Strawberry Hill Installation

20 Sept

‘Parched’

Strawberry Hill House
September 2026

‘Parched’ draws inspiration from our arid, fire-scorched landscape while paying homage to the room’s original purpose - a private treasure chamber for objects of curiosity, aesthetic distinction and sentimental value.

It showcases floral artistry alongside natural, plant- and earth-based processes including paper making and sculpture, carbonised flowers, weaving and natural dyeing.

Moving between the monumental and the minute, Fiona shifts our perspective from an overwhelming sense of scale to moments of intense, intimate attention. Ordinary and overlooked objects are elevated as prized artworks in their own right, inviting us to see and value them as much as she does.’

Curatorial statement : Sept 2026

This post is quite long so here’s a brief index of what to expect:

Conception, overview, brief, intentions and artistic vision

From the festival:

General images
After Dark
My demonstration
The bamboozling beheading! Did Horace play with us?

Video walk round of the central sculpture

Behind the scenes and thank-yous

Conception

‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing’.

GEORGIA O’KEEFE

Overview

The installation ‘Parched’ was created as part of the 2026 Strawberry Hill House flower festival - curated by Flowers at the House, including festival co-founder Leigh Chappell, alongside the 2026 guest curators Flowers on the Edge.

My concept to elevate ordinary objects, collected over many years, into the extraordinary was months in the planning and installed in a single day (ideally I would have required three to four days to construct the best version of my vision). It consisted of various elements - a central sculpture as the main focus with multiple smaller works and interventions around the rest of the space - all located within the Tribune. This room was originally conceived as a private treasure chamber for objects of curiosity, aesthetic distinction and sentimental value (seen in the picture - left) and I wanted to run with this, so I staged it in the manner of an art gallery with various prized exhibits, all of which were botanical misfits, relics and remnants. The juxtaposition of monumental scale and intimate detail were front and centre of my mind.

I have recently been on a sabbatical when I allowed myself the space and time to experiment and develop other nature-based practices which I could incorporate into my installations and exhibiting in this iconic room was the perfect opportunity to get my ‘unknown, known’.

Overarching Brief

Incorporate an ‘edge’ or backdrop
No introduction of fresh materials or physical attachment to the building in accordance with conservation requirements
Work sensitively within the existing architectural context

my overall vision

Reimagine the room as an intimate gallery space
Use a deliberately limited material palette, sourced entirely* from my garden & surrounding environs of West Yorkshire
Elevate the ordinary through transformation, composition and scale
Create theatrical impact while retaining an intimacy of detail
Incorporate my main practice of creating large floral installations whilst showcasing a few of my newer practices, including papermaking, weaving and exposing flowers to fire

*Iron ore & carbonised flowers under glass*

*I originally planned to buy some dried buttercups to add a pop of yellow, but decided to limit myself to purely materials from my garden. On the day of install however my neighbour, Lizzie of Clover and Tide said she had over-ordered on buttercups and asked if I would like some. Well, it felt like they were just meant to be, so I accepted Lizzie’s kind offer and incorporated the buttercups, which were grown and dried by Charlie Armour of Wild at Heart.

the individual elements

The central sculpture

Form

A freestanding, self-supporting structure built around a framework of branches
A translucent ‘edge’ of handmade papers made from thistledown and dandelion clocks

Artistic intention

Create a sun-bleached, desiccated quality by maintaining a restrained colour palette, drawn from hues of the desert
Evoke the widespread parched landscape, drought and wildfires experienced across the land during the summer of 2026
Draw attention to the transformation of humble and discarded materials

Materials & Making

The paper ‘edge’ consisted of handmade papers:

Formed from thistledown, dandelion clocks, cleavers, mulberry and mares-tail
Ordinary paper exposed to the elements, inviting the garden to leave its imprint
Paper cast directly onto the studio floor, capturing its indentations, textures and marks

Other noteworthy ingredients:

Snail-damaged hosta leaves and other materials commonly regarded as waste
Flowers, grasses and twigs dipped or embedded in paper pulp and/or combined with paper
Woven vines
Handmade paper dyed with earth pigments
Roots, skeleton leaves, bamboo plumes and peeled bark
Lunaria, malva & clematis tangutica seedheads
Sunbleached sweet pea trails, teasel leaves, bramble stems and euphorbia bracts
Dried hydrangea, alchemilla mollis, achillea ptarmica, cotinus coggyria, and buttercup flowers

*Handmade paper, imperfect leaves & peeled bark*

Smaller works & interventions

Fire damage

A ‘fire-damaged’ plinth supporting a floral arrangement evokes the impact of wildfire

Carbon & iron
Brittle flowers transformed by fire, their forms preserved in carbon, are counterbalanced by raw iron ore and its weathered, manufactured counterpart under glass

*Carbonised rose, clematis seedhead & buddleia flower*

Black chest

Two amphora vases containing prized ‘detritus’ and a mounted fragment of bark, creating a small-scale assemblage of collected and elevated materials

Entrance plinths

A contorted poppy stem with suspended feather and damaged hosta leaf demonstrated perfectly how exquisite imperfection can be (keep reading for the ‘poppy beheading drama’ 😳)

