On now: 11.09–19.10.20EXHIBITION COMMISSION
For Glass Cloud Gallery, McCabe has created ‘Fieldworks’ an installation of floral tapestries made from dried, repurposed and foraged floral materials inserted into a mesh structure in gestures almost like painting. Given their exposure to sunlight the materials will change colour over the course of the exhibition, reminding us of the seasons and referencing the fascination for bringing nature indoors as well as our increased observation of nature this year. Atop of the natural background are badges of chopped up ephemera from exhibitions visited, botanical drawings and the artist’s archive of photographs ‘inspired by nature’. These tokens insert a sense of distance from floral material and reading of landscape, teasing our ability to understand nature and our representation of it.
16.05–26.07.20EXHIBITION COMMISSION
A collaboration by OmVed Gardens, Thrown and Metafleur, Gatherers was originally formed as part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival and with lockdown restrictions halting plans, the exhibition was re-thought for the digital sphere, presented through Virtual Reality, online workshops, film and photographs.
Using the medium of ceramics as a starting point, the exhibition includes wild clay projects that stretch from Tambourine Mountain, Australia, right back to OmVed Gardens itself.
The ceramic work and exhibition content is further expanded by foraged floral displays from Metafleur. These include an intertwined collaborative wild garden installation by Metafleur’s founder Alice McCabe and ceramicist Zuleika Melluish on the central stage. With Alice’s usual suppliers suspended, Metafleur uses solely flowers dried from previous events together with materials from friends offcuts and materials.
08.06VIDEO COMMISSION _ National Maritime Museum_ World Oceans' Day
The circumpolar current is responsible for keeping Antarctica cool – it is also a part of a larger network of ocean currents that regulate the planet’s climate and deliver nutrients to all marine life.
In this special demonstration of chi kung, Antarctica is represented as a bouquet, with hands removing and swirling the stems in movements associated with restoring equilibrium in chi kung. The stems, made using foraged dried alliums, peel on and off in addition / subtraction of ice due to hot and cold currents. The crossed stems of the bouquet are the central focus to suggest balance both above and under the waterline, and the functioning relationship between both.
I hope the work makes you question scale and balance – how our own realigning can hopefully be reflected in larger systems throughout the world which we must respond to collectively in order to re-address the harmony.
Alice McCabe - Metafleur
https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/exhibitions-events/world-oceans-day-2020/antarctica-crafts
08.2019PHOTO COMMISSION _ collaboration with photographer Sebastian Boetcher
"Closing the Borders opened the Gates of Hell" is inspired by the many levels of purgatory in Dante's Inferno and created as a response to political events for a private commission. Red hot poker flowers alongside the vibrant firecracker morph between the balls of fire of the protea heads, all linked by the licking flames of the orange and yellow stained ruscus foliage. Everything is bent out of shape in this double hanging arrangement, somewhat reminiscent of a figure of eight and infinity symbol, suggesting everlasting entrapment.
