28 April – 4 May 2025

Open Age is a charity that champions an active life for older people. They work across Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham to enable anyone aged 50 or older to sustain their physical and mental fitness, maintain an active lifestyle and develop new and stimulating interests. With this exhibition, Open Age continues its partnership with Saatchi Gallery and invited their participants to respond to our current major exhibition Flowers: Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture through a series of workshops with the Saatchi Gallery Learning team.

Several of the artists in Flowers: Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture gained their most significant recognition later in life. Margaret Mellis was in her mid-sixties when she began assembling some pieces of driftwood into an ad hoc sculpture. This was the beginning of what turned out to be a new phase in her art. Christo’s most ambitious projects such as Wrapped Reichstag and The Gates were not completed until he was in his sixties. Susan Beech, Mary Fedden, and Winifred Nicholson also gained greater appreciation for their work later in life.

We asked Open Age participants to take inspiration from each section of the exhibition to further their own artistic practice.