Louisa Lee travels to East London to find a community project powered by flowers.
"We need you and your flowers!" reads a flyer handed out in preparation for the most recent exhibition at ‘A Brooks’. Lawrence Daley’s show at this converted florist consists of two flower beds and two dehumidifiers, which occupy a single room on Hoxton Street. The result is well, pretty much as described: two flower beds and two dehumidifiers, in a room. Opening in May this year, the tiny space has kept its original signage giving little indication of its newly found gallery status.
Reminiscent of Agnes Denes’ ‘Wheatfield’ or even Doris Salcedos’ ‘Plegaria Muda’ tables, embedded with live growing grass, the two flower beds in the show were planted at the shows’ opening by Mark Brooks, the former owner of the shop, in beds constructed from recycled scaffolding. The dehumidifiers are similarly recycled and only run during opening hours (Thursday –Sunday) so that the gallery visitor’s breath is carried directly back into the flowerbeds, watering the flowers. The work is very ‘eco’; everything being recycled from the space to the flowers, even the former florist is recycled.
Donated by the Hoxton Trust, Saint Mary’s Secret Garden, other artist’s and local residents, the flowers are a bright assortment of colours and types, of which I cannot name any. Amongst them are a feather – donated from a lady’s hat on the opening night. and a slightly worse for wear dead flower which some Saint Martin’s students kindly stuck in the soil.
Accompanying the exhibition are a number of online photographic portraits, undertaken by the artist, of people who donated their plants to the project. The portraits; set against the white backdrop of the gallery space, show grinning groups and individuals clutching their donations to the project. These will eventually contribute to a small publication, to be given out to those involved, and available to download online. It’s this continual taking and returning of community resources which transforms what could be a fairly straightforward eco-artwork to an engaging and non-elitist project space for the East End.
The florist shop had previously been in the Brooks' family for a hundred years and a straight appropriation of the shop without any acknowledgment of its history would have been too easy and too common. Instead ‘A Brooks’ is sympathetic to both this history and its surrounding locality. Once the exhibition is over, the plants will be given back to the Hoxton Trust, which provides a horticultural service alongside a legal service to the local community, supplying advice and training for gardening initiatives. With White Cube Hoxton closing its doors this winter, it might seem that this gallery has some what missed the boat, however, ‘A Brooks’’ incentive to support emerging artists while engaging Hoxton via providing resources and educative opportunities is long overdue.
The show ended last week, but the next exhibition, by C.A. Halpin, is a photographic archive of lost objects or forgotten detritus of the city, taken by the artist on her humble iPhone. Her interaction with aspects of Hoxton sounds less directly community orientated than Lawrence Daley’s exploration. I might be wrong though. Either way, A Brooks’ is taking East London’s’ gallery scene in an all together different, and more user-friendly direction.
C.A. Halpin's Can Ts Pelle begins on the 1st November. Photograph by Lawrence Daley.
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