When I was born, my parents were given a rose called ‘Peace’. They joke that they’ve never had any peace since. That rose still blooms in my father’s garden. In April this year, I planted a ‘Peace’ rose in my own garden and over the last week I’ve been watching with anticipation its first bud develop. This weekend, it opened…
It was a rose born out of the conflict of the second world war – the only existing plant was smuggled out of occupied France on the last boat to America. My father gave me the story of my rose to read as a child.
I have a dream of planting a ‘Peace’ rose in all the conflict zones in the world …
This was one of the four questions I asked my mother and my gran to respond to,
‘What would you most like to plant? Where would you plant it and why?’
The other three questions were,
What you most like to repair or mend?
Imagine a cotton reel unwinding and an invisible thread taking you somewhere you’ve always wanted to go or to a favourite place…where is that place and why would you like to go there?
What does home mean to you?
The works in the exhibition will centre around these four questions and their themes of: home, place, repair, plant. I’ve also drawn inspiration from conversations and discussions with my mother around those themes.
Writing and text play a big part in my work and I often begin with words. This is the notebook I’m keeping as a means of collating all the words and texts from the three of us.
This has been a week of growing things. My mother sent me some birch tree saplings dug up from her garden to be included in the exhibition – they’re so tiny I’m not sure they’re going to survive…