Electric field of a flower Series (2018)

Pollen and india ink on cardboard
12 x 18 inch panels

NEWS FROM FLOWERS
First Annual Saltspring Island Flower Show July 2018

In celebration of the Gulf Islands summer, Fault Line Projects presents an exhibition of contemporary BC artists who have incorporated floral imagery into their work in innovative ways. Selected by Vancouver artist Robert Kleyn, News from Flowers takes as its departure the fact that flowers are a recurring motif in art, whether as a historical, social, cultural, psychoanalytic, or political reference. The flower asserts the power of the symbolic realm as Walter Benjamin observed – flowers act as the ultimate symbol of a naked vegetal nature confronted by the technologically armed world.

The artists work in a range of mediums and include: Chris Brayshaw, Amber Frid-Jimenez, Rodney Graham, Lyse Lemieux, Myfanwy MacLeod, Al McWilliams, Marian Penner Bancroft, Bernadette Phan, Kathy Slade and Brady Cranfield, Stephen Waddell, Ian Wallace, Neil Wedman and David Wisdom

The exhibition also includes rare photogravures by the early modernist photographer Karl Blossfeldt whose striking close-ups of botanical specimens was the subject of Benjamin’s essay “News from Flowers” that inspired the title for this show.