NAUM FLOWER FOR THEASTER GATES, WHITE CUBE
Naum Flower for Theaster Gates " 1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise" exhibition at White Cube
February 2025
Naum Flower created flowers for a private dinner for the leading significant artist Theaster Gates and his archive of work commemorating the centenary of Malcolm X’s birth and 60th anniversary of his assassination. The show centers on the archive of late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata and his partner Haruhi Ishitani who brought the story of Malcolm X to Japan, even as Japan's left was fighting against occupation and militarisation post WWII.
Internationally acclaimed Chicago based artist Theaster Gates works in a diverse range of media including ceramics, metal, paint, many of these coming together in large-scale installations and social activism.
Inspired by Theaster Gates’ focus on positive social change, Naum Flower brought together a combination of unusual floral elements, referencing darker themes, as well as including pops of joyful bright blooms.
Dinner was served in a beautifully cocooned room, with dark grey curtains, tablecloths and napkins, as well as graceful meter tall candles running down the center. All this was interspersed with our collections of little vases filled with delicate catkin branches and bouncy ranunculus in burnt orange and dark burgundy.
The atmosphere of the space was exaggerated by the black wax candles and bold shadows.
For the bar and front desk of the gallery, we created a series of larger arrangements in our very own Troy Town x Naum House Vase.
Chosen for their subtle stoneware glaze and elegant form, these vases worked perfectly in reference to the artist's own practice and his lifelong interest in the Japanese ceramic craft.
For the florals we chose huge swathes of butter yellow mimosa, foraged hazel branches, dusted with catkins and fluffy ranunculus in the same tones as on the dinner tables.
The bright flourish of yellow looked great against the ‘industrial’ setting of the gallery's packing room where the event bar was erected.
Seasonality is another feature that highly influenced our designs and choice of species for this event and all our projects at Naum Flower.
Catkins are the long slim clusters of flowers that grow on the hazel tree. They are the male part of the flower which produces copious amounts of pollen to be distributed by the wind to their female counterparts. The hazel tree is monoecious, which means they have male and female flowers on the same plant.The female parts of the catkin are often bright fascia and beautiful but sadly too tiny to use as a focal flower for an event. If pollinated these female fascia flowers become the hazelnut in autumn. Common hazel (Corylus avellana) is native to Europe and Western Asia and grows happily through Oxfordshire’s hedgerows and woodland, giving us the opportunity to sustainably harvest branches for the Theaster Gates event.
