REVIEW Nov 2024 Ruth Moilliet: FOFO at The Atkinson

Jo Manby

On show at The Atkinson in Southport, ‘Ruth Moilliet: FOFO’ is a continuation of the artist’s fascination with all things botanical. With a specialism in sculpture, Moilliet has a longstanding career in celebrating wild and cultivated flowers in her work, and has more recently turned her attention to the decline of plants, pollinators and the natural world generally in the face of climate change and the impact of the fossil fuel industry. the Fourdrinier Editor Jo Manby reviews ‘FOFO: Fear of Finding Out’, which throws down a challenge to the visitor to confront what we are doing to the natural world, and how, collectively, we might change our attitudes and behaviours in mitigation of species extinction – and which does this in a highly engaging way. See the show until Saturday 8 March 2025, FREE entry. There is a free, drop in artist’s talk by Moilliet on Wednesday 13 November at 1pm.

https://www.theatkinson.co.uk/exhibition/ruth-moilliet/

In Ruth Moilliet’s latest exhibition, ‘FOFO’ (Fear Of Finding Out) at The Atkinson in Southport, it’s the zenith of floral summertime. An extensive display, mainly created over the past twelve months, but some of which has taken three years to make, divides into eight main pieces or groups of spectacular, showstopping flower-related work. However, here real blooms no longer exist. They have been replaced by gigantic, late Anthropocene replicas. Ruth Moilliet flowers are mechanically composed flowers, riveted together with stitched and knotted seams. You can imagine artificially generated perfume emanating from their neatly snipped and carefully coloured plastic anthers and stamens.

As a village kid, I spent a lot of time waiting for the first spring flowers to come out. An opportunity to see a living thing emerge from a seed, a bud, to open out and present itself. My mother taught me that they come out in colour phases (or at least they used to). First of all, the dog’s mercury with its green tassels, then the shiny petalled yellow celandines, dandelions, buttercups, then white stitchwort, pink campion, then bluebells, harebells. Then in the summer it was a free-for-all, scarlet, orange, mauve: colour flooding the gardens, hedgerows and meadows.

Moilliet also recalls growing up in a rural area, in Cheshire, and, as near in age, we agreed that somewhere around the 1980s people seemed to get more careless. A seductive hint of purple glimpsed among the green buds would often turn out to be a sweet wrapper that someone had tossed into the verge. Around the walls of the main installations in ‘FOFO’ are an extensive range of iPhone photographs, attaining a painterly quality through enlargement: they each depict an example of littering, whether on a small (a Blueberry Muffin wrapper caught in a bush) or large scale (a landfill site looming out of a local hillside).

Moilliet’s flowers have a slightly disturbing beauty, partly owing to their outsize scale. Their characteristics remind me of the 2023 film Poor Things. Their persistence and resilience reflect the way Emma Stone’s character Bella Baxter, the drowned girl, is artificially revived with a brain transplant into an unabashed, naïve but adventurous young woman who transforms the world around her to suit her own appetites. As in the film, ‘FOFO’ colours and textures appear not-quite-natural, larger-than-life. You have to suspend disbelief and enter a different but parallel reality. But like Poor Things, these are flowers that border on the outrageous yet refute any potential accusation of garishness or vulgarity. The conflict between the fairylike delicacy of real flower petals and the use of rubbish to recreate them sounds a dark and sombre note of warning about what we are doing to the natural world, just as the reanimated protagonist in Poor Things stands in counterpoint against the oppression of women across eras and geographies.

On one level ‘FOFO’ could be read as an alternative reincarnation of the Victorian craze for botanical investigation. Brendel anatomical botanical plant models were the inspiration for the re-envisioned set, Theatre of Devotions, occupying a glass case within the exhibition. While the originals, with which Moilliet became familiar at Gallery Oldham where she exhibited in 2023, are mainly made of papier mâché but some with added glass beads, cotton, feathers and animal hair, Moilliet makes her own composite sculptural objects in which recycled plastics are collaged together to mimic reality in three dimensions.

