'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

Bodfa Continuum 09.04.22 - 24.04.22 // Plas Bodfa, Penmon, Anglesey

I greatly enjoyed taking part in Bodfa Continuum, an exhibition exploring the multiple histories of a now empty house in Penmon with over 70 participating artists, curated by Julie Upmeyer. I exhibited two placards dedicated to Saints, back to back, hanging in the moongate, to occupy the spot where a placard to St. Matilda once hung on the east facade of house. Now with the help of the birds, these seeds, (all used to prepare grounds for wildflower meadow) can be distributed and re-incorpated into the site.

Growth Exhibition 15.05 - 23.05.21 // A collaboration with OmVed Gardens and Thrown Contemporary

"The natural world growing around us, the constant ebb and flow of plants reacting to the seasons, at a pace invisible to our busy lives. And of course our own emotional growth, an inward personal journey which may not be visible to the outside world – and sometimes even, yet, ourselves."

Claire Pearce, curator of exhibition and director of Thrown Contemporary.

It is a pleasure to be collaborating again with OmVed Gardens and Thrown Contemporary again for their 2021 Exhibition "Growth" as part of The Chelsea Fringe. Following ongoing hardships and uncertainties this exhibition looks at the weathering and points of direct friction as we face each other, ourselves and society moving forward.

My "Flipside Gardens: Spring / Autumn" and "Summer / Winter" (which together illustrate the garden year) are now on display at Growth exhibition alongside creation of new floral vessel "Gatekeeper" which sees my flowers move from inside to outside of the vessel, to become the whole arrangement.

To view the exhibition online visit Growth Exhibition

Blind Horizon or Bookmark found in "The Word for World is Forest” // 14 - 28.03.21

“Blind Horizon or Bookmark found in The Word for World is Forest” is a large hanging work composed of mesh, Venetian blind slats, dried dahlias, Swiss milk bottle tops and small squares of mirror. The starting point for this work was trying to envisage the loss to our collective imagination via mass extinction, which, being completely unable to visualise and slightly overwhelmed by a sense of earnestness, initiated a turn to natural world references and symbolism.

The cut- out blind form is inspired by an ocean sunset and the sense of the sun’s rays hitting the water. Two maquettes of the work (made from re-purposed diary and see – through ribbon) are attached to the piece that went through many different forms. These included a double or reversed sunset, which look like an i and ! next to each other, which felt like a fitting reference to our view and use of the planet.

Whilst the title Blind Horizon is self explanatory the second part is developed from a dystopian book by sci-fi writer Ursula Le Guin “The Word for World is Forest.” In this book an aggressive team of men abuse a local race of creatures to harvest natural materials for use on the frazzled and irreparable earth. In the introduction she talks about love vs power and the difficulties of making a work that feels preachy; offering courage via creative complexity when an urgent message must be addressed.

The milk bottle tops here are displayed in series – one complete line of species on the left and remaining doubles from the series on the right. The second series is also mirrored this way, but more gaps emerge as they must be rarer. In this way the collection of milk bottle tops attached try to articulate some of this potential loss and place of choice we sit at now in light of the Climate and Ecological Crisis.

For more information, please visit Window135

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

Fieldworks 11.09 – 19.10.20 // Glass Cloud 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. 

Press release available at Glass Cloud Gallery

Review of exhibition by Miriam Al Jamil on Lucy Writers

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.