Seed all about it!

Monday 16th March, the same day on which 'The Metro' ran the article 'Grow your own Metro', based entirely on the event I was going to be holding on the rooftop of JWT that Friday, I decided to display my two beautiful MetGro seed encapsulated pieces in the canteen or 'Comm' as it's known there.
I wanted to encourage people to pick them up, feel the seed infused paper and read the articles as they would a real newspaper.
I was also hoping that people in the building would have read the article in the Metro that morning during their commute and would put 2 and 2 together in order to link the events.
The publishing of that 'Metro' article and the display of my 'MetGro' pieces went hand in hand. It was perfect timing.
I wanted to display the two pieces on plinths which would give them more gravitas as art pieces in their own right. I decided to tie in the gardening theme and link it to outside by making plinths out of large plant pots! The shiny black plastic juxtaposed against the seed paper really worked really well and was a very interesting way to use these normal garden objects.

The two plant-pot plinths stood inside, next to the door which leads out on to the roof terrace. I wanted the pieces to remain inside for the first few days in order to allow people to pick them up and take them to read with a coffee as they do with the other newspapers available in the canteen. By putting them by the door to the roof terrace, the MetGros and the Greenhouse started to create a dialogue and more people began to piece my clues together.
Here are some images of the MetGros on display inside the building:

No smoking in the greenhouse please.

It turned out days before my event that some sneaky smokers had been using my greenhouse as a lovely warm area to get away from the March chill. It's an art installation not a 'Let's be kind to smokers tent!'
I guess that is the problem with leaving an installation unattended!
A friend of mine kindly made a sign which read,s "Please Keep Out, ART IN PROGRESS."
Genius.

Plant pot takeover

I decided that another way to provoke interest for my forthcoming event was to take over the roof terrace space of JWT with small plant pots which were donated to me for free by the lovely Gardener, Peter Logan. These pots would form the basis for my event in which participants would pick up any pot of their choice from the surrounding area, rip up whichever part of the Metro they chose and cover it in soil before writing their names on the pots and then placing them in the greenhouse.

Giving the participants
-A pot of their choice
-Whichever part of the newspaper they wanted to plant
-Their choice of a location inside the greenhouse,
I would be making the event more personal and hopefully, more people would be willing to get involved and compete to help create the most successful outcome. Writing their names on the plant pots also meant that once the event was over, the participants could also keep a close check on their plant's progress through the see-through greenhouse gallery.

By filling the bases with soil to keep them from blowing away and placing them around the roof terrace walkway, I was able to spread my greenhouse installation and use the whole space.
Placing the plant pots in areas where people walked, encouraged them pay more attention to the installation and venture inside to read they flyers in order to find out what on earth was going on!
Here are some images of the plant pot takeover, taken during the week of my event.