Manufactured in Germany by father and son Robert and Reinhold Brendel working in Breslau and Berlin in the late 1800s to the 1920s, the Brendel plant models were conceived at a time when natural history was having a moment, a quintessential part of the British Victorian period (the French Belle Epoque; Civil War era US, Meiji Japan, Qing China, the New Imperialist period whereby most of Africa and parts of South America and South Asia were colonialised by Western European states).  Collecting natural history objects became a feverish obsession for the Victorians. Pteridomania or ‘fern fever’ was the fixation with ferns which peaked in 1820 and which in contemporary times has morphed into everyone being besotted by houseplants. It was, typically of the era, considered a wholesome, edifying and moral pursuit – and similarly we are encouraged to benefit from the mindful, calming and life enhancing properties of tropical and semi-tropical potted plants. Ferns being one such example. Pity the Victorians couldn’t leave it at ferns: the colonial project a nightmarish expansion of obsessive acquisitiveness on a monumental scale.

Moilliet describes how she began to explore ways of representing wildflowers back in the early 2000s at ‘a time when their decline was beginning to be more widely picked up upon’. As a sculptor, her choice was for metalwork and she became proficient at welding, cutting and bolting steel, employing a medium that was strong and resilient like nature. This affinity for highly refined metalwork was honed during her MA Art in Environment at the University of Manchester where she graduated with a masters in 2002. ‘The first sculptures I created were from mild steel and I had them lacquered or powder coated,’ Moilliet explains. ‘Coloured elements in the work were initially from coloured acrylic. I then started to make the work from 316 stainless steel and anodised aluminium so that it would be longer lasting when displayed outside. I began working with a fabrication company once the commissions became larger.’

Moilliet began to use plant forms for inspiration during the second year of her BA Fine Art Sculpture at the University of Manchester. ‘The first metalwork piece I created was based on an echinop thistle, quickly followed by the Allium sculpture which was in my final BA show. The Allium was my first commissioned piece and has developed overtime changing materials from welded coated mild steel to welded and hand polished stainless steel. It is now made from stainless steel with mechanically fixed flowers which reduces the chemical processes involved and ensures the sculpture is even longer lasting.’ Moilliet’s work has been exhibited widely and she is regularly commissioned: 3 Leaf, for example, is a 4m high stainless-steel sculpture for the ROCLA Sculpture Trail, Redhouse Park, Milton Keynes, depicting flowers and insects local to the area.

The new focus, evidenced by ‘FOFO’, on recycled plastic as a medium, came about after a revelatory visit to the first major exhibition of work in the UK by Keith Haring (1958-1990) at Tate Liverpool in 2019. Haring’s colourful work thrived on the New York graffiti and pop art scene and was influenced by alternative club culture. He directly responded to contemporary issues of sociopolitical gravity that impacted on the day to day lives of himself and his peers – capitalism, racism, homophobia and AIDS awareness. Haring developed an iconic graphic style that was the envy of many a brand agent and which burst out into the streets and buildings of his home city and as far away as an erstwhile, celebrated section of the Berlin Wall.

Moilliet found the experience of seeing this show a bit of a revelation and began to realise the potential in breaking free of the strictures of metalworking, deciding to embark on a second MA. This plan, however, was interrupted by the pandemic and Moilliet successfully applied for an Arts Council England Develop Your Creative Practice grant instead. This facilitated a new phase whereby, working with a mentor, she began to relearn how to play with creativity, describing the joy of having a studio practice where she ‘just made stuff’. The change came about as she began to mechanically fix components together more and rely on welding less. The process involved in colouring the pieces changed as she cut down on chemical use. Having learned the practicalities of working with metal, she now had to learn how to work with plastic. Moilliet tells me about the industrial warning triangles – a 2 and a 4 mean that these plastics are ok to heat; a 5 cannot be cut with a hot knife due to toxic fumes.

The exhibition ‘Devotions to the Goddess Flora’ at Gallery Oldham in 2023 was the first solo show that featured this new strand in her work, but as she points out, it is ‘FOFO’ that is truly her own. ‘Devotions to the Goddess Flora’, the title of which was taken from a quote in an essay by a Victorian botanist Thomas Rogers, featured a substantial amount of material relating to Gallery Oldham’s herbarium, with, for example, floral plates from a bound volume of papers relating to Victorian botanical expeditions. ‘FOFO’ is exclusively new work by Moilliet. While in ‘Devotions to the Goddess Flora’, Brendel plant models were included, here, Moilliet has created her own versions, in the Theatre of Devotions. Each flower is composed of meticulously crafted recycled plastics and represented by a label that documents its common and Latin names and botanical details, with additional information regarding its current rarity and conservation status.

