Not all Roses are Romantic - London Craft Week 9-15 May 2022
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This exhibition and performance is part of London Craft Week, 9-15 May 2022.

This event explores, animates and ruptures the once-symbiotic relationship between humans, roses and the natural world.
It comprises a collaboration between a contemporary fashion artist and Jo Cope, performance artist Xristina Pompano, sustainable flower designer Shane Connolly and Amy de la Haye, Professor of Dress history. Together, they amplify the politicised and ‘darker’ themes raised by the Garden Museum’s exhibition ‘Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose’ co-created by Amy de la Haye and Simon Costin. These include female-flower metaphors, sweated labour within the artificial roses industry and the detrimental environmental impact of the cut roses we buy today.

Jo Cope’s handcrafted ‘Feminist Rose’Tryptic is the central installation. This is partly inspired by the French philosopher George Bataille’s declaration that roses are repugnant and paradoxical; when the petals are stripped away all that is left is a ‘sordid tuft’ (1929). Shane Connolly and Amy de la Haye create an installation and various narratives that orbit around this.