Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: Richard Nott

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery is delighted to present Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, a new body of work by British artist Richard Nott. The series takes its title from Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson’s 1961 folk anthem, a cyclical lament in which flowers are picked by young girls, the girls taken by young men, the men gone to soldiers, the soldiers to graveyards, and the graveyards covered once more in flowers. At its refrain, the song asks, with quiet devastation, When will they ever learn?, a plaintive question that feels remarkably relevant in a world once again marked by conflict and uncertainty.

Yet Nott’s new series does not dwell in lament. It marks a dramatic departure within his practice, moving away from the meditative, muted tones of earlier works towards an exuberant, vivid and celebratory abundance of flowers. Rather than mourning their disappearance, Nott fills the canvas with their presence. The artist reimagines floral forms drawn from historic Asian ceramics, Indian miniatures, Chinese painting and seventeenth-century English embroidery. Working with a rich palette of softly marbled colours and intricate, layered patterns, Nott explores the flower as a motif that has travelled across cultures, histories and decorative traditions. In this way, the paintings suggest that beauty can be assembled from fragments and harmony found in difference.

Nott’s engagement with floral form is also rooted in the language of couture embroidery. He began his career as a design assistant to Valentino in Rome before returning to the UK to work as an independent designer. The botanical motifs stitched into the garments he encountered throughout his fashion career, from the ateliers of Valentino to historic European and Asian dress, have left a lasting imprint on his artistic vocabulary. In 1985, Nott also co-founded the cult British fashion label Workers for Freedom, recipient of the British Fashion Council’s Designer of the Year Award in 1989. When he eventually turned from clothing to canvas, he brought with him a designer’s sensitivity to material, pattern, ornament and construction.

One of the most striking qualities of Nott’s work is its physicality. Paint is layered, scraped and marbled; metallic pigments catch the light and shift as the viewer moves. For Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Nott worked primarily with palette knives, reserving brushes for only the smallest flowers. The palette knife, he admits, pushes him beyond his natural inclination towards neatness and precision, habits formed through years of a fashion designer’s exactitude. 'There’s a funny kind of freedom in it,' he says. The slow-drying nature of oil paint allows it to be reworked, smeared and pushed across the surface. The resulting works retain the precision and decorative intelligence that have long characterised his practice, but temper them with something freer and more instinctive.

In Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, floral motifs drawn from different cultures, histories and traditions are brought together and transformed, affirming the flower as an enduring symbol of hope, renewal and possibility.