Dried Tablescape Demonstration with Flowers from the Farm 09.07.22 // RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Show

Delighted to be asked by Flowers from the Farm - a supportive network of British Flower growers and florists wishing to work with seasonal flowers and sustainable practices - to give a demonstration at their RHS Flower School at the RHS Hampton Court Palace and Garden Show.

All flowers used in the school were to be grown no further than a thirty mile radius away and I was partnered up with Claire at Plant Passion; a Flower Farm just outside of Guildford.

A couple of days before the show, knowing that I wanted to work with flowers which would for the most part be dried or dry out I went to visit her field and make a selection. I was immediately drawn to everything that you cannot find at the market and that was in a dried and drying out stage quite naturally in the field. This included a huge selection of grasses, dock, phacelia, honesty as well as these jumbo helichrysum.

On the demonstration day it was a delight to see the flowers all conditioned and cut by Claire that morning.

Here I am, in a pose akin to traffic control demonstrating a dried tablescape which can be left to dry out and sit as an everlasting artwork. The work can be viewed from all sides and also from the top. It would suit a low lying table or being put somewhere it would not be disturbed and must be out of wind as it is a piece which is balanced.

To construct this I worked with two re-purposed boiler tops, fashioned into bowls by Rye artist Peter Edwards. Dried and curling climbing hydrangea whirls were then balnaced within them. These provide movement in the piece and extra stability between the two bowls, which have very small bases. Two loose hand tied bouquets were then balanced in the bowls and other light flowers, limonium and grasses added in to soften the shape. Within these structures there is also space for jars with floral pins in to support small fresh pockets of flowers which can change more immediately with what is outside. The piece was then completed with a dried allium garland and the start of a fresh achillea chain. All the colours over time would fade but I hoped that the garlands could bring in further movement to work in and through the arrangement and shape of the whirls.

Underneath is a picture of Claire demonstrating how to make a button hole and the Flowers from the farm team, all of whom it was a pleasure to meet and work with.

Visor 09 - 10.07.22 // National Garden Open Scheme, Lieneke's Flowers, Cae Rhydau

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.

'The Wild Collective' 13.05 - 29.05.21 // A collaborative Exhibition with OmVed Gardens and Thrown Contemporary

Truly delighted to announce collaborative exhibition as Metafleur with specialist craft gallery Thrown Contemporary and garden and sustainable food education space OmVed Gardens taking place in their gardens and greenhouse in Highgate.

This is our third collaboration together for The Chelsea Fringe, with artworks assembled from around the world via an open Call from thrown.

Expanding the exhibition content and encouraging new ways of looking and participating in the exhibition there will be a host of activities including talks, supper clubs, poetry, dance and musical gathering. It is my pleasure to have been organising performances on the 25 / 26 / 27th May as part of the Events programme. Please find more information and a few lines about how each went beneath.

May 25th, G(Roe)

Choreographed by Andrew Sanger and in collaboration with the dancers.

This performance is a collaboration between Andrew Sanger, musician Josef Berk, and the first-year dance students at Roehampton University. Throughout the creative process the students grew calendula plants from seed and documented their growth patterns to devise movement material. The film ‘Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith’, and the poem ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver also contributed to the creative research undertaken by the students. The work will take audience members on a gentle stroll through the gardens of Omved.

A particular movement / moment that moved me was “Show me your sorrow and I’ll show you mine”as they pointed at each other before dropping into a rolling curtsey. Utter magic to see the dancers melding with the garden, with invitations to follow them individually first before returning to self-supporting growing group structures; an opportunity to let go / grow.

26th, Utopia Collective Dinner

Good Place: A series of interventions inspired by Thomas More’s dinner scene in Utopia and William Morris’s ‘How we live and how we might live.’

A joint Supper Club hosted by Thrown Contemporary and OmVed Gardens, with food by Gilvic.

Good Place (direct Latin translation Utopia) is envisaged and includes performances and objects by Amy and Ben Mcdonnell, Joshua Phillips, Eva Sajovic, Mónica Rivas Velásquez, Portia Winters and Alice McCabe.

