A Bouquet of Flowers

Created in response to the Inspired by Her brief. Exhibited as part of the 2026 Orana Every Woman Festival, Dubbo NSW. By Phoebe Maroulis.

A Bouquet of Flowers inhabits the ornate Victorian photograph album as both inheritance and interrogation. In the nineteenth century, the floral frame functioned as more than decoration — it structured meaning. Ornament conferred legitimacy, signalling that what lay within was worthy of preservation and display.

Within this album, however, the images resist easy classification. Abstracted landscapes, a mob of cattle, the Sydney Opera House, shifting textures and patterns sit within the decorative border. Together they form a subtle self-portrait, an inquiry into belonging, displacement, and the layered identities of a woman living in Western NSW.

By placing contemporary regional experience inside a Victorian frame, the work questions why ornament grants authority. Does the floral border stabilise the image, or expose the constructed nature of what we deem “cultured” and worthy?

The album becomes both homage and critique, embracing beauty unapologetically while unsettling the historical power embedded within it.

Phoebe Maroulis is a visual artist, land steward, and social impact practitioner living in rural Australia. Her work emerges at the meeting point of creativity, culture, and community, guided by deep listening to place. She often begins on canvases already marked, honouring the truth that nothing begins blank, just as the Country she creates on has always held story and care. Phoebe sees herself as holding a baton briefly and reverently, creating in response to land, memory, and kinship. Her practice is an act of offering and remembering, shaped by the mystery of belonging to something larger than ourselves.