Château Ramezay : War Flowers

War Flowers - Fleurs D'ARMES

A Traveling Art Exhibition

October 24, 2019 - March 31, 2019

Presently at Château Ramezay in Montreal, Fleurs D'ARMES is an innovative multisensory exhibition exploring human nature in the landscape of war through floriography, sculpture and scents. It draws portraits and examines experiences of ten Canadians directly involved in the First World War.

During the First World War (1914-18) Canadian soldier Lieutenant-Colonel George Stephen Cantlie, a Montrealer, picked flowers from the fields and gardens of war-torn Europe, pressing and drying them within a book. Every day, he sent one flower home, along with a short, affectionate note to one of his children, including his one-year-old baby daughter Celia back home in Montreal, so that, as she grew up, she would have something to remember him by in the event he didn’t survive that war.

The exhibition is inspired by the pressed flowers picked by soldier George Stephen Cantlie in the gardens, fields and hedges of war-torn Europe and sent home to Montreal to his baby daughter, « wee Celia », as he called her.

These century-old flowers, some of them on display with the original letters, are used as floriography, a Victorian method of communicating meaning and emotion through flowers, to tell the story of human nature in the landscape of war. Each flower represents emotions associated with such attributes as “devotion”, “solitude”, “familial love”, “grace”, “innocence”, “memory” and others.

There are 10 stations at the exhibition, about Canadians at the World War One The war is portrayed through personal stories of John McCrae, Georges Vanier, Elsie Reford, Jean Brillant, Talbot Papineau, A.Y. Jackson, Percival Molson, Julia Drummond, Edward Savage and George Stephen Cantlie, offer diverse perspectives on the Canadian contribution to the war ending efforts.

For each station, optical crystal sculptures created by award-winning Toronto-based artist Mark Raynes Roberts portray scenes that illustrate different aspects of human nature, while scents at each station developed by Magog, Quebec, olfactory specialist and perfumer Alexandra Bachand evoke memory.

Visit the War Flowers website that complements the exhibition and features the profiles of artists who created various show elements. It explains the behind-the-scenes access design process.

For more information about the exhibition and other activities, visit the Château Ramezay website.

WAR FLOWERS - The team behind the WAR Flowers touring art exhibition