Objects and performances were asking: “How do our relationships to each other, the land, food, pattern, governance, perpetual ripeness (one of Morris’ key visual cues) affect our perception of abundance or lack thereof?”

27th May, The Gathering; wild collective music making with Maggie Nicols

Respond to nature in our different rhythms together.

Vocalist Maggie Nicols has been an active participant in the European improvisational community since joining the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the late ’60s. As a co-founder of the Feminist Improvising Group, she has also worked to further women in improvised music, dancing and other creative arts not only by example but through workshops and extensive collaborating.

Maggie Nicols builds confidence to interact collectively inspired by the OmVed garden environment. Everyone is invited to listen or take part in the music making; responding in any medium. Maggie also invited us to find freedom in everyday moments and celebrate the Permaculture Zone 6; unmanaged land or minimal inpiut, an observed zone left wild. Felt like a fitting end via extension to the Wild Collective Exhibition.

More information available via the Wild Collective website: www.wild-collective.com

Invitation image by Vivian Ge - join in with sharing images at #wildcollectivechelseafringe

Fieldwork I at Kenspace // 27.02 – 28.03.21

Fieldwork I exhibited at Ken artspace, an artist run space in the heart of Kennington, dedicated to a mix of exhibitions, window installations and pop-up events orgnanised by Rob Kesseler, fellow botanical artist, and Agalis Manessi.

Fieldwork I at Ken artspace, photograph by Sebastian Boettcher and Walking Fieldwork I to Ken artspace, with Anny Lytridou through Kennington Park, photographs by Ben Deakin.

Fieldwork I was created as one of two hanging floral tapestries for Glasscloud Gallery in 2020. Fieldwork I is a reflection of an internal landscape and started off with a rough sketch imagining the five seasonal elements wood, fire, earth, metal and air of chi kung practice flowing into a central void. As the work developed via the intuitive drawing of lines with millet and heather the concept behind the work expanded rooting itself in the philosophy of natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka who advocated for observation and experiments in farming over intellectual knowledge. This piece aims at capturing this inquisitiveness whilst also encouraging exploration of our individual nature and collective responsibility towards our environment.

Flipside Gardens 12. 11 – 23.01.21 // Merry - Go - Round Group Winter Exhibition at JGM Gallery

‘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

Gatherers Exhibition 16.05–26.07.20 // A collaboration with OmVed Gardens and Thrown Contemporary

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

Cultivar Project 29.06.19 – 16.07.19 // Museum of The Flat Earth, Fogo Island

Cultivar Project 29.06.19 – 16.07.19 // Museum of The Flat Earth, Fogo Island

Having missed the opportunity to work and walk with Amy Ash last year in 2018, due to hostile environment of UK (see floral pilgrimage post) we secured a residency together on Fogo Island, an area in between the coasts we both currently look out from.

Our plan was to draw from physical exploration of the Islands flora and the metaphorical implications of botanical terminology, to explore botanical and cultural hybridization to connect political displacement, communities and nature using Amy’s experience of a hostile environment with new possibilities for future growth as a starting point.

From our base at the former Museum of the Flat Earth we got to work on the Island - card reading, dining at Cod-jigger, blackfly biting coastal exploration, workshop plotting and cyanotyping of our hybridised species:

Floral Pilgrimage yr III // #Blauwhaus Artist Residency, Belgium 25.04.19 - 17.05.19

www.blauwhaus.be

Absolute pleasure to be invited to this residency, exhibition, lecture and collaborative working space set up by Wim Wauman in a Castle in Waasmunster, green green Belgium. The project morphed from being a celebration of female arts and crafts makers / muses with him at the helm as Blue Beard to a working unit of craftspeople, with talks and tours organised exploring local history and Bauhaus ethos. Together we worked towards expanding the heraldic crest of Waasmunster - a mermaid holding a turnip - via many tangential connections found in The Wasteland / Waasland, hyperborea - land of eternal Spring and immortality, flat earth theory, colour blue, trees of heaven for presentation as a parade, featuring performance and installations on May 26th.

Powers of x 10 conceived of by animator Isabel Bouttons and droned by Melvin Vanderstylen at the May Day Picnic, 2019.

