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Writer's pictureAnnie Kavanagh

Alice - conversations with flowers creating an exhibition.



The mini gallery I constructed to help me plan the gallery space for artwork and furniture.




Usually the first question people ask me is “Why have you got all this furniture in here?” quickly followed by “Are these pictures really taken on your iPhone?”.


The answer to the first question is I like to provide context to my work.  Alice is all about her 1880s garden and the flowers found there and those that were displaced. The Victorian parlour was the principal, posh room in the house and where social interactions took place.  It allowed men and women to be in the same place which was quite rare and was used for entertaining, and an activity the Victorians loved, conversation.


Alice is all about initiating and having conversations around Victorian gardens, the history of flowers, and the consequences of clearing native vegetation. The name parlour is derived from the French parle (to speak) and hence, an ideal venue for Alice.


I encourage visitors to the exhibition to sit in the space and linger.  I want people to feel relaxed and then hopefully this encourages the conversations.  So far in this edition of Alice - conversations with flowers I have had many and all interesting or illuminating. 


The second question about the iPhone is yes I do take all my photographs on my iPhone. These days it is an iPhone 13 Pro Max but I started with an old 6S and the only reason I upgraded was due to lack of storage for the 70,000 odd photos that routinely reside on my phone. Coming from a manual camera/darkroom background the idea of carrying around thousands of photographs in your pocket still amazes me. I do all the editing of my photographs on the phone too before working with my wonderful printer Amanda from Churchill Imaging to create exactly the image I want.  However, the process of selecting and editing images digitally is very similar to the skills I once used in the darkroom.


So where do I start when thinking about pulling Alice together? The essence of Alice is about creating a lasting legacy of flower stories. Learning and researching about the flowers that Alice may have planted in her Victorian garden is often where I find inspiration.


For Alice - conversations with flowers, I have been working for about two years on creating my own rose garden at Roselyn. I started a few years ago randomly buying roses and sadly killing many of them as I had yet to learn how to care for them properly. I really did not know much about their history but have always loved them. Most flowers create memories for people. For me it is my grandmother’s deep red rose - Josephine Bruce. She had a tiny garden and it was the only rose bush but very treasured.


Now I am focused on creating a rosarium and collecting all the roses that I just simply love, particularly the more unusual or heritage roses. Having set aside a part of the garden just for the roses I now have more than 100 different varieties and a list that is probably five times as long.  Putting all the roses in one place makes their management easier. In their early years, in our part of the world, roses need a lot of TLC to get them through their first couple of summers. Once established they are pretty hardy. I’ve discovered they are hearty feeders and it is almost impossible to overfeed them, especially in our ancient soils. Other than sufficient water and food they are very easy to look after.  I have issues in the spring when the first buds appear with aphids but I have discovered over the past couple of years if I do nothing the hoverflies and lady birds will eventually appear and sort the aphids out.  I may lose a few flowers but the benefits of natural pest management outweighs this.


Probably because I was spending so much time with my roses is why they became the feature flower for Alice - conversations with flowers. That and they are just incredibly beautiful flowers which range from simple rugosa type roses to the more complicated multi-petalled modern roses. 


Having decided roses were the featured flowers for this edition. I realised this is part of how my work will unfold in the future.  Each edition of Alice will focus on a particular flower (the rose is not done!) and it is all part of my wider project of documenting the flowers in my garden which reflect the historical provenance of these gardens. 


Curating the images relies as much on the actual images themselves as how they sit together and where they will sit in the exhibition. The starting point of approximately 70 images was whittled down to 23 different roses and the  21 rose pictures. 


I started by making a mini scale model of the gallery space.  I needed to know how to lay out the space to create both the parlour and an hallway.  There are always particular characteristics with room spaces.  In Gallery 152 there are large almost floor to ceiling windows at the front which extend the full width of the gallery space. This meant unlike in my last exhibition I couldn’t utilise this area for furniture.  


To create the parlour fortunately the gallery has mobile walls which I was able to configure to create the ‘walls’ of the parlour.  However, I still needed an extra wall to create the hallway so I had one made out of corrugated cardboard which is made out of recycled paper by Spice Digital printing. It  arrived flat packed and took some time to assemble - not what you want to be doing the day before the exhibition opening. 


Having made my mini gallery it became obvious where furniture would go and how much wall space I had to play with. I even made scale models of all the pictures so I know exactly where everything would go.  Once this was done it determined how many pictures would fit in the space and how they would go together. 



I may have been a  window dresser in another life because I suddenly decided to create a display for the large gallery windows.  This may seem like a waste of space but I think it acts like a book cover to the exhibition. It is a taste of what’s to come plus an opportunity to advertise the exhibition and feature my image of Alice who is of course the muse for everything.


All the parlour furniture is recycled/upcycled and secondhand. It is important that visitors feel comfortable in the parlour.  Whilst beautiful antique furniture might be more in keeping with the style of a Victorian parlour neither I nor visitors would feel very comfortable using it. The sofa is a double spoon back which is typical of the Victorian era.  The other chairs were all painted black and recovered with black velvet. The rest of the furniture tables and sideboards are also painted black. The idea is to bring some conformity to the exhibiton but also for the furniture to ‘fade’ into the background so the artwork is the feature rather than the furniture.


This time around I was able to get wallpaper made and installed on the back wall.  I had originally wanted this for last year’s inaugural Alice exhibition but unfortunately the walls in the Fremantle space were too damp and the wallpaper refused to stick! 


Once again I have collaborated with natural perfumer and friend, Shelley Lewis of L”HORTO who has created the beautiful Alice scent which pervades the space. The perfume is all part of a larger plan to incorporate music and possibly moving images to future exhibitions to make them thoroughly immersive.


All the frames are again upcycled/recycled vintage pieces.  As most older frames are rectangular they are cut down to a square and then I paint them black. This is often how the Dutch Masters which are a huge influence on my work framed their floral paintings. This time around I have also included some gold frames which were the other popular choice back in the 16th century.


In addition to all the practical decisions that have to be made the design of the artwork is the priority. I will explore the background to the art in my next missive.


I am after all telling a story through Alice’s eyes. I know for sure Roselyn Homestead had a rose garden front and centre of the garden as you approached the house. From the old black and white photograph I have it is impossible to tell what colours were grown or the varieties but there were a mix of standard and bush roses. Given they had their own dedicated space I am assuming they were Alice’s pride and joy and meant to impress visitors as much as the long tree lined driveway and wide hallway into which visitors would enter the house.


What has always fascinated me is why these gardens were so important. The flower garden, or decorative garden as a they were known, were the sole responsibility of the lady of the house. The farm and productive gardens including orchards and vineyards would have been the responsibility of her husband and farm manager.  But in the flower garden Alice would have been in charge. The flowers were to beautify both house and garden and I imagine the house would have been filled with roses and the other English flowers Alice would have planted. I will delve more into the history of gardens life this in a later missive.


For Alice - conversations with flowers the art is presented in two halves and I will explain how I curate the images in my next blog.



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