For The Spirit of Utopia exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery (4 July – 5 September 2013), ten artists and collectives from around the world speculated on alternative futures for the economy, the environment and society itself, asking “what if?”.
Wayward created Improbable Botany, futuristic greenhouses that are imagined to be lunar chambers growing food, genetically engineered sheds and bicycle trees for a fictional moon colony. The crops are imagined to have been grown by farmers on the moon in correlation to lunar and earth cycles. Improbable Botany explored the practise of growing and harvesting crops taking inspiration from biodynamic farming, fusing new possibilities in food production with scientific narratives. Children from Lauriston Primary School, Hackney compared the growth of seeds planted to the four moon phases and in an exchange with fictional moon farmers they entered into a fantastic, inter-planetary dialogue about the future of our relationship with nature.