A new exhibition titled, CODED BLOOMS, exploring relationships with flowers at the Museum of Australian Photography opens on 7 March and features the photographic works of five leading artists.
Robert MAPPLETHORPE: Poppy 1988, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.
Flowers have long stood in for what could not be spoken aloud: sex, death, longing, defiance. Soft in appearance yet potent in meaning, they are among art history’s great deceivers. Across centuries and cultures, the bloom has functioned as a visual code that artists have returned to, reclaimed and rewritten to speak about desire, power and taboo. CODED BLOOMS begins with the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose flower photographs form the exhibition’s conceptual anchor. Drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, these works establish a charged framework for a contemporary rereading of the floral. In Mapplethorpe’s hands, the bloom becomes sculptural, erotic and exacting, stripped of sentiment and sharpened into form.
From this point, four artists push the floral beyond polite still life traditions into unruly and intimate terrain. Pat Brassington, Del Kathryn Barton, Jake Preval and Meng-Yu Yan each approach the flower as a site of psychological tension, bodily presence and relational meaning. Here, petals, shadows and surfaces operate as signals, carrying what is hidden, forbidden or quietly radical.
This exhibition is supported by: Albert and Barbara Tucker Foundation, Gordon Darling Foundation, Arten | Fine art framing and printing and Spicers Australia. It will run until 24 May, 2026. Click here for details.
