Madge Gill: Portal to the Future. Young creators dream of a floral future inspired by a legendary Newham artist

The group discovers Madge Gill and the flowers that inspired her.

Madge Gill’s expressive paintings and drawings are full of floral motifs ©Oliver Wallace and Elena Juzuenaite

In the first session our young creators discovered the world of Madge Gill with a talk and stories from Elena and Oliver. 

When she was nine, Madge Gill was sent by her family into an orphanage and then sent by the orphanage to Canada to be a domestic servant. She was finally saved and returned to England at 19 but had a hard marriage and lost a child in childbirth. After such a troubled life she found comfort and meaning in making art under the name of Myrninerest  – the name of what she believed was her spirit guide, that she had contacted through her practice of spiritualism. She was a prolific artist and her art reveals an intensely imaginative and curious way of viewing the world. As well as having a rich interior world, the amount of floral and natural forms in her work seem to reveal a deep interest in the natural world around her. She often brought her work into the garden to view it and she once said that she would have liked to be a botanist studying rare Himalayan flowers.

While hearing Madge Gill’s complex life the group explored the photographs of her artwork that Elena and Oliver had taken during their archive research search sessions and encountered the pressed wild plants gathered on a research trip around the streets where Madge once lived. We discussed how diverse and beautiful the flora that cling on around the edges of the urban landscape is hearing the evocative names of the plants.

The group then began to investigate how Madge Gill created her striking images with a mixture of ink patterns to create tones set against the softness of the watercolours. They tuned into the way Madge saw the world and we created beautiful images that will be reused in different ways throughout the project.

Creating imaginative identities and dreaming of the Flower Future 

Making flower identity masks ©Oliver Wallace and Elena Juzuenaite

As we have heard, Madge Gill created her work under the name Myrninerest and in this session we explored how having an alternate identity could help you imagine the world differently. The group randomly picked names from the wild plants we had found and took them as their ‘flower names’. These are new names for their imagined ‘flower identities’. Together with Elena and Oliver they began to investigate if working under these ‘flower names’ – instead of our own – could help them to imagine a flowery future for Newham.

Oliver led the group on an imaginative storytelling journey into the ‘flower future.’ They imagined waking up in a kindly world full of flowers, abundant with plant life and they imagined a message being sent back through time – a message of hope, that we can create the beautiful future we dream of.

Working on this idea and led by Elena, the group created 3d masks for their ‘flower identities’ and decorated them to match the flowers name they had picked. Wearing their masks the children transformed, becoming mysterious flower people from the future. 

Oliver and Elena transformed into Hairy Bittercress and Three-Cornered Leek and the children became…

Dandelion, Primrose, Pansy, Shepherd’s Purse, Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Cleavers and Grape Hyacinth © Oliver Wallace and Elena Juzuenaite

Creating messages of hope from the flower future

Ivy-Leaved Toadflax growing on the street where Madge lived © Oliver Wallace and Elena Juzuenaite

As the project continues the group will continue to explore Madge Gills artworks and playing with their newly imagined ‘flower identities’ while they create soundscapes with professional sound designer Steven Villacís and animations with professional animator Angeline Ferguson. Finally they will work on storytelling and will film messages of hope from the flower future spoken as their ‘flower identities’. 

Each element will deepen the group’s investigation into how Madge Gill’s life and work can offer a way to imagine things differently through creative acts. This is one of the essential powers of art and culture.

All of the elements will be edited together into a film and the group will present it at a special immersive screening offering the whole community a fresh way to imagine the future of their area!

More about Elena and Oliver

The project is a collaboration of two East London based artists, Elena Juzulenaite and Oliver Wallace, both with a passion for working with communities and children throughout their careers.

Elena, a visual and community artist, has been interested in heritage for over 5 years and created four maps dedicated to various heritage topics in Newham. Elena is particularly interested in lesser-known stories of working class and minority background people.

Find out more about Elena’s work here https://elenajuzulenaite.com/ or @elena_juzulenaite on Instagram.

Oliver is an artist and storyteller and the director of Patchlarks, creating adventures in curiosity for children (and adults) for 13 years. His work has popped up in Tate Modern, The National Maritime Museum, National Trust properties across the country and many many more places besides. As a storyteller he has a keen interest in how our heritage of stories can help us connect as communities. He is also interested in the multi-species heritage of wild growing things.

Discover patchlarks work here https://patchlarks.co.uk/ or follow them on Instagram. @patchlarks