Feeling deflated? Ant Hamlyn’s squished sculptures are sure to cheer you up

Flower pressing is a pastime often seen as quaint and charming – a practice from a simple, more appreciative time. But when looking at the pastime more literally, artist Ant Hamlyn observes something a little more complicated: “When we crush a flower to preserve its beauty, we essentially destroy it to conserve it,” he highlights. It’s this contradiction that Ant seeks to interact with – his brightly coloured array of pressed flowers and plants being “at once a celebration and a critique”.

A real “labour of love”, all of Ant’s pieces are meticulously drawn, cut and sewn by hand. The use of varied materials is important to his work, as he endeavours to create a sense of tactility and physicality. The artist's material manipulation is rooted in one of his biggest influences: stagecraft magic and music, especially late 19th Century and early 20th Century stage illusions. Ant explains: “the delicate interplay between materiality, scale and context are intrinsic to the simultaneous creation of mystery, familiarity and deception.”