BLUEMING, 2016, Blooms Of Hesperides exhibition. Dimensions: 10m x 2.4m x 3.5m

Hundreds of gilded, dried and hand-dyed apple slices — dyed an intense teal-blue that literalizes the work's titular pun — are pinned to the wall and threaded onto taut black cotton string. Surrounded by a mass of stainless-steel knife blades, they burst into space, forming a large bloom-like shape with black tendrils that draw the viewer in. The blades radiate outward from this central form, their menacing geometry encircling the organic bloom.

Expanding on the ongoing Apple of Discord project, Blueming reinterprets the Greek myth through a contemporary lens, using the chromatically-altered, gilded apple as a symbol of deception, distraction and manipulation. The apple motif carries a dense accumulation of metaphorical and emotional connotations that have solidified into archetype across Western narrative: the Garden of Eden, Snow White, the Apple of Discord, the race of Atalanta and Melanion.

By engaging this motif spatially and materially, the work activates the latent psychological impression it carries. The immersive scale envelops the viewer in a field of contradictory sensations—organic and industrial, attractive and threatening, natural and artificial. It considers how the apple's role in storytelling—as symbol, allegory and metaphor—can speak to current conditions: the treacherous quality of the seductively packaged object; the hidden labour behind luxury; and the way desire and consumption mask their own dangers. At its core, the installation examines how deceit operates in human relationships, using the gilded surface and unnaturally intense hue of the apple to mirror the attractive yet fundamentally false nature of manipulative behaviour.