Not All Roses Are Romantic

2022

Installation, performance, sculptural hybrid artefacts, live discussion

Context & Collaboration

This project developed through an extended dialogue with fashion historian, curator and writer Amy de la Haye, whose research into the cultural symbolism of the rose informed the critical framework. The project took shape during the pandemic, following an exchange around de la Haye’s exhibition Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion (Museum at FIT, New York, 2021).

The hybrid rose - stiletto work The Feminist Rose emerged from this exchange, describing what de la Haye has characterised as a “human - plant hybrid provocation” - a form that blurs boundaries between bodies, objects and environments. The subsequent live event at the Garden Museum, developed as part of London Craft Week, brought together curatorial, performative and discursive practices through collaboration with Sustainable florist Shane Connolly and dancer Xrestina Prompona.

Rather than illustrating research, the project positions collaboration itself as method, allowing ideas around feminism, age, ornament, sustainability and desire to be tested materially, bodily and publicly.

Selected commentary

“Jo’s project animated my work in ways I could never have imagined - which is, of course, the joy and beauty of successful collaboration.”
- Amy de la Haye, dress historian, curator and writer

Documentation

Photography: Maria Andrews

Presented at

The Garden Museum, London - Invited project as part of London Craft Week, May 2022
Installation, performance and live panel discussion
Curated by Emma Hope