and decided to train as a horticulturist.

In 2016 Poppy began her horticulture studies with the Royal Horticultural Society, and spent time working with a number of community gardens in London. She also studied alongside Martin Crawford, the creator of the oldest “food forest” in England, qualifying in 2019 as a Permaculture Designer.

Poppy has been featured on Gardeners’ World (BBC2), and is a regular contributor to the Royal Horticultural Society podcast.

About Lauren Gault

Lauren Gault is a Glasgow (Scotland) and Magheramorne (N. Ireland) based artist born in Belfast, working in sculpture, installation, text and sound. She graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Samhla’, ATLAS Arts, Isle of Skye (2024); Galalith, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin (2022); 'Cithra', The Tetley, Leeds (2021); 'C I T H R A', Gasworks, London (2020); forgets in knots, Kantine, Brussels (2019). Lauren has upcoming exhibitions in 2025 at DCA, Dundee and Dilalica, Barcelona, Spain.

The public programme is presented with support from Gaia Art Foundation and the World Living Soils Forum by Moët Hennessy