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Floating Garden 
May & June, 2016

This suspended flower installation reached up from the floor to above visitors heads, forming a beautiful arch in the heart of Bath's much loved building, Walcot Chapel. The delicate installation invited visitors to walk through it, giving them an opportunity to experience an intimate connection with the natural world.

The beauty in the piece speaks of utopia, yet the work also wilted and dried over the duration of Fringe Arts Bath, the cities annual art festival. The inevitable cycle of death, and the human desire to have, keep and remove something from its natural environment whispers of a dystopia, so often disguised.

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The plants in Floating Garden are entirely donated - from a woodland in Devon, local gardens and a fantastic selection from Flowers by Passion, donating old flowers destined for the compost heap - giving them a new life through the Floating Garden project.

The project was a fantastic opportunity to combine plants from these varied settings and work with volunteers who were interested in assisting with the installation. Those involved also got to help shape the project and give it their own creative touch, composing their own patterns of strung flowers for the installation. This added variety, keeping the piece growing organically. 

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I installed the strung flowers a day later, only revealing the beautiful archway of flowers to the volunteers at the opening of the utopia:dystopia in the world exhibition.



I thoroughly enjoyed bringing the outdoors inside with this piece, the work so peaceful in the setting of Walcot Chapel. 

Thank you to Flowers by Passion, Geoff Dunlop, Stephen Magrath and Annabelle Barton for their flower donations. Thank you to Heather Griffin, Sarah Emily Parkes, Nina Marie, Kamila Szczesna, Katja Petch, Aimée Coates and Ieva Lākute for volunteering to help with the project. 

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