Gabriella Presnal’s exhibition, COMPOST, presents poetic works navigating ecologies, circular and linear economies, and the carbon cycle.  Their exhibition is on display at Kaisaniemi Botanical Gardens (greenhouses) from 8.4.25 to 8.6.25.

The works primarily reuse scrap materials to create textures, poetry, and paint. In 2022, I worked with bio-based inks using food scraps such as onion & orange peels, dirt and herbs, birch ash, daffodils, dried marker tips, salt flour relief, and more. This was the first time making bio-inks so I was happy with the results. The materials were gathered from what I was eating at home, so while the palette may be limited, it also meant I was using everything to its fullest potential and not going out of my way to extract or purchase other working materials. The works focus on different carbon pools & exchanges in the carbon cycle, such as photosynthesis, limestone & mollusk shells, CO2 in oceans, and carbon in compounds in detrivores, saprotrophs, & producers, and more. In this series, I also started working more with paper machè using newspaper and magazine scraps, which later informed the smaller works I made in 2024.

The more recent series (2024) uses scraps from previous projects, including bio-materials using milled bark, egg shells, nettle leaves, etc. On top, there are scrap collage cut-outs, small objects, discarded photographs, and textual excerpts. The texts were produced using automatic writing (not having a prior plan for the poem), attempting to visualize thoughts on our present and future. The works also force you to look at what materials are going unused around you and how even weird scraps or dried-out glue that you would otherwise throw away have artistic potential.