Living Labyrinths: Art and Fungi at RAMM, Exeter, 3 October 2026 to 21 February 2027

An exhibition that outlasts the mushroom season

Living Labyrinths: Art and Fungi opens at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery in Exeter on 3 October 2026 and closes on 21 February 2027. The run appears on RAMM’s exhibition page, which carries the note “Posted on 21st August 2026” and was read on 17 September 2026; the same dates were announced earlier, in the museum’s news release of 1 July 2025. The show occupies Galleries 21 and 22 of the Queen Street building, Exeter EX4 3RX.

It is an art exhibition. RAMM frames it as an approach to the cultural world of fungi through a lens of scientific enquiry, and the curator named in the 2025 release is Lara Goodband, the museum’s contemporary art curator and programmer; no mycologist holds that role. The works are in ceramic, glass, photography, painting and textile. The same release promises that RAMM’s newly conserved fungal specimens will be on display as well, so the collection is in the room — but it is there inside an art show, and neither page offers identification keys or a natural history gallery.

Inspired by the collection, not made from it

Newly conserved dried specimens, natural history drawings and lantern slides from RAMM’s own fungal holdings inspired two new commissions. Inspired is the museum’s own word, and the distinction is worth keeping: nothing suggests those specimens went into the finished works. Over a hundred artists from across the south west expressed interest, six were shortlisted to present to an independent selection panel, and two were chosen. Both live in Devon and neither had shown at RAMM before. Gemma Anderson-Tempini’s large-scale drawing, Body Mapping the Mycobiome, uses mycological inks and Killerton Estate soil pigments. Jason Singh’s immersive sound installation is derived from electrical biodata and from recordings of fungi, mycelium, soil and Devon field sites, with interviews with mycologists, storytellers and herbal practitioners woven in.

Beside them go fungus watercolours by Beatrix Potter and Cy Twombly’s 1974 collage series Natural History, Part I, Mushrooms. RAMM calls these major loans, so neither belongs to the museum, and no source says which institution lent which work: RAMM acknowledges the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate as having helped make the exhibition possible, and stops there. Twombly’s collages are works of art rather than scientific studies of fungi. Eight further contemporary artists show alongside them — Sian Bonnell, Seana Gavin, Andy Harper, Hilde Hauan Johnsen, Lucy Mercer, Jo Pearl, Chantal Powell and Holly Stevenson.

Tickets, hours and a time that two sources dispute

Admission is not free. A standard ticket is £6 online or £8 at the desk; students, under-25s and Art Fund and Museums Association members pay £4; accompanying carers and under-19s go free. A guided tour is charged separately and aimed at groups — 45 minutes for up to 20 people, £115 plus VAT on top of the ticket price, booked by telephone. The museum closes on Mondays, opens at 10.30am on Tuesdays and at 10am from Wednesday to Sunday, and shuts at 5pm on every day it opens. These are the prices published on 17 September 2026, and nothing promises they hold for the whole five months.

The sources also disagree, which is worth knowing before booking. The British Mycological Society’s UK Fungus Day listing gives the exhibition’s hours as 11.00 to 18.00; RAMM is the authority for its own building. The same split affects the linked urban foray around Rougemont Gardens and Gandy Street on 10 October 2026, led by Professor Mark Ramsdale of the University of Exeter at £5.50. RAMM’s page for the walk gives 11.00 to 12.00 while also saying the event should last “around 60 to 75 minutes”, which does not fit the hour it advertises; the UK Fungus Day catalogue carries the same walk twice, once at 12.00 to 13.30 and once at 12.00 to 13.00. The times here are quoted as published rather than reconciled. The foray is booked and priced on its own, and an exhibition ticket does not cover it.

RAMM is Exeter City Council’s museum and its contemporary art programme is supported by Arts Council England. The University of Exeter supplies the walk’s leader and collaborates on one commission; the exhibition itself is the museum’s.