Ngv presents: ngvwa art of bloom

Sour Sunflower was invited to create an installation for the NGVWA Art of Bloom in May 2023. 

Alongside 24 other floral creatives, we were given a piece of art collected by the NGVWA association over the last 65 years, to create our own floral installation that reflected our interpretation of
California, carpet 1982 by MEMPHIS, Milan (design house) ELIO PALMISANO, Milan (manufacturer) and Nathalie du PASQUIER (designer)

STRANGE WORLD, 2023
Celosia, Chicken wire.

The Director of Sour Sunflower, Alyssa Trenerry, has created a striking installation for Art of Bloom which draws inspiration from Nathalie du Pasquier's California, carpet, 1982. The distinctive shapes, colours and textures prompted Trenerry to envisage Strange World, 2023.

Du Pasquier's work was designed under the umbrella of Memphis, Milan, an Italian design and architecture collective founded by Ettore Sottsass in the early 1980s. Their goal was to produce everyday objects and furniture in unconventional ways, using bold colours, new materials and geometric designs. The synergy between Trenerry’s work and the work of Memphis Milan can be seen in Strange world, where flowers have provided a means to express unorthodox sculptural concepts.

Trenerry chose to feature the Celosia argentea var. cristata flower due to its unusual appearance, which is created by an abnormal growth pattern called fasciation. This natural phenomenon usually results in commercially unviable flowers destined for waste. However, as Trenerry explains ‘in the case of Celosia flowers and Memphis Milano, there will always be a place in our world for the strange’.

Film photography by Alison Madsen- The Petal Project