Simone Gooch – Flowers in the Front Seat

Known professionally as Fjura – the Maltese word for ‘flower’ – Simone Gooch has always maintained a delightful tension between imperfection and splendour. Beginning her floristry practice in 2005 in Sydney, before establishing herself in London for several years, Gooch’s work ranges from hand-delivered gift flowers to large installations for major clients in fashion and design. Her second publication with Perimeter Editions – following the much loved collaboration with photographer Derek Henderson, Rosa, published in 2021 – Flowers in the Front Seat restages the beauty of Gooch’s arrangements against a backdrop that is firmly in the everyday. Intricate and spontaneous in equal measure, these flowers appear lovingly buckled in, precariously propped up in cup holders, or occasionally, held steady by anonymous hands. Magnolias, gardenias, hydrangeas, and violas – all snapped colloquially on an iPhone – fill the grey, utilitarian interior of the delivery van, an occasional passerby punctuating the otherwise private images. Spanning more than ten years of work, this book elicits the informality of the camera roll, as different takes on the same image appear alongside each other; a new angle tried, better lighting captured. The image itself becomes an arrangement, tweaked and revisited, but never entirely perfected. Flowers in the Front Seat acts as both a casual archive of Simone Gooch’s professional practice and an ode to the forgotten – but required – labour of florists. They are the couriers of precious cargo.