Gather
Introducing my solo exhibition, Gather - the culmination of a year's worth of research, experimentation and development - Opening Friday 30th May
The allotment lanes are lined with life and thrum with activity. Air thick and sweet with the scent of hawthorn, recalls a memory that’s not your own.
Gather is an exhibition of new works by Lianne Mellor bringing together collective wisdom, otherworldly experience and folkloric tradition. The compositions act as living ‘potions’, entangled arrangements where the canvas becomes both cauldron and almanac, distilling centuries of herbal knowledge into something that concocts a particular feeling, fulfils a wish, or offers protection.
While nodding to 17th-century Dutch vanitas, the compositions subvert the memento mori tradition. They do not whisper of mortality, instead, they emphasise healing, interconnectedness, and celebration.
Taken from the exhibition statement for Gather
Introducing Gather
A year of research, experimentation and creation culminates in a solo exhibition, filling 2 rooms with brand new works.
I’m delighted to invite you to visit The Bowery in Headingley, Leeds, to walk the hedgerows and get lost in forgotten knowledge. Open from 30th May until 21st August, there’s plenty of time to visit and explore the hidden meanings and historical uses of everyday (sometimes overlooked) plants.
The stars of the show are 6 new paintings with more wildness, detail and romance than I’ve ever painted before. Each arrangement is meticulously created to evoke a desired change, outcome or purpose. These visual talismans echo the charms, potions or medicines of the past, promising support or relief for what ails you - broken hearts, despair, turbulence, fragility, susceptibility to sickness & evils, and cowardice are flipped around to offer love, hope, transitions, resilience, protection and courage.
These will be exhibited alongside further paintings and monoprints.
Introducing Jo Dunbar
My research has depended on the wisdom and generosity of medical herbalist and druid folklore storyteller, Jo Dunbar. I first encountered Jo through one of her books - Secrets from a Herbalist’s Garden: A Magical Year of Plant Remedies and was captivated by the variety of uses of the plants I had growing in abundance all around me. Through multiple video calls, Jo has helped me understand more about the plants growing deliberately or voluntarily on and around the allotment. We’ve collaborated to combine and make sense of groups of plants both in their applications, and also their seasonal appearance. These conversations have been instrumental in creating the fantastical compositions on canvas. I’m eternally grateful to be able to retell our conversations with a twist of my own interpretation and experience.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll take a deep dive into the stories behind each painting and the process of creating them.
If you’re even slightly curious about herbal medicine, folklore, superstitions and ritual uses of the plants that grace our hedgerows, scrublands and apothecary gardens, you’ll want to make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single dispatch.
The professional looking photographs on the allotment and in the studio are by Owen Richards