Folk art and flowers

It occurred to me the other day while I was doing some preliminary research about the Battle of Flowers that a surprisingly large number of my previous projects—all of which are in some way related to the notion of ‘folk art’—have involved the use of flowers. This gravitation towards flowers as a medium has not been a conscious choice. Many of the activities and practices I’ve worked with have had a floral connection, sometimes used as part of a costume—as in the hats worn by English morris dancers—and sometimes employed as a symbol or metaphor—as in the ‘Rose Day’ parades in the UK Northwest.

Can this really be a coincidence? I’d like to spend a bit of time reflecting on the association of flowers and folk art—which I have a feeling will be one of the main drivers of my project in Jersey—by way of a brief tour of some of my work over the last five years. Some of the pieces were created during my practice-led PhD at Manchester School of Art, which I finished in 2014 (#immodestwoman!) and others are more recent projects. There are more details about all the featured works on my website: http://www.artistic-researcher.co.uk.

One of my first projects which made use of flowers was 'Conversation Hats', a piece of artistic research undertaken in 2013 with members of Lymm Morris Men from Lymm in Cheshire. North West morris dancing teams (or 'sides') are known for their large flowery hats, but those worn by the Lymm dancers are amongst the biggest and most impressive of all. Performers create their own hats upon joining the side, often supplementing an array of plastic and silk flowers with small personal effects, such as badges, jewellery and charms.

During the project, I interviewed five members of the team about their history in relation to the dance, using their hats as aide-memoires. I then made a series of my own hats in response, which the dancers modelled for me at Lymm Rushbearing in 2013. 

Making the hats was a surprisingly time-consuming process—and they cost a small fortune in silk flowers—but the process helped me to think differently about the relationship between folk performance and material practice. Here's an excerpt from my thesis:

At first the repetition and the sharp wire stalks cut into my hands, leaving them raw and pink and punctured. However, once begun, I find that I am unable to leave behind any visible trace of the silver armature which lies beneath. I work feverishly, like a smoker who lights a new cigarette before the old one is extinguished. One hand clips the filament, the other clamps the bloom. But it is satisfying and almost meditatively absorbing. As the work progresses, I bargain with my local shopkeepers, haggling for bulk discounts and wholesale prices—fifty stems for £40—and my fingers grow tougher and thicker with every new batch. 

Once fully stuffed with flowers I bestow the hats with the effects of individuality, supplementing a few items from my own trinket collection with other small pieces found rummaging around local charity shops and market stalls. A broken brooch for ‘Mother’, tiny Limoges dishes, a silver shoe charm and horseshoe from the top of a wedding cake, to bestow good luck. Old strings of beads and used bottle caps and two small faux-taxidermy birds also find their way onto these repositories of symbolism and memory, but the mythology created is hardly my own. Instead, as I work, I imagine meanings for objects which once belonged to others. I craft myself into the role of the photographer and writer, Rosamond Purcell, who picks through the debris and wealth of a junkyard in Maine to curate a collection of artefacts whose heritage will almost always remain unknown.

“Rarely, if ever, do I learn an object’s actual history,” she writes, “usually, I do not care. I am after the butt ends after all – the fact-free, provenance-lacking, bucket-kicking, burnt-out, no-good nameless shard,” and I think to myself, isn't that somehow like my ideal of folk? I only want its present form, its immediate façade rather than any conceits about the truth of its origins. Folk as a construction, an abstraction. I don’t want to pin it down or make it untouchable, I want to use it to ask questions...about the tales it tells and has told about it, and what it means to be created and recreated time and time again.

Too large to properly dance in, the hats were like wearable shrines. They were displayed as part of the 'Creating the Countryside' exhibition at Compton Verney in Warwickshire in 2017 and are currently on long-term loan at the Lymm Heritage Centre: https://www.lymmhic.co.uk.

 

As a result of this work on the Lymm hats, I also used flowers when designing a costume for Bear Dance, a collaborative project with morris performer, Edwin Beasant.

Also around the same time, I worked with members of a South Manchester Guides group to re-stage the historical Manley Park Rose Queen celebrations. No flowery hats this time, but plenty of flower accessories and garlands.

In 2015, during an artist's residency in Stoke-on-Trent, I was inspired by the US tradition of 'homecoming 'mums'' (short for chrysanthemums). In the southern states, particularly in Texas, these elaborate corsages are worn at homecoming events, such as parades, dances and football games. They are usually made by hand and are sometimes given as gifts or love tokens. For decades, ‘mums were relatively simple, comprising just a single flower and a few ribbons, however in recent times ‘mum making has become an increasingly competitive activity, sometimes including whistles, fairy lights, photograph albums and stuffed toys. 

I held workshops with local people and members of the troupe dancing community to create our own version of the homecoming 'mum, as an experiment in importing traditions from one place to another. I don't think they caught on, but I loved how our final installation turned out.

And most recently, I used flowers in the piece Ballot Urns, exhibited in 2017 as part of the LEAVE/REMAIN show at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield:

During Tito’s National Front regime in the former Yugoslavia, two different ballot urns were sometimes used at election time; the first—ornately decorated with flowers and ribbons—was for collecting Tito’s votes, the second—for his opposition—was a bulky tin can. Members of the electorate were given a small, rubber ballot, with which to cast their vote. Many stopped to admire the pretty flowers and the fancy bow; watched closely by officials of the national militia as they dropped in their ball.

So, what does all this suggest? I’m not completely sure yet… Flowers are (and were) readily available and almost universally admired. They are a sure-fire way of adding some colour and some interest to a scene. At the same time, folk art is often highly textured. I’m thinking here of embroidery and patchworking and woodcarving, to name just a few examples. There’s frequently a busyness about the composition, an obsessiveness about its construction. 

My most recent work on ‘bling’ certainly fits that description… Mostly practiced by girls and young women, the technique of ‘hand-blinging’ (also known as ‘bedazzling’ and ‘bejewelling’) was actually a comparatively short-lived DIY trend, which involved the application of paste gemstones and small plastic charms (or ‘cabochons’) onto the surface of a range of objects, such as mobile phone cases, laptop covers and cosmetics. It spread primarily via online tutorials, posted on YouTube and Instagram, borrowing its aesthetic from 90s rap videos and Japanese decora subcultures. It spoke to a sense of optimism and wish-fulfilment, also representing a form of disobedient consumption as makers appropriated otherwise mundane items and re-worked them into the stuff of (apparent) luxury.

I'm looking forward to getting started on this new project and adding a new flower tradition to my collection!