WAR Flowers opens to the public at Campbell House Museum on January 24, 2018 and runs until March 16, 2018.
The exhibit explores the story of a Canadian World War I soldier, Lt Col. Cantlie and the connections with nine other people during that time. Lt Col. Cantlie collected flowers on European battlefields and sent them in letters, pressed between the pages, to his wife and children.
The tickets will be available for sale on November 20, 2017.
“I believe people have an ability to find beauty and hope, even amidst the horrors of war. This exhibition examines human nature in wartime through a series of artistic representations, multisensory experiences and portraits of ten Canadians who were involved in the First World War. Optical crystal sculptures created by Mark Raynes Roberts portray scenes that illustrate different aspects of human nature while scents developed by Alexandra Bachand evoke personal memory. WAR Flowers is inspired by the pressed flowers picked by George Stephen Cantlie in the gardens, fields and hedges of war-torn Europe and sent to his baby daughter in Montreal. I examine these century-old flowers using floriography, a method of communicating emotion through flowers, to tell the story of human nature in the landscape of war.” – Viveka Melki, curator www.warflowers.ca