Hanging from the ceiling and filling an entire double-height gallery are more than 100,000 dried flowers. A soft aroma of rose petal potpourri envelops you as you walk beneath the cascades of seed heads and grasses, lavender, roses and hydrangeas.
White statice is threaded on copper wires and gives the installation a nebulous air, as if you are stepping into a floral cloud. La Fleur Morte (2025) is the fragile creation of Welsh artist Rebecca Louise Law and the first work you see in the Saatchi Gallery’s vast new exhibition Flowers: Flora in art and culture. In size, ambition and photo-friendliness La Fleur Morte sets the tone for the entire show.
Flowers unfurl over two floors, blooming in corridors and stairwells as well as across nine galleries. The range of work is staggering: everything from flowers made of bones and medieval herbariums to album covers, book illustrations, corsets and tattoos.
There’s Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils, a giant photograph of Jeff Koons’ plant-covered Puppy and images of Vietnam War protesters slotting flowers down gun barrels.
Marc Quinn's 'The Sunny Side of the Moon (In The Night Garden)' from 2010
The exhibition begins by exploring the roots of floral art and showcasing work from the last sixty years. This is not an exhibition about the history of still life, despite opening with the Dutch golden age and Gordon Cheung’s contemporary interpretation of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in his City of Gardens (Suzhou) (2023).
Rather it offers a brief history of artists working with flowers — Alphonse Mucha, William Morris, Winifred Nicholson — before moving towards the colourful paintings, prints and embroideries of Gillian Ayres, Marc Quinn, Yinka Illori, Takashi Murakami, Martin Maloney and many others.
Flowers doesn’t restrict itself to art: one gallery features flowers in fashion, and highlights include Vivienne Westwood’s platform shoes, Mary Quant’s flower power suits and jewellery such as a rock crystal and diamond orchid brooch from the roaring twenties designed by Mario Buccellati.
Begonia diamond flower earrings in white, yellow and pink gold — part of Buccellati's Historic Collection — designed by Gianmaria Buccellati and handcrafted in 1991
Further galleries explore the medical properties of plants and how album covers employ flowers (think The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising). It’s a heady mix. There’s even a gallery where you can interact with Miguel Chevalier’s digital garden. He uses infrared sensors to ensure his artificial blooms bend and sway according to your position in the room.
Elsewhere, there are six Buccellati archival pieces on display — one for each generation of Buccellati designer — along with an installation of the jewellery brand's silverware.
As gallery director Paul Foster explains, ‘The Gallery is delighted to pay homage to nature and celebrate the manifold ways that artists have been inspired by nature.’
‘Flowers: Flora in art and culture’, supported by Cazenove Capital and Buccelati, is on at the Saatchi Gallery, London, until 5th May.
-
'I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed': Inside Jane Austen's Winchester home, the house where she penned her final words and drew her final breathJane Austen spent the last days of her life in rented lodgings in Winchester, Hampshire. Adam Rattray describes the remarkable recent discoveries made about the house in which she died.
-
An utterly charming island home in Scotland with gardens so beautiful they made the cover of Country LifeAn Cala on the Isle of Seil has a fascinating history that is only enhanced by its amazing setting.
-
Ineos Grenadier: What price nostalgia?Ineos's Grenadier is a rugged off-roader with a simple job — to go anywhere. Its simplicity and singular purpose is the foundation of its success.
-
This obscure and unloved picture that turned out to be Turner's first oil painting — and it's about to sell for 500 times what it last costJMW Turner's 'The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol' was lost and forgotten for years — but now it's been rediscovered, and is going under the hammer in July.
-
Fields and fashion: why luxury loves the British countrysideFrom Perthshire to Paris, 'Anglomania' is taking over high fashion. Amie Elizabeth White tells us why
-
What was Andy Warhol really like? The Newlands House Gallery exhibition shows the artist like never beforeThe exhibition, in Petworth, West Sussex, shows the many layers behind the artist's public persona.
-
The world’s most iconic handbag could be on your arm40 years after its conception, the original Hermès ‘Birkin’ bag, owned by the OG It Girl Jane Birkin, is going up for auction with Sotheby’s on July 10.
-
Sparkling diamonds: Nancy Astor and Ann Fleming’s jewellery is up for auctionAstor’s Cartier tiara will be sold by Bonhams, while the accessories of the wife of the James Bond author go up for auction with Dreweatts.
-
'More of a family member than a car': 50 years of the Volkswagen PoloHalf a century? That’s a milestone for humans, never mind cars, so join us as we raise the bunting, stuff our faces with cake, and cheer for one of our favourite little memory makers.
-
A five minute guide to the new V&A East Storehouse’s treasuresSamurai swords and 350,000 books are just some of the curios in the new Victoria & Albert storehouse in Stratford, London, which is now open to the public.
