Although the artists live in different cities and come from different generations, a shared fascination with flowers and the stories they conceal brings them together for this show. In ‘Unarranged’, they each explore subverting the still lifes genre, questioning arrangements, authorship, and the unseen forces at play beneath the surface.
Barbara Ryan’s new series imagines flowers as possessing their own agency and desires, living, perhaps conspiring, behind our backs. What happens when they’re no longer performing for us, no longer held in place? Drawing on the textures and formal compositions of historic still life painting, Barbara uses lenticular printing to animate the moment flowers shift, actively unarranging themselves. The works ask us to consider how much control we ever really have over the things we try to contain or curate.
In contrast, Kavel Raffferty’s work takes a more tactile, sculptural approach, dipping floral arrangements into dripping black rubber, freezing them mid-transformation. Alongside these sculptural pieces are redacted still life paintings: original artworks sourced from charity shops and online marketplaces, where the flowers have been obscured with glossy black paint. Kavel’s process involves a form of quiet collaboration with forgotten or anonymous artists, challenging conventional ideas of authorship, beauty, and value.
While Barbara’s work is rooted in digital manipulation and the illusion of movement, Kavel’s approach is materially grounded, one teasing the viewer through visual trickery, the other through stark transformation. Together, their differing methods and materials offer a dynamic dialogue around control and the unseen lives of objects.
