Makoto Azuma is the Indiana Jones of florists. He has fired flowers into the stratosphere and plunged them to the bottom of the ocean. One of his favourite tactics is to preserve specimens at their moment of maximum beauty, in blocks of clear resin, which is how visitors to the Triennial at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria can experience his work.

In the installation A Chaotic Garden, we see a room lined with exotic floral specimens, apparently frozen in time. At first we might think how wonderful it would be to preserve ourselves at our own youthful peak, but Azuma is telling us that beauty can only be made permanent when it is removed from the stream of life.