Andrew Merritt (Something & Son)

How do we (re)create flourishing forests full of food?

As humans, we rely on plants. Yet the relationship between humans and plants is strained by current food systems. Let us rethink these systems and re-engage with the time when we wandered the forest for food rather than supermarket aisles. Let us embrace a symbiotic relationship between people and plants, looking after each other.

With playful seed sculptures shaped like familiar supermarket products, Andrew Merritt’s flowerbeds are a proposal for turning supermarkets into ecosystems instead of extractive systems. The seed sculptures will slowly decompose, losing their supermarket shape as the seeds within them germinate and grow. These flowerbeds are prototypes for vast ecosystems, providing sustenance not only for humans but also for soil, worms, insects, birds, the plants and more.

Andrew uses supermarkets as a starting point to rethink how we get our daily needs. His work featured in a solo exhibition [Superm̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶Forest] at Orleans House Gallery in 2023.

Andrew’s work is a collaboration with ethnobotanists, artists, ecologists, farmers, and the forest itself. A special thanks to the volunteers and community members who helped build the seed sculptures.

About Andrew Merritt

Andrew Merritt’s work explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. Through permanent installations, functional sculptures and public performances, projects provide a framework or foundation for communities and ecologies to build upon. Works mimic the everyday to act as familiar starting point and then take the subject into new realms. Andrew is one half of the artist duo Something & Son.

Something & Son have exhibited at Tate Britain; Tate Modern; V&A Museum; South London Gallery, Manchester International Festival; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Deon Foundation, Netherlands;  Vienna Biennale/MAK; Artangel; Milan Design Week; FACT, Liverpool; Cultural Olympia; Somerset House; Folkestone Art Triennial; Design Museum; Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; the Wellcome Collection; Istanbul Design Biennial.

Current long-term projects by Andrew Merritt include Intertidal Allotment, which takes inspiration from the traditional allotment form and expands it into the intertidal zone; and Field Hospital, a multinational project starting in the UK and Mexico. Field Hospital will act as nurseries for slow disasters – a term Andrew conceived to describe areas of land that have been destroyed over centuries and in increasing ferocity.