Hey bloomer: The simple things we use to celebrate life’s big moments

We use them to celebrate and commemorate life’s biggest moments: from romance and marriage to breakups, birth and death. And artists have been fascinated by them for millennia – think Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Mapplethorpe and Frida Kahlo; even The White Lotus honours the humble flower.

Artist and curator David Sequeira has curated Floribunda at Bunjil Place.Credit: Penny Stephens

The fundamental role of the flower in art is now being celebrated in Floribunda, a new show opening in Melbourne this weekend.

But it’s about bigger issues, says curator and artist David Sequeira; it’s about turning to artists to reveal something about the human condition through flowers.

“As soon as they bloom, they are also dying … that’s the case with humans as well, we have a life cycle. A flower’s life cycle is very short – a reminder of that beautiful human fragility is often at the forefront.”

Their ephemerality is partly why artists are fascinated by flowers, but they hold appeal on many levels, Sequeira says. Delicate to touch, with a beautiful fragrance, they engage our senses in many ways, and “our response to them is immediate”.

The brief life of a flower mirrors something of the human condition, which is partly why artists return again and again to them in still life paintings.Credit: Christian Capurro

Covering visual art, photography, fashion, printmaking, bark painting, jewellery, sculpture and installation, Floribunda includes work by Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith, Arthur Streeton, Jim Dine, Lorraine Barber, Deanne Gilson, Akira Isogawa and Carla Zampatti.

A partnership between the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and Bunjil Place, the exhibition includes more than 150 works from the NGV, in one of the largest single loans in the gallery’s history.

A centrepiece of the show, Block Flowers (2023) by Japanese artist Azuma Makoto, is made up of 130 plant specimens suspended in perspex. “You go into that chamber and you are in this space of life suspended,” Sequeira says. “You have this personal experience [of] real plants that have been picked at their prime and placed in a resin block; they’re kind of frozen.”

A suite of 10 paintings – Before Joseph Banks, Our Baskets and Plants Held Sacred Knowledge (2022), by Wadawurrung artist Dr Deanne Gilson – is paired with 20 prints from Banks’ Florilegium, drawn by botanist Sir Joseph Banks between 1770 and 1784.

Detail of Block Flowers, by Japanese artist Asuma Makoto.Credit: Christian Capurro

“We ask artists to communicate all sorts of things about the world. Filmmakers, painters, poets, actors, writers – they are the people who go in and clean up,” Sequeira says, adding that in many ways, artists make sense of the world for us, including in his own art practice, where colour, geometry and contemplation is the focus. He is also director of the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, which shows contemporary work, at the Victorian College of the Arts.

One wall of Floribunda is dedicated to still lifes, showcasing works by Preston and Cossington Smith. “There are works painted during the Depression, in postwar optimism, there are works that are quite melancholy and quite sad and reflective, others that are completely exuberant.”

Given the current state of the world, the exhibition is designed for people to be present, Sequeira says, and to generate conversations that are rich, magical and fruitful.

“What’s going on for you, what is this evoking for you, what memories are emerging, what values? More than ever, those questions matter.

“The use of flowers in art is a call to be present; it is a call to slow down, take a breath.”

Floribunda is at Bunjil Place Gallery from March 29 to July 20.

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