These paintings invite joy and melancholy in fairly equal amounts. Of course, that is inherent in the nature of flowers… impossibly radiant, blooming one minute then tainted by forces beyond their control, wilting, fading, their sweet aroma dissipating as they begin to turn, becoming unwelcome.

But as much as these paintings have flowers as their subject, they are, as Juliet described of Romeo “a rose by any other name would smell so sweet.” For the inherent quality of these ‘flower paintings’ is less the flower and more the paint. Their essential character, like Montague, ought not to be captive of the name.

Each painter here uses their shared material in profoundly differing ways and yet each arrive at the conclusion that these fragile motifs insinuate something fundamental to our fugitive existence. But let’s not be so bleak… for as poignant as each is, there is a celebratory spirit that overcomes the rhythm of decay. Furthermore, their vivacity as paintings, their precociousness and their material poetry is really what is at stake.

Lawrence Carroll, Gideon Rubin, Niyaz Najafov, Robert Malherbe, Bianca Rafaella and Aida Tomescu.