Yes, it’s bigger than Chelsea – the annual Southport Flower Show is in its 78th year and is the UK’s largest independent flower show. This year the organisers wanted to highlight the horticultural arts.
Working in collaboration with Southport Flower Show, A Foundation in Liverpool has invited artist Lisa Cheung to develop Summer Palace, a sculpture and outdoor furniture installation that will be on display at the flower show, before being shown at Greenland Street arts centre in Liverpool throughout the autumn 2007.
Lisa Cheung uses a variety of media such as drawing, sculpture, installation and photography in her artwork.
Lisa told Arts Hub that the idea for the artwork was simple: engaging flower lovers in the local community. “I was asked to think of a project for this large professional flower show. I thought it would be nice if flower enthusiasts could get involved, not just professionals”.
Lisa says her sculpture is hard to describe. “It will house about 100 plants from the community. It’s in the shape of a large squiggle. If you imagine a folding screen, it’s in the shape of a curve – we’re cutting out holes, so you can see through and we’ll have people’s plants in these holes in the screen. It’s also a seating area, it’s a display, it’s indoors/outdoors, and it’s a bit of everything. It’s about 15 metres long and 2 metres tall.”
The plants displayed will be submitted for the sheer pleasure of sharing the beauty and enjoyment they give their owners, rather than for competition. Personal plant stories will be documented on a set of limited edition teacups, which will be used in Summer Palace to serve specially brewed Chinese tea free to visitors.
While Summer Palace sees her working with plants, Lisa’s work tends to be participatory and often involves food. She is perhaps best known for her ‘Public Feasts’. These one-off events see Lisa creating magical environments from lovingly prepared vegetables, which people are then invited to tear down and cook in communal woks.
“I like Food as a material because it’s quite ephemeral. And it’s quite easy to understand so people are more willing to get involved,” Lisa told Arts Hub. “A lot of the time I use an access point in order for people to get involved in the work – like the plant, or the food. They can understand it – they get it. I think that’s why I choose things are not that complicated. It’s an engagement point and it’s very much a social event. A lot of my work is about creating social situations.”
Recently Lisa has also become the first artist in residence at the Museum of Garden History in London, where she has been exploring the archives and piecing together the stories behind the objects donated to the Museum. After researching and interviewing the many people who have contributed in some way to the archives and collection of the Museum, Lisa has brought them all together in an audio guide, which provided snippets of people’s personal stories about the objects within the Museum.
Lisa says she tends to find her inspiration in the place she intends to produce a work. “My work is usually very site specific”, she says. “The piece about the flower show was inspired by the flower show. I think this is why I work in places other than galleries. A recent piece is on a ferry – it’s a radio play. It is inspired by the people who work on the ferry. So my work is very much about the site and the people around it.”
In 2003, Lisa undertook a residency in Rio de Janeiro, and two of her artworks there involved food in public. She wrote “Take me I’m yours” and then “Beijos”, which means kiss, on a street with candies. “It was on a street on a beach, and I did it on a Sunday afternoon – I wrote the word kiss, and I had a huge crowd of people watching me. Because the word is kiss and people are so romantic in Rio they all thought it was very beautiful. People told me afterwards that there was a play by a famous Brazilian playwright called Kiss On The Asphalt – so a lot of people thought it was about that play. Some people thought they had to kiss someone to take one. There were mixed reactions. But for “Take me I’m yours” the candies were all taken in about a minute!! It was more direct.”
Lisa recently undertook a similar performance in Madrid in a museum involving trail of sweets around the gallery in which she wrote a sentence: Feed the desire for sweet utopias. “When I got outside the kids started helping me, and then they started drawing with the sweets – around the idea of utopia, it was really nice. They grasped it without understanding the word”.
Editor’s note: If you are interested in contributing a plant for Summer Palace or would like more information please contact Helen Brierley at Greenland Street on 0151 706 0600 or helenb@afoundation.org.uk.
