Altar Flowers

Lost and Found
Running 15 – 22 July 2021
at The Darkroom, 32 Brunswick Street, Dublin 7

as part of Photoirelandfestival 2021

Installation: plinth, lantern slides, printed artificial flowers, vase, time delay light, donation box.
147 x 40 x 40cm

https://www.darkroom.ie/exhibitions/groupshow

Reference slide: an amateur/semi-formal flower arrangement featuring large dark pink quilled Chrysanthemum with smaller pink and yellow chrysanthemums/dahlias with a variegated ivy arranged in a vase. The flowers are on a table in front of a net curtained window with red brick sill. 

Reference sticker: Flash

The subject, tonality and suggested suburban setting immediately brought the 1980s to my mind. The waxy looking petals and showiness of Chrysanthemums always appeared artificial and plastic and remind me of church flower arrangements.
In my memories they were chosen, arranged and displayed by a usually female cohort of church acolytes. I guess their function (of the flowers and the women) was to soften the often austere architectural and spiritual space…but only on a superficial level, all the while adhering to a tightly arranged formulaic pattern designed to keep everything in its place.