Tom Isaacs

Night Soil explores the earth as the site of birth and death—a womb and a tomb—through the live burial of the artist inside a purpose-built wooden bed. The live burial references rites of passage with their particular relationship to death and rebirth as well as natural cycles of renewal and transformation. The bed is a space for sleeping—itself a kind of temporary death—but also a place for the conception, birthing, and nursing of infants, and for the care of the sick and dying. We spring from the earth and return to it, fertilising the ground for new life.