An artist's answer to finding a place for uncomfortable feelings

The first time Clare James arranged funeral flowers was for her friend's 10-year-old son Harper, who was killed, along with his father, when a tree fell on their car in 2019.

Impelled by the urge to give the children in the room something to look at beyond their friend's coffin, she created a wild and twisting semi-circle of branches, flowers, moss, pebbles and fungi. Woven into the installation were Harper's toys, and guests were invited to light a candle and place it among the pebbles when they arrived.

"So, that was the first one. I just did that because I was worried about how the kids would get through such a funeral," Clare says.

That same year, Clare, an artist based in Victoria's Yarra Valley, created a similar installation in her backyard. Using flowers recycled from a wedding — floristry has been her long-time side hustle — she built a flowery alcove, an altar upon which to lay the grief that doesn't find a home at a funeral.

"For relationships broken, parents that had to leave, pets who died, bodies that no longer work, regrets that haunt, wilderness lost, rivers poisoned, animals slaughtered and the endless amount of grief out there which need a place to be acknowledged," she said at the time.

Growing up with anxiety disorder, Clare says her thoughts get caught in a loop and "things that have upset me or worried me in the world I've not found it easy to let go of". For once, until the flowers wilted and the candles melted, this altar gave her thoughts a place to rest.

The Place for Lost Feelings

In 2022, she built a similar installation for the public. With her sister, artist Kate James, she created The Place for Lost Feelings in an old hall in Healesville. "While we were building it, we got the giggles a few times going, 'Do you think anyone will come?'" Clare says.

But she had a hunch that she wasn't the only one searching for this place, or this experience, outside of organised religion. A church is a place she says she wouldn't feel safe or comfortable.

The two sisters weren't quite ready for what happened next.

"People came from so far and wide and people came with extraordinary grief," Clare says. They came to mourn, to remember and forget, to confront death.

One man in his 50s, diagnosed with terminal cancer, arrived with his wife and his two best friends. When it was their turn to enter the space, the man lay down in front of the installation and they sat with him, Clare says. Later, he told her "it was the first time he actually accepted his mortality".

In the comments book, someone wrote: "It's not like we were hungry for this; we were starving." Clare says it struck her as a "profound thing to say and feel about this little pop-up flower thing".

Clare's installations reflect a high-end floristry movement that has emerged over the past two decades. A slave to the vase no more, bold installations of traditional cut flowers, branches, grasses and edible plants scrunch and twist up walls, creep along ceilings, and hang in defiance of gravity. They scream with life, and they're not cheap. They appear at well-heeled weddings, events and restaurants.

For Clare, giving everyone the chance to experience such a luscious installation at a free event is part of the appeal. Fresh flowers and candles are "there for the most important celebrations in our life", she says. And there's something about their fragility, their ephemerality, which make them the perfect medium for these artworks.

Tomorrow, Clare will open the doors on the second iteration of The Place for Lost Feelings in Healesville. For two days, people will have the opportunity to spend five minutes alone in the space and light a candle. As they exit, two trauma response workers will be available to check in with people.

A new understanding of grief

The event was meant to occur in March, but as Clare was preparing it, her husband Mark suffered a massive stroke. Since then, grief has gained new meaning for her.

There is a "new, profound grief that I feel, and that Mark feels, for everything that he has lost", she says. "The things that we together have lost is huge, and the level of his brain injuries is just so life changing." There is also gratitude that things could have been worse.

"I said to my sister the other day, 'Oh my God, I need The Place for Lost Feelings,'" she says. "I'll go in there and sob for myself and for Mark."

At the same time, she doesn't understand what it's all for: "It doesn't bring back your child, it doesn't make your body better, I don't understand, yet, what it is that makes it feel alright."

After we speak on the phone, Clare texts me photos of the flowers she was looking at in her garden while we talked. There are Granny's Bonnets in different shades of purple, an orange tree bursting with blossom, and a delicate flower, the colour of mango, turning its face to the sun. Brief glimpses of beauty that will return to the soil.

The Place for Lost Feelings, supported by the Margaret Lawrence Bequest, is a free event (bookings recommended) at The Healesville Living And Learning Centre on October 24 and 25.