The Chelsea Flower Show, one of the most traditional events of the English summer season, today revealed its edgy side.
Marc Quinn, best known for using his own blood to create a frozen sculpture of his head, unveiled a huge bronze orchid designed to help inspire the next generation of horticulturalists.
The 49-year-old artist was commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society in their first collaboration and the eye-catching work forms a dramatic centrepiece to the centenary show which opens to the public tomorrow.
Quinn said he had worked for six months on the six-foot high recreation of the moth orchid, which in real life grows to just two or three inches.
His previous best known horticultural work, Garden in 2000, featured hundreds of plants in cryogenic suspension. “I work with flowers the whole time but usually the ones I work with aren’t alive,” said Quinn.
“Hopefully, the flowers and the sculpture blend. There is a sense of real nature and artificial nature, although having seen the transformation of this place from a muddy field it is not so clear what is real nature.”
London-born Quinn is famous for his sculptures, including Sphinx, of Kate Moss depicted in a yoga position, and Alison Lapper Pregnant, of the disabled British artist which was put on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth.
The bronze orchid was cast at the Pangolin Editions foundry in Gloucestershire and was painted with 18 coloured layers, each being stripped back so that every colour is visible.
The work will be sold through a silent auction organised by Sotheby’s that will run throughout the five-day show. Funds will go to the RHS’s £1 million centenary appeal aimed at creating an apprenticeship scheme, a learning centre and a schools programme.
Further funds will be raised from the sale of garden gnomes — making a one-off appearance at a show they have always been banned from — designed by celebrities including Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Elton John, Joanna Lumley and Miranda Richardson.
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Near the show ground, two metal-framed Indian elephants decorated by florist Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart have been installed in Sloane Street. The frames will be used to cultivate a living “garden” which charities Elephant Family and Habitat for Humanity will enter into next year’s show.
