Delighted to take part in this all female exhibition Side Step curated by Anna Lytridou. This exhibition brings together works by artists whose practices do not fall squarely into one type of art making bracket.
I was delighted to exhibit Rake #3. One of an ongoing series of collaged paintings pairing world leaders with garden rakes - the research and raking continues. This rake featurs the Queen.
On the 9 – 10th July Lieneke and Victor will be opening their garden Cae Rhydau, Caernafon via National Garden Open Scheme for the first time. Lieneke a Dutch RHS Gold Medallist florist has very kindly invited me to exhibit a floral artwork in her garden alongside her own work.
This Summer inspired by bright light, long views, wind beaten trees surrounding my new temporary home in Anglesey, I have been thinking of the Australian landscape and my early childhood in Melbourne.
Thanks to brilliant Amy McDonnell and Zero Hour campaign co-ordinator and Permaculture Book Group collaborator for her willingness to work in wind and rain.
Thanks to Lieneke, who kindly suggested the collaboration, on the right and her dog Fleur (the larger of two) and Rod on the left, who I met on the Pilgrimage for Nature last year.
Using cut willow which was drying on site we built a visor shaped install as a nod to Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. In these famous Australian paintings the outlaw, murderer, bushranger Ned Kelly merges with landscape. The violence encompassed by his actions is depicted in a naieve bright style by the painter who inhabits this outsider. In this series Nolan reflects on European ties, both via his personal experience and of Australia’s involvement in the Second World War and Western painting tradition and there is a sense of both belonging and staunch independence cultivated at the same time.
I like the visor shape as a starting point for reflecting on how we have a blinkered view of the landscape according to what we know of it, whilst simultaneously providing a viewpoint to look at the landscape from and opportunity to look at the tool of our own blinkeredness, which hopefully expands the vision.
I see this work very much as a prototype; the design changed rapidly given materials and stability in the wind, and I think that the coverage of mesh could be further developed to reflect different sites. The visor panels also act as a temporary divider and having worked on it flat we created a trampled stage area within it and series of pathways up through the grass to the artwork. Perhaps this space could also be used for further reflection on the landscape as well as the armour we build around ourselves and how our views are informed by both indiviudal and collective vision.
‘Flipside Garden: Winter/Summer’ 2020
Seasonal dried flowers, hand cut tokens from RHS magazines, floral twine, wool, chickenwire
120 x 110cm
‘Flipside Garden: Spring/ Autumn’ 2020
Seasonal dried flowers, hand cut tokens from RHS magazines, floral twine, wool, chickenwire
120 x 95cm
Smaller version of "Fieldworks," the hanging floral tapestries first developed for Glasscloud Gallery can be viewed in the JGM Group Exhibition. These "Flipside Gardens" act as learning utensils for the artist uniting and using the cut flower installation world to envisage the growing seasons of Gardens, and enjoy a sense of long and forward thinking that garden design brings and a sense of shifting perspectives which is so valauble in 2020.
For more information and for sales enquiries please contact JGM Gallery
'Fieldworks'. An installation of hanging tapestries of flowers and collage inspired by permaculture farmer Masanobu Fukuoka's relationship to nature.
For Glass Cloud Gallery, McCabe has created ‘Fieldworks’ an installation of floral tapestries made from dried, repurposed and foraged floral materials inserted into a mesh structure in gestures almost like painting. Given their exposure to sunlight the materials will change colour over the course of the exhibition, reminding us of the seasons and referencing the fascination for bringing nature indoors as well as our increased observation of nature this year. Atop of the natural background are badges of chopped up ephemera from exhibitions visited, botanical drawings and the artist’s archive of photographs ‘inspired by nature’. These tokens insert a sense of distance from floral material and reading of landscape, teasing our ability to understand nature and our representation of it.
A collaboration by OmVed Gardens, Thrown and Metafleur (my new sustainable flowers venture), Gatherers was originally formed as part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival and with lockdown restrictions halting plans, the exhibition was re-thought for the digital sphere, presented through Virtual Reality, online workshops, film and photographs.
Using the medium of ceramics as a starting point, the exhibition includes wild clay projects that stretch from Tambourine Mountain, Australia, right back to OmVed Gardens itself.
The ceramic work and exhibition content is further expanded by foraged floral displays from Metafleur. These include an intertwined collaborative wild garden installation by Metafleur’s founder Alice McCabe and ceramicist Zuleika Melluish on the central stage. With Alice’s usual suppliers suspended, Metafleur uses solely flowers dried from previous events together with materials from friends offcuts and materials.
For more information about the images and all ceramic artists please see Gatherers.co
