By Maria Bregman
Still-life painting has long allowed itself bouquets that no garden could produce, flowers of different seasons gathered into one imagined arrangement. Violeta Sofia takes that licence and gives it a body. In Handful of Spring, at the London head office of Winston Taylor, the flowers are held up by hands, and the hands are hers.
Still life that turns into portrait
The exhibition text puts the idea plainly: many still-life paintings "brought together flowers that could never have bloomed at the same time", creating arrangements that existed beyond a single season or moment. Sofia works in that tradition through what the text calls theatrical photographs that combine photography and painting. The boundary between still life and portraiture is where she chooses to stand.
In the pictures shown, a bouquet rises from a pair of raised hands while the rest of the figure is hidden, so that the arms vanish into a billowing sleeve and the sleeve behaves like a vase. This is the logic of her Hand Masters pictures, which she has described in a video interview with the florists Blooming Haus. There she explains that she builds the arrangement first, adds the shirt and then hides beneath it, triggering the camera by whatever means she can reach. The hands must look as if they hold something light, she says, when the flowers are very heavy. That small contradiction is worth noticing in front of the prints: the effort is real and the image shows none of it.
Yellow, blue, green
The works named in the show are Carnations, Flame Giant Crest, Tropical Crest and Yellow Gladiolus, alongside two versions of Garden Party. They split into two moods.
Yellow Gladiolus is the Old Master picture. Yellow spikes stand against a dark brown damask wall, with a blue brocade sleeve below and white chrysanthemums and green grapes at the edges. The palette is warm and heavy, and the frame, in gold, completes the argument that this is a painting by other means.
Flame Giant Crest and Tropical Crest are louder. A cobalt blue field behind orange-red blooms; a green panel behind red heliconia-like flowers and palm. At the foot of the picture sit woven baskets, patterned cloth, fruit and objects, the still-life inventory transposed to a different set of references. The exhibition text speaks of "the ways different cultural references can coexist within a single image", and these two come closest to showing it rather than saying it.
The painted surface
Sofia has said that she prints her photographs on canvas and then paints on top, adding a layer of texture where the photography stops. The reason she gives is characteristically direct: she is also a painter, and she wanted the result to sit between the two. The consequence for the viewer is a certain doubt about what kind of object stands on the wall, a doubt the gold frames do nothing to settle. I would encourage visitors to look at close range, where the surface says what the reproduction cannot.
Who she is
Born in Cameroon and raised in Spain, Sofia is based in London. Her website lists exhibitions at Foundry in Dubai, Handbag Factory, Home House and the LAPADA and Contemporary Istanbul fairs, and her work is also shown by Gillian Jason Gallery. In that interview she says of the project's beginning, "I started getting vitiligo when I was 19", and that she knew it needed to be documented. Asked what being "in bloom" means to her, she answers: "Ever since I started this project [Hand Masters], it's been in bloom throughout my career."
Why it matters now
The show is hung in a company head office rather than a white cube, and is part of PhotoMonth, London's October photography festival. It was first announced for October and then for 2 November; the artist now confirms it has been extended to 15 December. That leaves time for a second visit, which the work rewards: the first look is for the colour, the second for the sleeves, the grapes and the hand that is holding all of it up.
Practical information
Exhibition: Handful of Spring, Violeta Sofia
Venue: Winston Taylor head office, 5 New Street Square, London EC4A 3TW
Dates: until 15 December 2026
Access: by appointment with the artist - book online
Curator: Ryan Monro (as credited in the PhotoMonth listing)
Installation photograph: Jon Chadwick. Artworks courtesy of Violeta Sofia.
