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.
