A Spring Orchard blooms at Melbourne’s GPO

If you’ve been to Melbourne’s GPO (MGPO) recently, you may have noticed a 30-foot vine, made from a kilo­me­tre of rope and 2000, pur­pose designed, indi­vid­u­ally scored pieces of fruit and green­ery that has taken res­i­dence along the walls of the iconic land­mark on Level One. If not, then this is a heads up. No, the build­ing is not in dan­ger of being uprooted and over­run by Mother Nature– at least not literally.

Spring Orchard is the prod­uct of a col­lab­o­ra­tive endeav­our taken onboard by MGPO and visual design maven Amanda Hen­der­son and her team of artists at Gloss Cre­ative. A col­li­sion of fash­ion and beauty, Spring Orchard is a spec­tac­u­lar super-scale art instal­la­tion, which is said to “con­jure thoughts of both a horticulturist’s pot­ting shed and a curated col­lec­tion of pre­cious, botan­i­cal arte­facts”. How­ever, the retail the­atre doesn’t end there. Grow­ing from the lus­cious vine are the Cab­i­nets of Curios­ity that house hero gar­ments from MGPO’s retail­ers, them­selves, a series of ‘still-life’ art­works.

MGPO’s Spring Orchard “is a metaphor for the fresh crop of design­ers and season-launch col­lec­tions wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered”. Indeed, in prepa­ra­tion for the arrival of new Spring/Summer col­lec­tions, a trib­ute to nature and the birth of a new sea­son is most def­i­nitely a fit­ting cel­e­bra­tion.

Spring Orchard will be on dis­play from now until the end of August.