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.

Futura Glitch, Livia Rita and The Avant Gardeners 04.05.22 // Sadlers Wells

Delightful evening with Livia Rita and the Avant Gardeners - wild card - at Sadlers Wells.

I created three pairs of blooming displays within Livia’s shoes. It was wonderful to see them inaction and leave heart buouyant after a night of her creatures, all stomping out gleeful.

For more information about Livia Rita www.liviarita.com

'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