Wednesday Artist: Rebecca Louise Law

Imagine more than 8,000 flowers amassed for an exhibition in a gallery. Now imagine the elapse of time and its effects — how the flowers look, what they smell like, how they lose their color and form, how they remain beautiful even as they begin to deteriorate.

The internationally exhibited artist Rebecca Louise Law, who is based in East London, recently created a site-specific installation, The Beauty of Decay, for San Francisco's Chandran Gallery. She wrapped each of the thousands of flowers with copper wire and then suspended all of them from the gallery's 20-feet high ceilings. Interestingly, Law did not throw out the gradually decaying work at the conclusion of the exhibition (it ran from July 8 to August 4); instead, she had the dry flowers sent back to England to re-purpose them. 

Also included in the Chandran Gallery exhibition is a selection of limited-edition prints Law created with British garden and plant photographer Rachel Warne. 

Law uses in her work a variety of flowers, including dahlias, roses, and tulips, as well as native plants and herbs, grasses, lichen, and cotton stems. (View images of Law's installations. Some of her paintings and wood sculptures are at the same link. Also view Law's archive.)

Here's a time-lapse video of the installation of Law's The Canopy, an installation of 150,000 mixed flowers in Melbourne, Australia:

Law's installations have been featured at a number of well-known online sites, including This Is Colossal, Design Boom, DesignSponge, and My Modern Met. Oprah also has featured Law in her O, The Oprah Magazine.

Law's "Drying at Luton Hoo Estate" exhibition continues through September 28. (Luton Hoo is an English country house and estate in England.)

Rebecca Louise Law Website

Rebecca Louise Law on FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram