Supported by Cazenove Capital and Buccellati, the new exhibition ‘Flowers‘, at the Saatchi Gallery features large-scale installations, original artworks, photography, fashion, archival objects, and graphic design to explore the ongoing influence of flowers on creativity and human expression, spanning two floors and over nine major gallery spaces.
Paying homage to the flower’s perennial attraction and endurance of flora as an inspiring subject in art, the new exhibition examines how flowers are depicted in art for their inherent beauty and as powerful symbols of love, birth, death, hope, and human emotion.
Throughout nine gallery spaces at the Saatchi Gallery, over 500 unique artworks and objects reveal the myriad of ways flowers influence painting, photography, sculpture, fashion, film, literature, music, science and contemporary culture. The exhibition is divided into nine sections, each exploring different creative themes and media;
- Roots, establishes the rich history of artists depicting flowers and harnessing their symbolic power from the Renaissance through Dutch flower painting to the blossoming of the Arts & Crafts Movement in the 19th century and onto modernist explorations of flowers in the 20th century.
- In Bloom, focuses on works by established contemporary artists created over the past 30 years revealing how flowers have continued to fascinate and provide inspirational material in our contemporary age.
- Fashion examines flowers are a source of infinite inspiration, aspirational allure and perpetual appeal – featuring works by Buccellati, Vivienne Westwood, Nick Knight, Mary Quant, Schiaparelli and Marimekko.
- The fourth room in the exhibition includes works by contemporary photographers and sculptors. Here, moments of beauty and life are captured in two and three dimensions.
- Covering 2,000 sq ft of gallery space, La Fleur Morte, by Rebecca Louise Law features over 100,000 dried flowers to create a breathtaking space for visitors to explore and contemplate. Known for her immersive installations, often made from her signature, preserved flowers, viewers are invited to navigate through them, discovering the diverse forms, colours and textures of each specimen.
- Music reflects on the prevalence of flowers as emblems and content in music, film and literature. A wall of vinyl reveals the recurrent themes that feature on vinyl record covers over the past 50 years. Separate sections on film and literature demonstrate how flowers have proved fruitful sources of meaning and metaphor for poets, writers and directors.
- A digital projection space occupies the seventh room, featuring the work by French artist Miguel Chevalier. This animated work features virtual flowers and plants projected over 70m2 which interact with the movement of visitors within the space.
- Science: Life & Death. In collaboration with the Chelsea Physic Garden, botanical art works reflect on the properties of flowers as medicinal plants and another looking at flowers as poisonous plants. The mathematical principles behind some natural floral phenomena are explored as is the influence of the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show. A section featuring botanical illustrations, kindly loaned by the Schroder Collection from the Schroder family, reveals how orchids were bred and developed over decades in the 20th century.
- The final room of the exhibition features artworks by emerging or early-stage artists entitled New Shoots. The gallery space will be a rich garden of blooms competing for the attention of the viewer and revealing a diverse range of styles, approaches and media being used by contemporary artists right now.
Paul Foster, Saatchi Gallery Director comments: “The Gallery is delighted to pay homage to nature and celebrate the manifold ways that artists have been inspired by nature. We invite everyone to step into Spring and aim to put a spring in everyone’s step.”
Flowers will be held from the 12th of February until the 5th of May, at the Saatchi Gallery in London.