As part of the residency, I gave an introduction to my work as The Floral Pilgrim to students at The Academie of Waasmunster and invited class to create their own floral bouquet in a small cone to befit the Monster of Waasmunster, replacing the turnip with something more delectable.

Props for the Parade //

At the Academy I worked with glass sculptor Veerle Verschooren and tattoo artist / sculptor Cardon Lander; to create an illusion of a water source from one section of the groups communal table, with the idea of adding floral touches as an alternative well dressing. The small brown pots, designed to display grass blades are part of it. The full installation will only be revealed after the 26th ;)
The object on the right is a pipe, one of 8 made, hoping to plug in a gap at the Local Museum that has an extensive Happy Smokers display rack but a comparatively limited selection of pipes. These will then form part of an installation on a picnic blanket embroidered with group poem and Waasmonsters created by Ilse Van Roy. One pipe will hang on a walkingstick designated for Wim, designed and conceived of by Warre Mulder and Chantal van Rijt.

Daniel Ost, 2012 - Belgian Floral Art Superstar Installation - at the Roosenberg Abbey, Waasmunster.

Floral Pilgrimage III // The Dutch Flower Route _ What 👁️ Saw 22.04.19 - 25.04.19

The Flower Industry

Monday 22nd: Finding the Bluemenstrecke

Left from Folkestone with Liz and Carol, entered via freightlane, pulled over with an emergency stop and boarded train - France - Belge (picnic lunch in Flora!) - Haarlem / start of the Flower Route. Stayed lovely Air B’n’B where other guests mistaking my height for being Dutch owner kept telling me where they had left the keys.

The shut Pilgrim Museum in Leiden displaying it’s Dutch still life charm.

Tuesday 23rd: Keukenhof

Bluemenstrecke, bright fields behind the hedges; straight lines peeking round. Cut tulips for sale on the side of the road and rows rows of flowers being sprayed. Lunch in Leiden after dining out on feast, swathes of star, bulbs, grape hyacinth at Keukenhof “Mega Garden.” Night in Waaldwick: bedazzled by glasshouses, skies and skips of flowers.

Wednesday 25th: D I S C O

Visited Flora Holland / Flower Auction and entered the NO tourist zone. Serious forward sloping arena of mainly manly back apparitions, with flower trolleys rotating to pop music. Dif. wheels of $$ fortune spin, while a man holds sample as trolleys move behind, like some kind of whirlitzer, where you realise that you cannot process your surrounds at the pace they move in so let it go, minor whiplash at brush with price / scale.

Sarah Boulton // Zinc Violets ongoing

Zinc Violets is an ongoing work by my friend and ephemeral artist extraordinaire Sarah Boulton. Together we have collaborated on a few projects - as she now lives in Wales / was giving birth! / was on a residency - I have performed works (normally minimal gestures) on her behalf in London.

She invited me to be part of this project last year, at it’s opening in Masons Yard where Polly Wright and myself laid two identical paper poems down, very slowly at the same time.

Mason’s Yard and Sarah Boulton present an exhibition happening in the space of an evening, comprising of two intangible artworks. One is a prediction and the other, a scent. Both have occurred and will be occurring.

Extract from Press release, Masons Yard

The poems and project relate to a place called Epen in Holland, which given trace element zinc in the local water supply has changed the nature of the local violets, becoming a beloved emblem of the area.

As part of my Floral Pilgrimage pursuits, I am hoping to journey to Epen and find the violets on Sarah’s behalf. She wrote to me to tell me her latest thoughts, after I realised that although the residency at Blauwhaus was close it was too far to be able to visit that trip.

Currently, the next time Alice or Polly does a search in Epen, I am planning to spend the time predicting and every time I remember that I am predicting I will write down a short observation of what I see in front of me wherever I am. I am interested in the distance and these transformative flowers being at the end of the work, stretchable and transformative as it is.

What does a prediction feel like? To me it seems quite unlike most Contemporary Art, and yet a lot about contemporary life.

The flowers are always there in the back of the mind. Influencing and influenced.