In the centre of the room is the enormous flower-covered archway, vulnerable : endangered : extinct (neglected : abused : ignored), based on a combination of a hothouse and a pergola. Open at both ends, visitors can walk through it and gaze up into the huge plastic flowers. Around the outside, festoons of strips of shopping bags and groupings of repurposed milk bottles and margarine tubs drape the structure along with garlands of artificial flowers. Moilliet describes how very young children, when coming face to face with the archway, are utterly transfixed, presumably at the sheer scale. I wondered about the texture and colour of the large flowers in the archway work - what processes were used to create the petals, the rich pinks, blues and yellows? ‘The petals are made from old vinyl banners with coloured plastic carrier bags and postal bags stitched onto them,’ Moilliet explains. ‘I ironed the plastic bags before attaching them to the banners to give thickness, texture and patterned details to the material. I suppose this is a bit like papier mâché but with no glue and much bigger pieces. People have asked if they are painted but no, it is all from the plastic packaging.’

Originally, during her metalworking phase, Moilliet says she was ‘keen to stick to botanical veracity,’ and used to ‘take the plant and dissect it, draw its structure and parts. I think now I’m allowing myself to be more free.’ While the flowers on the archway are quite representational, others, such as those in Superfluity Sphere, are composites. ‘I’ve drawn so many flowers over thirty years as an artist, I can now allow myself to create generic forms.’ For this and the mirror work near the entrance of the show, each of the flowers was made by grinding plastic down in a Nutribullet, heat-pressing it with a Breville Sandwich Toaster to make a 30 x 30cm square sheet, cutting out with a still saw, then hand-carving with a dremel and engraved onto, and finally formed into the flower shape with heat.

Because the work is highly labour-intensive and this took weeks and weeks to complete, I wondered whether there was an element in the work of the devotional, in terms of the process of making being a time to meditate on the beauty, ephemerality and resilience of nature and botanical life, and its beneficial nature. ‘This is very much the case. The plant forms I choose to work with, the designs of a piece, the chosen ways of manufacture and the setting for the work all focus on all of the above. I am also now quite selective with the commissions I choose to apply for and take on so that the work I create maintains this focus.’

Is there a sense in which Moilliet’s work acts as a memorialising process, the sculptures in the landscape marking the passing presence of wildflowers, some of which are now sadly so endangered or no longer growing in certain places where they used to be abundant? I was reminded in ‘FOFO’ of the use of flowers on gravestones and in roadside shrines, and generally for funerals. This resonates with Moilliet. ‘I've always been very conscious that if we just stopped as humans with our destructive ways the coexistence and cyclical processes of the natural world would allow so much of the planet's biodiversity to recover. I think this is another reason why I scale up the work to dwarf the viewer and demonstrate how nature's ability for ongoing existence far outweighs our own selfish ways. The other being to raise awareness of its importance and existence in the first place.’

I asked Moilliet whether she could be accused of creating more 'things' that have to become part of the capitalist system, in which art objects are highly prized and bring obligations to store, preserve and care for them. As she points out, her works are the diametrical opposite of consumerist art objects. All the component pieces can be recycled or reused. The bedframe work, where an optical illusion can only be solved by viewing the woven plastic mattress through the camera of a mobile phone, is made of the offcuts from vulnerable : endangered : extinct (neglected : abused : ignored). After the show, the bedframe can be just that – a bedframe again.

‘I don’t want to become a community artist,’ Moilliet explains. Once upon a time working with the community in the form of an accompanying educational programme might have been a matter of box ticking, ‘but now it’s a very important, a vital part of the work – it’s about sharing the message.’ Moilliet is delighted with the public response so far. There have been toddlers of three or four years of age, grandads in their eighties, and everyone in between at the family workshops. There were wide ranging discussions at these events about recycling and issues around conservation and mitigation of climate change.

Moilliet relayed to me some of the opinions people had shared with her at the opening of ‘FOFO’. “It’s quite depressing isn't it! It really brings home just how much we use and throw out, and all that litter... so sad,” one person said. “I’m already thinking about all the things I can do to change. I'm going to start making soup for my lunch again so I don't have all those plastic tubs to throw out,” said another. Someone else reflected on lockdown, “when the planes stopped and there were virtually no cars on the roads and we became so much more aware of nature and the countryside around us. You could literally hear it! So sad that it's already forgotten about and we go back to our selfish, polluting ways.”

Walking around ‘FOFO’, taking in the series of exquisite, framed foil models of winged pollinators, the gorgeously flamboyant installations, and the wall-piece composed of plastic bag grass and the recycled flowers made in the workshops, it’s easy to see how Moilliet is an artist who has found her direction.

This review is supported by The Atkinson, Southport