Exhibition Review: Flowers - Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture

Saatchi Gallery, London: 12th February - 5th May 2025

I was drawn to Flora at the Saatchi Gallery in search of something gentle, but what I found was so much more: an exhibition that is as much about transformation as it is about flowers.

This is a gathering of works that centre the flower, not just as botanical objects but as a representation of femininity, memory, mortality, and desire. It’s a curatorial whisper rather than a shout, and that’s what makes it so powerful. Flora is a quiet rebellion against the idea that flowers are simply decorative. Here, they are political, spiritual, deeply embodied. The show brings together over 100 works by more than 80 artists, including painting, sculpture, photography, and film - threaded together to explore the sacred, the sensual, and sometimes even the violent language of flowers.

One of the most striking installations is by Rebecca Louise Law, who creates immersive environments from thousands of dried flowers strung on copper wire. Walking through it felt like stepping inside a memory - suspended in time, delicate and fragrant. It reminded me of a holiday to the Loire Valley when I was a child, where herbs and flowers were hanging from the kitchen beams to dry. There’s something sacred in the gesture, a preservation of beauty, of life, in its most fleeting form.

The exhibition also thoughtfully includes historical botanical illustration, which contrast beautifully with the looser, more interpretive contemporary works. These drawings ground the show in a sense of lineage, showing how our relationship with flora has always been a dance between science and sentiment, taxonomy and symbolism.

A recurring theme throughout the show is the duality of bloom and decay, how flowers, like us, are always somewhere between becoming and unbecoming.

As I made my way to the final gallery, I felt a sense of stillness. There was a low hum of contemplation in the air. This wasn’t a show that dazzled in obvious ways. It lingered. It asked something of you.

Flora doesn’t just celebrate the flower, it reclaims it. It insists that we look again, look deeper. That we remember the politics, the power, the tenderness embedded in petals and stems. It reminds us that beauty is never just surface, and that softness can hold its own kind of strength.

And maybe, that’s the greatest gift this exhibition offers: the invitation to see, to feel, and to bloom… on our own terms.