MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF FLOWERS

More Than a Handful of Flowers, is a collaboration with Jess Dare. Jess’ words on the art below...

“At the heart of my exhibition sits a series of 6 portraits of 4 generations of women in my family.

When my Grandpa died over a decade ago, all of the women in my family picked flowers from his plentiful garden in the Adelaide Hills, a property where he had grown over 400 different types of trees. From all the collected flowers, mum and I made the floral spray for his coffin, a kind of final act of love.

This series was developed to honour this memory and celebrate the generations of women in my family, carers, gardeners, storytellers and keepers of our family histories. In the recent days with nana’s passing this work has taken on another layer of poignancy.

The camera is focused on our hands, drawing your attention to the passage of time, of cycles, growth and aging, to think about the memories etched in to our hands, our hands are how we connect, make, care, hold, give and take. My grandmother 95, my mother, my aunties, myself down to my daughter who has just turned 5, 90 years separating us all, all holding handfuls of flowers picked from our own gardens.

The flowers symbolic of both our connection to our gardens something that has been carefully passed down through generations but also seasons and cycles of life, growth and transience.”