JYLL BRADLEY Flower Train
In an exciting collaboration with First Great Western, ten specially commissioned posters by Jyll Bradley can be found on station platforms this spring between Penzance and Paddington, following the route of the now mythic train that once took West Country flowers to London markets. Bradley's evocative photographs of the places and people of Cornwall's embattled flower growing tradition are paired with texts suggestive of mutable connections between country and city, artist and subject. The work is intended as a train of thought for passengers, a meditation on image-making, journeying and the practical struggle for the cut flower.
The stations that will display one or more of the posters are Penzance, St Austell, Plymouth, Newton Abbott, Exeter St David’s, Taunton, Bristol Temple Meads, Swindon, Newbury and Reading from 29 March to mid-May 2010.
The final destination of Flower Train is here in the gallery, where the complete set of ten images is displayed, with one as a stack of 4,000 posters awaiting passengers and visitors. Each is offered as a gift, to be rolled up and bound by the same elastic bands that draw the farmers’ flowers together. You are invited to take one.
