CHARLIE SHEPPARD: DAISY CHAIN: A forthcoming exhibition bringing together a new body of mosaic works that celebrates the playful relationship between people and flowers, at 8 Holland Street's Kensington Gallery.
8 Holland Street is delighted to present CHARLIE SHEPPARD: DAISY CHAIN, a forthcoming exhibition bringing together a new body of mosaic works that celebrates the playful relationship between people and flowers.
Daisy Chain explores the contrast between our impulse to shape and arrange flowers and the ways in which they quietly resist our control. From the childlike pleasure of weaving a daisy chain or carefully potting a plant, to the understated humour of a wilted bloom on a windowsill or a stem bending beyond the frame, each composition reflects the tension between human intention and nature's own course.
The works celebrate both the joy of shaping organic forms and the inevitability of their resistance. Flowers invite our play, yet they never fully cooperate. They grow, bend, fade and surprise us. These works celebrate that relationship - playing with flowers as they play with us.
Through these quiet acts of rebellion, the series reframes flowers as collaborators rather than materials. Humour and play emerge through negotiation rather than mastery, suggesting that arranging flowers is less about imposing order than responding to another living presence. It is, ultimately, a dance.
Charlie Sheppard (b. 1988) is a London-based artist whose practice centres on mosaic, spanning handcrafted ceramic works and large-scale murals united by a celebration of colour, shape and form. Sheppard's process challenges the conventions of mosaic-making, creating loose, expressive and energetic compositions that sit in deliberate tension with the medium's traditionally precise and highly controlled aesthetic.
"I try to use organically cracked tile pieces as they lie, celebrating every crack and blemish. These become tools to draw with, informing the visual story of the artwork as it happens, rather than fashioning and tweaking individual pieces into a certain shape to fit a pre-determined design.”
His previous collaborations include Paul Smith, The Conran Shop and Orlebar Brown. His work has been exhibited and permanently installed in London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Mexico, Phuket and Palma. Daisy Chain marks Sheppard's second exhibition with 8 Holland Street, following his successful solo exhibition South Facing at the gallery's Bath space in August 2025.