Window sills

A selection of some of my favourite gathered objects and materials
A paper specimen mount presented on waste packing material in the manner of a natural-history collection, elevating humble materials and handmade botanical paper samples to objects of study and display

*Snail-damaged, sun-bleached hosta leaf*

View the Pinterest Board created during planning stage

handmade paper samples on the ‘Specimen Mount’

1 Tulip stems
2 Recycled paper dyed with red ochre earth pigment
3 Mares tail
4 Paper exposed to garden elements
5 Dandelion clocks
6 Recycled paper
7 Thistledown with mulberry
8 Mulberry
9 Red ochre paper cast directly onto the studio floor
10 Pure thistledown
11 Cleavers
12 Wet-embossed recycled paper
13 Recycled paper dyed with homegrown coreopsis

from the festival

Thank you SO much for all the positive comments I received, both in person and afterwards. Because of timings and the distance to travel back for de-rig, I opted to stay locally for the duration of the festival, so I had a lot of wonderful conversations and interactions - the whole experience has given me a huge creative boost.

A thought for the future

One important thing I’ve taken away from this process is that to achieve the optimum result, the version that still exists in my head, I need days to install, not hours. There were so many more elements I would have incorporated given the time, so it feels a little like I have unfinished business.

My pieces are ambitious, nuanced, complicated and large, they are better suited for displaying in a gallery and longer term exhibition.

I loved what I made and it was hugely well received, but in a setting with unlimited space and unrestricted set up time this would have been, dare I say it, exquisite. So I’m actively seeking exhibitions to install ‘Parched’ MKII…. Bigger and better!

My demonstration

I was invited to host a talk/demonstration on the first day of the festival and I rattled off an urn design, twiddled a lot of flowers and forgot the names of most of the flowers I’d picked myself. I banged on about burning and boiling flowers, snail damaged leaves and my self-appointed role as ambassador for the colour brown! It was so fascinating one audience member was moved to photograph my boots 😆 .

The beautiful stage backdrop flowers were created by Julie of Madge and Ivy flowers

On a serious note for a moment though, it was lovely to see so many faces in the audience, thank you if you watched and joined in.

Thankfully I received some images (thank you Noosheen Noei-Tabrizi and Jayne Roberts) otherwise the whole event may have gone unrecorded (you could argue that would be a good thing 😉).

After Dark

The ‘After Dark’ events brought a whole new dimension to the installation and wider room.

Shadows cast on the intricate ceiling and interacted with the paper within. Tendrils merged with the gold details and reached for the central star.

Some exceptional visitors taking a group selfie also helped dial up the Gothic to eleven.

The Bamboozling beheading

Did Horace play with us …?

Probably the most photographed object in the entire room was this poppy/feather combo in a Barbara Hepworth inspired vase. I was tagged in SO may instagram stories about it that it made me wonder why I bothered building a large sculpture at all - should have just rocked up, popped the vase on a plinth and put my feet up.

Anyway, I walked into the Tribune one morning only to find that the vase was empty - I couldn’t believe it and stood there open mouthed while my brain computed what had happened. I immediately thought somebody had popped it in their bag and I was absolutely (and disproportionately 🥴) devastated.

I wandered around like a headless chicken for a while and may possibly even have been a little teary 🫣. I hugged the empty vase close, like it was an abandoned puppy, until the lovely team at the House checked the CCTV and it transpired that someone with a large messy side-bun accidentally got a little too close and caught the stem in their hair. It then fell onto someone’s shoe before being kicked towards the main sculpture.

So apologies if you witnessed me dementedly scrabbling around on the floor as if searching for some long lost treasure (which to me it actually is).

Lo and behold, there it was, but without it’s head and unbelievably the feather remained in tact 😮‍💨. So, at least it wasn’t a deliberate art heist, just an overzealous chignon, which was some comfort at least.

The decapitated stem was returned to its vase and pedestal, slightly the worse for wear but still a thing of beauty.

*One of many admiring IG stories features*

I have two theories regarding what happened:
1 - The poppy’s sudden celebrity went to it’s head and it decided it wanted even more attention, so leapt out onto a passing updo for kicks.
2 - Horace Walpole, creator of Strawberry Hill House and lover of practical jokes, decided to have a bit of fun from beyond the grave.

At least I no longer felt like I’d been burgled and the urge to search everyone’s bag before leaving, lessened. So too did the desire to lock away all my other prized mis-shapes and misfits before they got stolen too.

Drama over!

Join me for a walk around the central sculpture

There you have it, the full account of my installation for the Strawberry Hill flower festival.

Thank you to everyone at the house itself who were unbelievably helpful in bringing my vision to life within the constraints of such a historic building; to Flowers at the House for months of hard work and for putting on such a wonderful, four day event and to Flowers at the Edge for inviting me to be involved by using words like ‘rebellious’, ‘renegade energy’ and ‘cutting edge design’.

Finally a HUGE huge thank you to the two hard-working souls who assisted in the construction of my design - Gemma and Noosheen. Your patience and muscle throughout the day, including what felt like hours of branch holding and waving while I tried to think my way out of some substantial build issues on the day was very much appreciated, especially when we were bing filmed for the telly!