Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club and artist Alan Phelan bring the art of flower arranging and photography together in a unique collaboration. Working over nine months, Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club have worked in the artist’s studio, at Temple Bar Studios with Alan, in an exchange of expertise that investigates forgotten histories in flower arranging and photography.

Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club is a voluntary organisation of 50 members from Ashbourne Batterstown, Clonee and Dunshaughlin.  Over a series of shared workshops, the club worked with Alan Phelan to revive and explore lost floral art techniques, from paintings of floral arrangements with 17th century Dutch paintings and working through to 20th century floral designers like Constance Spry, The arrangements made by the group are photographed using the Joly Screen colour method, a process invented in the late 19th century Irish physicist John Joly.   A large collection of colour slides by John Joly, mainly of botanical subjects, are currently held by the National Library of Ireland.

Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club and Alan Phelan will present their collaborative work in a series of events and exhibitions in Ireland as well as internationally in 2019 and 2020.   The first public exhibition will be at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon opening on November 16 2019-.4 Jan 2020, after which work will feature in Alan Phelan’s exhibitions at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin in February, Void, Derry in April 2020 and Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, November 2020.

Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club and Alan Phelan were recipients of Meath County Council Cultural Services Creative Award 2019, initiated to encourage new cooperative work between any professional artist(s) or professional production companies, with local formal and informal groups, societies and committees in the county.