Neels Scott floral installation at Pikicha Gallery, Emagumeni, 2023

Our group exhibition at Pikicha Gallery in Harare, titled “Burnt Offerings, Re-Invention, Taking Flight”, inspired top Zimbabwean floral designer Neels Scott to create an installation, a magnificent piece of floral art, for the exhibition.

Seen here, it is installed in the Pikicha Gallery foyer together with my painting “Abstract Fire Frass diptych, 1 and 2“, acrylic on canvas, 145 x 120 cm and 145 x 39 cm….

 My poem for Abstract Fire Frass diptych, 1 and 2“:

After a burn..

what’s left?

After flames

and pain..

what’s left?

After destruction

drug abuse

death or divorce

what’s left?

After life

sacrifice

living for others

lying to yourself

what’s left?

Nothing is left 

but you, in the present,

but you, in the presence

but you, in the knowing

but you in the belief…

so pick yourself up post apocalypse.

Feel the gentle whisper, 

see the soft fragments

as fire frass floats unfettered

to land on your skin.

Embrace yourself,

trace the sooty smudges.

It no longer burns.

Lin Barrie

And here it is with my draped canvas installation, “Bright Sky, Burnt Offering; Zimbabwe Bird“, acrylic/charcoal on stretched and draped canvas, 70 x 70 cm, plus draped canvas to 165 x 85 cm

My poem for “Bright Sky, Burnt Offering; Zimbabwe Bird“:

From fire to phoenix;

Zimbabwe bird

burnt offering

battered body

You reinvent yourself;

Beating worn wings 

into bright sky

above the burn.

Skirted by 

a tongued tail,

you trail flames

deftly, defiantly.

A Phoenix rising…

Lin Barrie

Below is a close up of dozens of pasted leaves, a leaf collage, which creates the feathers of a bird’s wing, or the scales of dragon wing… flora morphing into fauna, re-inventing itself from the flames and taking flight…

the graphic flow of the multi feathered/scaled wings is entrancing….delicately overlaid and connected by wire-threaded beads (which echo the snarewire threaded snail shells of my own installations in the exhibition!)

This lyrical floral statement by Neels is so deserving of a poem:

In my poem I have tried to encompass the concept of regeneration that Neels captures in his creation, the regeneration of plant life and animal life after a landscape burns, the reinvention of a human life after a life challenge, the inventiveness of man in the face of adversity!

Admirers at the exhibition…

Here are more views of Neel’s floral creation…

A sculpture in its own right, seen here with Nonoe, manager at Pikicha Gallery

Created from palm spathes and preserved leaves, sisal base, wire and beads…….