This Dreams of Verdant Decadence installation consists of two parts: the flowers etc. in the vault itself and scribbled black drawings and text in the corridor outside. My stated aim was that the richness and profusion of shapes and colours in the vault would form an incongruous counterpoint to the verse and drawings scribbled in black chalk in the outer corridor, thus opening a juxtaposed dialogue between these vastly different environments. I am also inviting viewers to reflect on the fecundity, richness and variety found in nature as opposed to the singular, repetitive nature of the architecture that the exhibition inhabits.

I hope that this aim is realised, even if only at a subconscious level. I sometimes doubt if we ever really know what we’ve taken content-wise from the world around us. The subconscious mind is a wondrous and mysterious thing. I find it fascinating what crops into your head when you least expect it. You’d think, after three months of four hours a day on average spent cutting and painting plastic flowers, I’d be thoroughly sick of it but apparently not. Late on Sunday night, two days after the opening, a design for a large new flower popped into my skull and I could not get it out (the visual equivalent of an ear worm). I kept working out the technique of how best to make it when what I really wanted to do was go to sleep!