Phloem is bonkers, as gloriously bonkers as a bunch of tripping clowns rioting in a sweet shop designed by Yayoi Kusama. It feels like Euan McCall has taken the history of party-time fruity florals, filtered it carefully through theory, put the results into a confetti cannon and let it go BOOM.

I should hate this. I can’t stand sticky sweeties scents, skin dripping with smashed-berry juice. They annoy me like hair sticking to lipgloss on a windy day–and it’s always windy in Edinburgh–or bad cake. But Phloem is laugh-out-loud joyous. And seriously bloody weird. And there’s a salty-sweaty undercurrent that keeps the living, breathing human at the centre of this wild, bright ride.

Who wouldn’t get a little sweaty running wild at a neon-lit Dadaist carnival?

At first glance, @Jorum Studio’s Pholem couldn’t be more different from the intense, earthy delicacy of Trimerous or the aromatic spaces and stories of Carduus, but it shares their deep, playful thoughtfulness, and a shining fascination with materials that breaks down and reassembles things you thought you knew, presenting them back in entirely new shapes.

And it’s so much fun.

originally posted 5 and 7 June 2019