John Peter Askew, Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Gordon Cheung, Tania Kovats, Sophie Layton, Sarah Lederman, Lana Locke, William Mackrell,
Hannah Maybank, Jiro Osuga, Rebecca Partridge, Tomoko Yoneda
Think of flowers and you think of beauty, of romance… and, especially if they are painted flowers, of death: ever since its Dutch 17th century heyday, the Vanitas tradition has been using the transitory nature of flowers to stand in for how all of us will die.
But enough of that: ‘Say It With Flowers’ sees a dozen artists tackle other subjects through flowers: modesty, sex, economics, menopause, cultural difference, fertility, consumerism, mystery, ageing, darkness, economics, culture, shyness, ageing, human relations with flowers, epistemology, and individual destiny…
The flower is recognizable everywhere and is universal. They are very mundane but they play important roles at life events. Throughout art history flower painting has been a very popular subject, in
contemporary art it has become less common, art schools no longer teach it as part
of the curriculum and it is often seen as a minor tradition within still life painting.
‘Flowers of Romance’ attempts to revitalise this once eminent artistic genre and place it
in a contemporary context. It deserves to be under the spotlight as this beautiful
and fascinating subject encompasses all human history and drama.
View an illustrated list of the work
Read texts by Paul Carey-Kent about the exhibiting artists
