At the pre-burial “viewing”, the bereaved are often confronted with their loved one in an artificially beautified state of what appears to be perpetual preservation. Artificial plastic flowers, found in abundance in our cemeteries, are ironically in a similar kind of suspended animation. Many of these plastic gardens are tended with great love and devotion and exist defiantly alongside their natural counterparts. These flowers however, don't really blossom into their fullest beauty until they have weathered at the grave for several years.
The flowers in this exhibition are significant, as they are each taken from the graves of people I once knew. Most of the flowers have been at the gravesites for many years and, like the body at the “viewing”, have now been treated with acrylics to preserve their current transient state – in perpetuity.
