'Last Chance to Buy' 120cm x 60cm  (2025) 

Stained Glass Light Box

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Detail

 

The blooms of the parasitic Rafflesia Arnoldii are the largest in the world at over a metre across. They are famous for their odour of decaying meat, produced to attract flesh-eating flies.  The plant is at severe risk of extinction due to deforestation in south-east Asia and also from tourists flocking to take selfies beside the rare flowers. The conditions required for its pollination are so fragile that even traces of chemicals left behind by people’s training shoes can cause it to fail. 

Two brides-to-be fight for the last existing Rafflesia flower, observed by an orange demon and a selection of rare Bornean wildlife.  However, they are also about to be walloped by the falling statue of Sir Thomas Raffles. The first British person to see a Rafflesia was Joseph Arnold in 1818,  in the Sumatran rainforest when a Malay servant working for him pointed it out to him. The flower was later named after Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of the British colony of Singapore.