“This multiple is the remains of a large installation piece red on green shown at the ICA, London in 1992. The installation consisted of 10,000 fragrant English hybrid tea roses. The heads were laid onto a bed made from the stems. When I made the piece I had been reading about a garden of love at the Chateau Villandry in France. I was intrigued by the idea that love could be reduced and categorised into different types which in turn could be presented by plants and colours. Roses seemed to be the most clichéd symbol of romantic or sexual love. I wanted to make something seductive yet dangerous. The velvety carpet hid a bed of thorns, as the roses dried and darkened they shrank and revealed the hidden layers of green. Red becomes passion or danger and, maybe, green naivety? Jealousy?… At the end of the show the roses had dried out into beautiful souvenirs. I was not interested in that. It was sentimental in a way that didn’t interest me. The logical thing seemed to be to end the piece in dust. To make all the different reds one. I ground the roses to dust and bound the dust with a mixture of beeswax, linseed oil and damar varnish to make an encaustic wax crayon. Ending the work with the potential for creating another. I could have made one huge crayon with all the dust, but in the end I decided to make a multiple. The size of the crayon was determined by the roses: one dozen, two dozen, six dozen: the denominations in which ‘love’ is often purchased.”

Multiplication, The British Council 2001