The Jamie Brannan Archive // Tannery Arts Project Space 28.05.17 - 25.06.17

Curated by Theresa Kneppers featuring the work of Priya Sundram, Christian Corless and my own paintings and flowers.

LEFT: California #0392 Super Blooms and Priya Sundram's Corporate Poster

The Jamie Brannan Archive Exhibition is a visualisation of a larger research project about the art collection of an early San Francisco Bay Area tech entrepreneur whom commissioned and collected artworks while creating an influential start up.  

Jamie Brannan’s business, GoldRush, an online flower delivery company promised to deliver arrangements in selected cities within a half hour of their orders. GoldRush took off with major investment in the mid to late 1990s developing a network of warehouses and delivery vehicles. The company and its initial hires were based in Brannan’s Mid-Century Eichler tract home.

With the early success of her business Brannan began to purchase and commission work by Bay Area artists that were hung in her home. Brannan’s collection included works by Bernice Bing, William T Wiley and Squeak Carnwath, as well as unknown young artists and graphic designers from the California College of Arts and Crafts. After the dot-com bubble burst Brannan left the tech industry in 2001 dissolving her art collection of an estimated 250 artworks.

The Jamie Brannan Archive Exhibition combines archival materials with the works of young florists, artists, illustrators and graphic designers that reflect the ethos of Jamie Brannan’s original collection. Inspired by California wildflowers and the type of arrangements that were sold through the GoldRush website, Alice McCabe, a florist and painter has developed two floral arrangements. Paintings by McCabe echo the inventive abstract narratives that Brannan seems to be drawn to in her own collecting practises. Illustrator Priya Sundram responded to Jamie Brannan’s unique position as a female entrepreneur in the tech field by creating a series of posters. Based on a former employee’s description graphic designer Christian Corless has reconstructed the GorldRush logo.

McCabe, Sundram and Corless’ contemporary pieces highlight the distinctiveness of the Jamie Brannan collection in the nascent dot.com world and opens up questions of the relationship between the art world and tech collectors.

We would like to thank James Mansfield of the Museum of Imaginative Knowledge and an expert in 1990s computer culture for his support and research into Jamie Brannan’s collection. 

For more information instagram @the_jamie_brannan_archive or www.theresakneppers.com

LEFT: Goldrush Logo by Christian Corless / visualisations of the collection and paintings by myself.

LEFT: Sample Frequent Flowers Weeks 1993

26.05 Man - U - lip - U - Lator

02.06 Mandocello

09.06 Dream Police

16.06 I want you to want me

23.06 California Man

Painting "Floral Cycles" 2015

Floral Art Observations // 10.04.17

Published on SECRETS OF GREEN BLOG 

Art into Flowers 

I am a practising artist and florist with over a decade’s experience and in 2016 I set up my own floristry business as a floral artist. This was born on the back of what seemed to be an abundance of flowers in contemporary art, of plants in art installations and significantly the first year Frieze Art Fair was sponsored by a florist, That Flower Shop. At the same time in the floristry world there developed a surge of florists without formal training (given instagram and social media according to Alice Vincent: Floral Revolution) which saw a rise in floral installation and innovative (non-traditional) artful arranging.

I aim to work at the borders of flowers and art by both creating conceptual flowers (which my friends warned me against – as they sound like something which might not be made of flowers) and working for contemporary artists using flowers, alongside the bread and butter work of making bouquets and doing event floristry. I’ve now re-titled conceptual bouquets as “topical” and recent pictured examples range from the Interrobang bouquet commenting on a new form of punctuation, to a hanging arrangement dedicated to Trump’s proposed closing of the Mexican border.

Double hanging arrangement February 2017, “Closing the borders opened the gates of hell.” Photographed by Sebastian Boettcher.

Interrobang Bouquet, June 2016 is based on the Interrobang symbol (!?) a novel form of
punctuation being taught to under 5’s used to denote an excitable or rhetorical question.

