Saatchi Gallery – London

Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture Until 5th May 2025

Those of you who read my blog will have worked out that I tend to be on the side of the artist or the cultural site, so you’re probably used to me being quite positive in my reviews, but this time I have to go a bit superlative, what a brilliant exhibition!

The premise of Flowers is the use of flowers in art, and particularly contemporary art, I was expecting a few out there things, you know, a dissected flower showing the futility of life, or a vase hanging from the ceiling exuding dead leaves through an air pump, but no, it’s mostly the pure unadulterated joy of flowers and their use in art, simples, gorgeous!

It's huge, there are over five hundred exhibits and I must admit, even I was flagging by the end, it definitely warrants a revisit. Obviously, there was too much to cover here but I’ve picked a few highlights, the rest you’ll have to see for yourselves!

As you enter the exhibition you’re greeted by Sophie Mess’s mural going up the stairs, huge, huge, flowers adorn the whole wall, lush in their gorgeousness, it’s not just the monumentality of them but the vibrancy of the colours, great stuff. It’s spray painted, I wonder what they’ll do with it?

The poster girl exhibit is Rebecca Louise Law’s, La Fleure Morte, 2025, a monumental piece that takes up a whole room of its own. This is a sculptural installation made of dried flowers, the wide variety of flowers are suspended from a wire framework and fall down into the room in tendrils, it’s absolutely stunning, like a secret, dried flower garden you can walk through in your own world. The artist talks about our connectedness to something spiritual within nature that comes through in her installations, I agree with her, the beauty of the flowers speaks for itself here.

Rob and Nick Carter’s, Sunflowers, 2012-13, is very interesting, the image, taken from Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, 1888, in the National Gallery, London, was 3D printed and then cast into a bronze sculpture using the lost wax method. It’s set against a digital image of Van Gogh’s Irises, 1889, it really brings the well known sunflowers to life out of their usual context. What an interesting concept, bringing something so iconic to life to be seen in a very different way. You have to wonder what Van Gogh would have made of it.

The sculpture and the original

After last week’s visit to the Wallpaper exhibition in York, wallpaper and the Arts and Crafts movement makes an appearance again, it’s not surprising really since their focus was an interest in the natural word and a hark back to the simplicity of nature. There’s a greater variety here, starting with a corridor wallpapered in Sanderson’s Hykenham in French Rose, it celebrates one of their leading wallpaper designers, Kenneth Truman. There are fabric samples from Sanderson dating from the 30s to the 70s and even some chintz seats to sit on in this room. The Arts and Craft movement is well recognised through tiles, ceramics and furniture as well.

Sanderson fabrics, furniture, ceramics and tiles, Arts and Crafts.

One of the, many, stand out exhibits for me was the sculptures by Ann Carrington, at first I thought they were exhibits created in silver but they’re actually made out of spoons and metal objects the artist collects at fairs. They’re fabulous, full of glamour, wit and depth, the trick of the eye makes you smile and then, small letterings, placed strategically, make you think. They reminded me, of course, of Cornelia Parker and her flattened spoons but also of Joana Vasconcelos whose ability to turn a saucepan into an object of glamour will forever stay with me!

Bloomstruck

Sakado Snowballs

Ipheion, 2021

Joanna Epstein’s, hauntingly beautiful photograph, Untitled, 2020, from her Isolation series, also stood out for me. It felt like the 50s, the black and white image, the style of vase and even the kind of flowers. Doing some research, and, joining the dots, it was obviously made during lockdown. On her website, the artist talks about how the images in the series reflect the loneliness and anxiety of that time, the flowers piece sits at the centre of the images and I wonder if that was the one bit of hope she was hanging onto at such and uncertain time.

The last room of the exhibition showcases emerging artists, nature and flora still being a current subject in a our digital world. There’s some really interesting work on this floor, Andrew Millar’s Moonlight Falling, 2025, is fabulously kitsch and energetic, it does recall the 70s to me, those velvet backed pictures and sparkly rainbow hues cast into a modern context here. The artist has used mother of pearl, an ancient medium, as you may recall from my Mughals blog post, being used here for its same properties, to add iridescence and luxury to the image.

Kior Ko’s, Pause and Scent, 2024, are pretty surreal, described as digital painting, I loved their fantastical imagery. We see the black, velvety background again here, those perfect, crystal clear water droplets and beautifully rendered flowers make me think of the classical still life images of Dutch 17^th Century art, while the eyes, lips and noses, sensually interacting with the flowers bring us to Dali and the Surrealists. Love it!

The final exhibit I’d like to mention is William Darrel’s, The Machinery of Enchantment, 2025, the artist has made 3D reproductions of flowers in plastic and animated them to represent the primal attraction that flowers have for us, and, as he points out, across all cultures. It’s mesmerising to watch, although there is recoil on the obvious falseness of the plastic, but still, it was pulling the audience in to stand and stare.

Obviously, I loved this exhibition, there’s so much to see, but it’s the clear purpose of the curation that is evident, to bring out how the beauty of flowers is so pervasive through art and culture, and this it does successfully. It is large, so either revisit or leave plenty of time for a good wander around. Enjoy!

Rita Fennell

Gallery Tart!