Not to be toytown or condescending, have you ever considered what a box of Party Rings (yes, Fox’s much beloved biscuit) would be like as an immersive exhibition? Much like the experience of unwrapping a little plastic box of sweet treats, Leanne Ross’ exhibition Dirty Dancing Flowers (at Tramway until March 23rd, 2025) transforms the clerical ‘white cube’ into a party, quite literally a karaoke party, one we are all invited to. To me this transformation flowers through a shared sense of common nostalgia, a feeling held so crisply in cardboardy forms and pastel pops of surface pattanation; it is a sense that flutters out of the gallery, further connecting Tramway to its community and the publics around its space.
Personally, Party Rings evoke images of springy smiles and iconic/ironic disco tunes; of children (and adults!) being hyped up, ‘having the time of their lives’ to riff on Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes sugary show-tune. Ross’ recent series Dirty Dancing Flowers paintings draw upon these multisensory image-memories. Vibrant collections of fabulized flower-forms, these square framed canvases juxtapose fat-faced frills with spidery-legged steams.
The press release tells me that Ross is drawn to the ‘bold floral designs’ of Maija Isola (think a more juicy Orla Kiely). The connection is overt, with the karaoke stage central to the exhibition recalling one of the Finnish designer’s Marimekko flower motifs. Looking at Ross’ jittering forms however, I am reminded of Cy Twombly’s flower paintings. With their feathery lines and energetic wafts of colour, Ross’ flower dioramas not only appear as joyful enmeshments of human expression but operate with a carefree sense of associative poetry:
[…]
From the heart
of the Peony
a drunken
bee
Cy Twombly
— from an inscription on Cy Twombly’s painting Untitled (Roses), c.2006/07
Please believe me I am aware of the grand fixity of that artist to artist connection. I do not mean to suggest that Ross operates in a closed Art bubble. A partnership between KMA Studio and ArtLink, this exhibition pays homage to the networks of care, respect and support around Ross which drive her practice. (It is of note that Ross is also a founding member of KMAdotcom, a ‘collective studio based in Midlothian that brings together a diverse group of artists’ providing members with access, material means and the friendship through which to develop their practices.)
Elsewhere in the exhibition the interdependencies around Ross’ everyday living are rendered in a similarly poetic style. Artworks from her ‘iconic’ Shout Out series, cut-up verses coming from moments of conversation overheard on the street, flank two of the exhibition’s walls. Echoing the colours found in her Dirty Dancing Flowers paintings, the inky collages in this series kink off balance, becoming positively dancy; becoming quasi-placeholders for the giggles, shouts, and various sayings one might overhear at a communal party. Indeed, with their cheeky simplicity these Shout Out works invite us to “colour/ in” the space around these snippets with voices from our own waverly memories — That Peony/ “Smells/ Nice”/ Doesn’t It.
Alongside these collaged works, Dirty Dancing Flowers features new painted text compositions, expanding the material voice of Ross’ Shout Out series. Uh Oh; Ermmm; MMMM, the three non-lexical Shout Outs in the exhibition, sonically, come from and communicate deeply bodily sensations, often indicating affirmation or as an indication of empathic listening. Standing before each canvas, these more-than-words sing to me. They sing all glittery in plasticky pigment, humming like daisies growing through the pavement, reminding me that beneath the humdrum grey of everyday life lies a ground prime for connection.
Leaving Tramway, I ponder the exhibition. Looking at Ross’ work through the gallery’s large windows I see a wall of colour, one I hadn’t noticed before. Not housed within the exhibition space, this wall is the reflection of the Tramway Community Mural — an artwork, co-authored with Molly Hankinson, found running the length of the brick wall across from Tramway’s entrance. Born through a process of collaboration and community exchange, the mural recalls the formal characteristics of Ross’ own artworks, with their pops of pastel colour and simplified forms. Reading up about the mural, the ethos for its making seems to rhyme with that of Ross’ show also — ‘the project aims to create a vibrant and welcoming entrance’, ‘a shared cultural asset’ where boundaries dissolve, thereby ‘reflecting ideas of oneness and connection, celebrating our differences.’
In my writing of late I have been trying to avoid being so interpretive of the artworks and exhibitions I see. I worry that in adding so much of my subjective self to another’s creative efforts I am somehow limiting or fixing all possible encounters that lie beyond me. But the joy of Ross’ exhibition lies in interpretation, in the meeting of the differing memories and associations we each bring to it — I mean the exhibition is a space for karaoke and here anyone, everyone, can join the party, enjoying finding their voice within this sweet box.
Leanne Ross, Dirty Dancing Flowers – March 23rd, 2025, Tramway, Glasgow
