LONDON.- Spring comes early to London’s world-renowned Saatchi Gallery when the exhibition Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture opens on 12 February 2025. Occupying two floors and over nine major gallery spaces, the exhibition will feature large-scale installations, original art, photography, fashion, archival objects and graphic design exploring the ongoing influence of flowers on creativity and human expression.

Flowers have, throughout history, inspired artists, writers and creatives. This exhibition seeks to reveal the myriad ways that flowers continue to be depicted by artists, and their omnipresence within our contemporary culture. Aside from studies of their inherent beauty and drama, flowers are also utilised as symbols, signifiers or metaphors for human emotions and impulses. Flora lies at the heart of myths and stories that inform our cultural outlook and language.

Recognised as unparalleled objects of beauty in nature, artists continue to evoke the power and beauty of flora to convey a multitude of messages and meanings.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections, each exploring different creative themes and media. The first section, Roots, establishes the rich history of artists depicting flowers and harnessing their symbolic power from the Renaissance through Dutch flower painting to the blossoming of the Arts C Crafts Movement in the 19th century and onto modernist explorations of flowers in the 20th century. The second room, In Bloom, focuses on works by established contemporary artists created over the past 30 years revealing how flowers have continued to fascinate and provide inspirational material in our contemporary age.

A third room explores the relationship between Flowers and Fashion. People have adorned themselves with flora throughout our history. From the high street to high couture, flowers are a source of infinite inspiration, aspirational allure and perpetual appeal. It includes the jewellery and silverware of Buccellati – known for its distinctive style and hand-engraving techniques. The fourth room in the exhibition includes works by contemporary photographers and sculptors.

Here, moments of beauty and life are captured in two and three dimensions. The fifth room is a 2,000 sq ft gallery space entirely devoted to a bespoke installation piece created by internationally renowned artist Rebecca Louise Law. Entitled La Fleur Morte, a double-height gallery space will feature over 100,000 dried flowers for visitors to explore and contemplate.

The exhibition continues with a room reflecting on the prevalence of flowers as emblems and content in music, film and literature. A wall of vinyl will reveal the recurrent themes that feature on vinyl record covers over the past 50 years. Separate sections on film and literature will also demonstrate how flowers have proved fruitful sources of meaning and metaphor for poets, writers and directors.

A seventh room will be completely transformed into a digital projection space featuring the work of the pioneering French artist Miguel Chevalier. This animated work features virtual flowers and plants projected over 70 square metres and which interact with the movement of visitors within the space.

The penultimate gallery space is entitled Science: Life & Death. In collaboration with the Chelsea Physic Garden there will be sections of botanical art reflecting on the properties of flowers as medicinal plants and another looking at flowers as poisonous plants. The mathematical principles behind some natural floral phenomena will be explored as will the influence of the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show. A section featuring superb botanical illustrations, kindly loaned by the Schroder Collection from the Schroder family, reveals how orchids were bred and developed over decades in the 20th century.

The final room of the exhibition will feature artworks by emerging or early-stage artists entitled New Shoots. The gallery space will be a rich garden of blooms competing for the attention of the viewer and revealing a diverse range of styles, approaches and media being used by contemporary artists right now.