The art of Heywood and Condie

Chelsea this year has two artists in residence creating video 'paintings'.

This year the RHS has commissioned Tony Heywood and Alison Condie (pictured above) as the 2012 Chelsea Flower Show artists in residence.

Part of their brief was to create flower portrait video paintings that are on display in the Refresh Champagne Bar.

To achieve these vibrant installations, Alison and Tony selected, at last year's show, a number of colourful show gardens, like Cleve West’s winning Daily Telegraph garden and also flowers displayed in the Great Pavilion. They then painstakingly recorded their elemental colours using RHS colour charts. These were then analysed by Dulux and matching paints were produced. The artists then carried out a ‘floral paint pour’ which was filmed. The result is an abstract representation of the quintessence of the flower: its colour and movement. 

The Dorset Coast Meets Las Vegas

Tony and Alison have also built a garden in the Fresh Gardens section. Entitled Glamourlands: a Techno-Folly the garden is an abstraction of the Dorset coast. Tony and Alison visited the area and soaked up its atmosphere, making sketches and video of what they saw. Tony then played the video back through gaming eyeware, while performing what can only be described as wall-sized automatic drawing of what he experienced through the glasses. The resulting shapes were used as the basis of the carved objects in the installation. Covered in jewels, these objects represent the high pixilation inherent in the gaming environment. Video screens show pixilated images and sounds played are of 70s and 80s arcade games.

Instead of the romantic ingredients normally associated with the landscape, they are using an artificial medium. The challenge of the mixture of natural with high artifice is fascinating, something a bit different for Chelsea visitors this year.