Not All Roses Are Romatic
May 9th-16th 2022
The Garden Museum -London
Installation, performance and live panel discussion. Exhibition element centered around three main handcrafted sculptural hybrid rose/stiletto shoe artefacts. The installation by Jo Cope explores parallels made between the lifecycle of the rose (bud, bloom, decay) and the stages of a women’s life. The design of the central piece comprises a critical response to the French philosopher George Bataille’s alternative Language of Flowers (1927). Bataille believed that flowers were repugnant and paradoxical. Singling out the rose (as the most romanticised of flowers) he declared that once the petals were stripped away, only a ‘sordid tuft’ remains.
The Bud, The Bloom and The Feminist Rose artworks seek to challenge notions of female related agism.
Words by curator of Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion - Amy de la Haye.
Project invited by Garden Museum curator Emma House as an official part of London Craft Week.
Not All Roses Are Romantic
Jo and I made contact on Instagram during the pandemic. During the pandemic, I’d created a rose-themed account to support my exhibition Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion (2021) at the Museum at FIT in New York. Jo became intrigued by my exploration of the darker side of roses, notably George Bataille’s declaration that, ‘…the interior of a rose does not at all correspond to its exterior petals, all the remains is a rather sordid tuft…’ (The Language of Flowers, 1929) The quotation went on to inspire her hybrid rose and stiletto shoe provocation The Feminist Rose (vegetable tan leather lamp nappa and beech wood, 2021.)
In 2022, Simon Costin and I were creating Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose at London’s Garden Museum and asked Jo if we could borrow her work. She, in turn, invited us to participate in a performative event that she planned to choreograph for London Craft Week. The Garden Museum’s exhibition curator Emma Hope, positive as ever, agreed the museum would host the event. We invited sustainable flower designer Shane Connolly and dancer Xrestina Prompona to join us: Simon returned to Cornwall. I titled it ‘Not all Roses are Romantic’ to support Jo’s exploration of feminism, the analogies between roses and the (mostly) female body and lifecycle, sustainability, and the human cost of the global cut roses trade drawn from my book Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion (Yale, 2021). We described it as ‘a human plant hybrid’ provocation involving figurative poses that blur the boundaries between people, objects and environments.’ Jo’s project creative vision, persuasive and project management skills made this – for me rather daring - project a complete joy. Jo animated my work in ways that I could never have imagined. Which is, of course, the joy and beauty of successful collaboration.
Amy de la Haye, dress historian, curator and writer, Centre for Fashion Curation, University of the Arts, London.
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Not all Roses are Romantic. May 9 – 15, 11am-5pm, 2021, Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1
Photography Maria Andrews