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‘Floriography: The Bureau of the Unsaid’ for Chelsea Fringe 2016

Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 May 2016, 1-5pm

Floriography-Hi-res Dalston Eastern Curve Garden will be visited by ‘Floriography: The Bureau of the Unsaid’ on 21 & 22 May, launching four weeks of ‘Dalston Flower Show’ events and activities at the Garden for Chelsea Fringe 2016.

‘Floriography’, the language of flowers, has been around for over a thousand years and was especially popular with the Victorians. Gifts of blooms, plants and specific floral arrangements were used to deliver a coded message to the recipient, allowing the sender to express feelings, which could not be spoken aloud in Victorian society. ‘The Bureau of the Unsaid’ will revive and update this cryptic and intriguing means of communication to help visitors express themselves with friends and family.

A pop-up florist’s office, filled with flowers entirely constructed from paper will be installed for the duration of the Chelsea Fringe. On the weekend of 21 & 22 May Artist Emily Tracy, assisted by a team from the Garden, will be hosting this messaging service and inviting all to express their secret or vital feelings. The team will help visitors to pick out and construct their own coded bouquet made from fabulous and fantastic paper blooms complete with typewritten translation for the uninitiated. If you need to say ‘Yes’ then a solid coloured carnation would do the trick, for ‘No’ that would be a striped Carnation, to say ‘Sorry’ that’s a purple Hyacinth, a purple Lilac is ‘I think I am falling in love’, and ‘I am dangerous’ is a sprig of Rhododendron, for ‘Can you get some milk on the way home’ a bunch of White Roses will say it for you. Events for Chelsea Fringe at the Garden continue until 12 June.

1000 Petty Indignities by Julia Mason

Sunday 8 & Monday 9 May 2016, 12-6pm

Julia Mason is a Hackney based artist with a nursing and public health background, whose work is influenced by her experience of working with children and families living in poor communities.

Her latest work ‘1000 petty indignities’, a fabric installation, will be displayed at the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden on Sunday 8 and Monday 9 May and visitors are invited to contribute to the piece.

Julia says of her piece:
“The work was borne out of anger and frustration at the welfare cuts. It was also inspired by J K Rowling who said in an interview “Poverty itself is romanticized only by fools. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships” and the government’s insignificant response to the migrant crisis, agreeing to take only 1,000 Syrian refugees by last Christmas.”

Visitors are invited to participate, by cutting open or sewing up the stitched cuts in the fabric. They can also take part in a film of the event to provide a record of shared conversations and stories, as the cloth is sewn and shaped by many different hands.

‘1000 petty indignities’ will be exhibited alongside another of Julia’s works, ‘Uprooted’, based on the theme of displacement, which won the ‘Wiener Library’s International Bookart Competition’ in 2014.
Uprooted (1) 2013 by Julia Mason

‘1000 petty indignities’ and ‘Uprooted’ will be displayed in the Pineapple House at the Garden, and entry is free.