It is the combination of manual labour and colour planning, alongside the unexpected nature of working with flowers that got me hooked to floristry. The more I work with flowers, the more surprised I am by their resilience not only in terms of lifespan within an arrangement but in how they organise themselves too within a display: it can be almost autonomous! For larger events I find myself using my practical artistic skills alongside skills gleaned from my MA in Arts Education and Curation, drawing designs and building prototypes to consider the flow of the space and how the experience of the flowers will impact at various stages of the event. I have a weakness for combining materials and more often than I ought to probably, I consider using concrete.

Like any other artist’s material flowers are loaded with historical connotations and issues of sustainability include at a glance: their readily acquirable worldwide availability as compared to their original export and introduction to Britain, their evolving meanings during different epochs and changes in significances across the world and lastly their developing narratives of display and positioning alongside art. An example of this interplay is the Metropolitan Museums fabulous commissioned vases refreshed every week and subsequent exhibition of ten years of flower drawings by Abbie Zabar which makes it hard to fathom who the artist in all of this: the museum for providing niches for the works which should hold sculptures hence changing their context, the benefactor for funding the creations within this institution, the florist for designing and making them or the painter for capturing and displaying them as art.

Flowers into contemporary art

Flowers have long been a popular subject for artists given their beauty and transience: drawing attention to the passing of time and fleeting moments of everyday beauty. In contemporary art there now seems to be an opening up of a political and conceptual dimension extending from these inherent qualities. Kapwani Kiwanga “Flowers for Africa” and Taryn Simons “Paperwork and the Will of Capitol” both look to the silent witnesses in the room of treaties, coups and agreements, re-staging and documenting the flowers in the room to re-assess history. Whilst Simons’ floral works are displayed as photographs, Kiwanga’s are recreated and allowed to rot over the duration of each exhibition, sharpening focus on both the precise moments where the world changes and the repercussions of such negotiations. Ai Wei Wei’s “With Flowers” shows a series of images of flowers in a bicycle basket. This bicycle was outside his confine in Beijing where the flowers were replaced and photographed daily, documenting the length of time he spent awaiting his passport: this kaleidoscope of flowers belying the inflexibility of the Chinese regime.

Favourite examples of artists work involving flowers with powers in 2016 included below: Kapwani Kiwanga, Taryn Simons, Iza Genzken, Jill Magid, Timur si Qun, Shaun Gladwell, Ai Wei Wei...

Taryn Simon’s Will of Capital at Gagosian Gallery New York

www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/taryn-simon--february-18-2016

Selection of Ai Wei Wei's "With Flowers" at the NGV, Melbourne. Full series can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/aiww

Two Orchids by Iza Genzken, David Zwirner Gallery 

www.publicartfund.org/view/exhibitions/6101_isa_genzken_two_orchids

Shaun Gladwell's The Inspector Tides, Anna Schwartz Gallery

http://sammypreston.xyz/The-Inspector-of-Tides

Jill Magid, The Offering (Tapete de Flores), 2016, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen. 

https://frieze.com/article/jill-magid-gallen

Kapwani Kiwanga, Flowers for Africa, 1.54 Contemporary African Art Fair 2016

http://1-54.com/london/interview-with-kapwani-kiwanga/

Berlin – Timur SI qin, squashed flowers and natural palm fronds onto transformer posters, sun seeking nature of plants, just as posters are always looking for the space, the gap in the light. Heirachies of nature na docmmersialism are not split. Info from SLEEK

http://www.sleek-mag.com/2012/11/14/timur-si-qin/

Fair Coniston // Grizedale Arts, 04.11.16

November 4th _ Flower arranging for societal impact and vase making for better delivery. Cost 5 buttons in the Fair Coniston alternative clay currency.

Holly White // Jupiter Woods, 21.10.16

I need your love is that true

FLOWERZINE 1 - What I think about when I think about preparing flowers, 21.10.16

Made for Holly White's self-help-self-love library at her exhibition "I need your love is that true" at Jupiter Woods.

Erwin Blumenfeld // Osborne Samuel Gallery, 04.10.16

From DADA to VOGUE