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Katya de Grunwald Gift

Katya de Grunwald: Gift

Uncommon or garden flower show

For those of you who are not going to the Chelsea Flower Show or can’t quite take the press of people, there is a gem of a flower show at the Observer Building, Uncommon or Garden. Hot’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths went to smell the roses.

Flowers and the natural world normally elicit paroxysms of delight. And these exhibits do that too, but in unexpected ways. This is an alternative show;  it is not at all chocolate-boxy which some flower exhibitions can be. Nor is it predictable.

This is an exhibition poignant, lyrical and tender about life, beauty, death and decay ­ celebrating each stage of living and dying.

On entering the room there is an assault on the senses: lovely flower arrangements, still lives, black and white photographs, an installation and a woven piece that looks like light filtered through leaves onto water.

BalthasarVanderAst 2014 Decayed Rebecca Louise Law

BalthasarVanderAst 2014 Decayed: Rebecca Louise Law

The flower arrangements of spring blossom and flowers, delphiniums, foxgloves, agapanthus are, and were, vibrant. And still are, as life in transition. A few weeks into the exhibition they haven’t been removed, perked up or rearranged to look perky and lively; they have been left to wilt– vividly illustrating the cycle of life into death. But this is not morbid, many of the exhibits demonstrate the beauty of their life, love and intimacy.

Curated by writer and editor Beth Smith and photographer and artist Katya de Grunwald, the exhibition brings together artists who look at the world in their own idiosyncratic way.

Jim Cook’s photographic record of Eddie’s Garlic celebrates each stage from seed to the papery remains. Eddie was his father and the work seems to be a labour of love as he plants and harvests his father’s garlic crop. The garlic cloves are laid out for the photograph in neat rows as if ready to be judged in a garden fete, and are labelled 10th annual harvest: from 27 cloves plants to be planted 18.11.09. 27;  harvested bulbs (Eddie’s birthday), cloves from the 27 harvested bulbs, cloves to be eaten, and then the papery residue from the harvest.

Autobiographies _ Garden 13 Yiorgos NIkiteas

Autobiographies _ Garden 13: Yiorgos NIkiteas

Yiorgos Nikiteas’ black and white photographs has bees and moths tumbling around a delphinium in Garden 13.3 while in Garden 13.1 he has captured in a tangle of dandelion seeds that moment of the explosion from the main seed head. Cornwall is a quiet criss-crossing of reeds lying quietly alongside each other.

A chair hanging from the wall gives me a wry smile: Birthday Chair 2009. Rebecca Louise Law has created a sculpture from a friendly wooden chair, its woven seat removed and planted with faded, dried, papery roses with their long stalks extending down through the seat towards the floor.

Tucked away in the corner is Jodie Carey’s subtle installation, Fallen 2016, of fallen, fragile porcelain leaves, scattered over the floor and blown into a pile in the corner.

Anne Smith’s minimalist abstracts are evocative of plants and remind me of Miro’s paintings. Jim Cooke’s Source of the Somme, France 2008 are photographs taken as he followed the river; twigs river beds, tiny star-like white flowers. With a jolt, I cannot help but think of that land, what lies beneath, the different terrains. Katya de Grunwald’s Gift is a photograph of peonies wilted like dancers taking a bow.  Rose Ratcliffe has created a still life table of shells and flowers, with paper and pencils provided nearby, children, adults and the children within us are invited to draw.

So many of these works are tender, understated but powerful pieces tracing the big themes of life and death. These are only a few of the artists mentioned. It is certainly worth a visit and to see – and probably by now smell – the strange beauty of the dying of the light.

A definitely uncommon or garden exhibition.

Artists exhibiting are Ansel Adams, John Blakemore, Nancy Blum, Jodie Carey, Juliet Graves, Katya de Grunwald, Mister Finch, Grace & Thorn, Lisa Hardy, Kitty Jenkins, Rebecca Louise Law, Ptolemy Mann, Richard Misrach, Hormazd Narielwalla, Yiorgos Nikiteas, Oriole & Thistle, Rose Ratcliffe and Anne Smith.

Uncommon or Garden is at  the Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Road, Hastings TN34 1DT until 6 June. Thursday to Sunday, 12 noon–5pm.

 

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Posted 14:03 Saturday, May 21, 2016 In: Visual Arts

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