Material World at Kew review
November 13, 2025Material World at Kew review – a number of interesting artworks in an exquisite setting. Thoughtfully curated and appropriately linked with the famous great glass greenhouse and Kew’s scientific botanical mission.
Image G Jones. Created using AI.
As the recent craze for mycelium has shown us, fungi is a complex and surprising (to me, anyway) organism. It doesn’t just consist of the mushroom that we know from our plates – that’s just the fruiting body, like an apple. It has a whole underground network called the mycelium network, which connects trees and plants. This carries water, nutrients, and electrical signals not only between mushrooms but also these plants and trees. The term coined (by German forester Peter Wohlleben originating from the scientific work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard) was the “Wood Wide Web”.
Fungi also has an ability, in some cases, to invade the bodies of ants and make them into “zombies” – fun fact, this inspired the series “The Last of Us”. Fungus can colonise human bodies too, but we don’t become zombies, just very ill, or, in the case of athlete’s foot, very itchy. Ants also “farm” certain types of fungi, protecting it from harm and cultivating it, and in return it feeds them. This is known as ant-fungus-mutualism. And of course, ingesting it alters human brains, from a hallucinogenic effect from magic mushrooms to increased concentration from Lion’s Mane, and other effects including energy from Cordyceps and immune boosts from chaga and reishi.
Material World at Kew review
It is tempting to see in mycelium not just a product but a philosophy, since its entire life revolves around networks, sharing and renewal. If trees use these fungal webs to communicate and to care for one another, then perhaps humans can use them as models for how our industries might behave. Less obsessed with competition and extraction, more interested in collaboration and regeneration.
So, all this being said… would you like a jacket made from mushrooms? Is it right to get it to form the cloud like cushioning effect of polystyrene, to make compatible protective packaging? Maybe? It’s an interesting material, and it can take many forms. Including clothes. And this, absolutely not in a nutshell, is part of the basis of the Material World festival at Kew.
Obviously, using plants to form clothing is not new. Cotton and linen are the most obvious plant fibres, you may know about hemp clothing, ramie is a fibre similar to linen and often mistaken for it at first glance, used a lot in the clothing industry. Viscose is made from bamboo, but is heavily processed.
London College of Fashion’s Thoughtful Approach
For this show, London College of Fashion students past and present have been looking into some ancient techniques of plant usage. This is a particularly good move as fashion is such a difficult area of creation, because of its environmental impact. Once you realise that – or at least, once I realised that – it’s difficult to find joy in something so destructive. But inviting fashion students to formally consider it could be the path forwards.
Silvia Acién has experimented with nettle fibre, which creates a surprisingly lustrous effect. She also makes weavings with Mediterranean grasses and pineapple fibre too. Acién looks at plant dyes too. And if you are interested in colour, you can easily do the same at home. The results can be surprising, often creating the opposite shade to that which you’d expect. For example, you get a beautiful soft pink from avocado stones, and red cabbage will create shades of blue. However, this designer is considering dyes from invasive species and bacteria. So perhaps we can reconsider doing it at home, after all.
Material World at Kew review – Wings of Cloth
Nnenna Okore’s Between Earth and Sky is a striking installation. It features enormous wing-like structures fashioned from organic cotton, hessian and cheesecloth. They dangle overhead in the vast greenhouse space. These forms are simultaneously fragile and monumental, almost skeletal yet alive, and they remind you of fungal networks on a giant scale, turning the air into a kind of fertile underground. The fact that every material here is biodegradable adds to the resonance. The installation is destined not to last forever but to return gracefully to the soil. It’s a process that speaks more eloquently about sustainability than endless talk of durability or permanence.
Then there is Global Threads by Lottie Delamain, a garden that looks like a quilt laid out on the ground, each patch planted with fibre and dye plants from different parts of the world. Indigo grows next to roselle, cotton sits beside turmeric. The effect is not only visually spectacular but also a reminder of how entwined our wardrobes have always been with colonial trade routes and ecological transformation. The borders of this garden are stitched together from waste textiles. These scraps might otherwise have ended in landfill. Their presence alongside the living plants drives home the cycle of extraction, use, and disposal.
Cotton and Colonisation
No form of manufacturing comes without a price, and though cotton might be biodegradable and better for the planet in many ways than synthetic alternatives, it has not got a great history. The writer and artist Michael McMillan, working with flautist Rowland Sutherland shows How Cotton Became King, an audio-visual installation exploring the colonial history of cotton and its relationship to capitalism.
Material World at Kew review – this autumn
The festival spans six weeks with its main focus being the exhibition in the Temperate House. It’s a really interesting building to house a show. If you go, you’ll get entry to the rest of Kew Gardens as well, which is always a treat. I recommend it.
Curated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in collaboration with the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. With installations and works by artists including Nnenna Okore, Lottie Delamain, Michael McMillan, Beth Williams, Silvia Acién, Eirinn Hayhow, Jessie Von Curry, Vega Hertel, Carry Somers, Kate Turnbull and Becca Smith. Material World ran in the Temperate House from 20 September until 2 November 2025.
