Artist Sangeeta Sandrasegar brings to life Melbourne’s forgotten flower boys

I ragazzi dei millefiori: the flow’rs of song and story is a new artwork by Sangeeta Sandrasegar, made in collaboration with natural dye expert Heather Thomas. The work consists of rows of long panels of silk organza and cotton, each hand-coloured with natural dyes made from flowers, leaves and roots. 

As you walk underneath the work, it gently moves in the breeze – the fluidity of the silk contrasting with the hard angles of the architecture, while the gradients of pinks, corals and peaches complement the sandstone, behind.

From different perspectives and at different times of day, the interplay of light and shifting silks present the work afresh, revealing and occluding the figures of boys holding baskets of bright flowers.

Behind its beauty, the artwork explores themes of migration and cultural identity through a myriad of ideas – the histories of the production of colour through plant material, the representation of gardens and plants in classical tapestries, the craftsmanship behind textiles, and the story of young immigrants newly arrived from Italy selling flowers in market stalls. 

Melbourne Arts Precinct curator Julia Murphy spoke with artist Sangeeta Sandrasegar.

JM: Your work as an artist often deals with themes of migration. Can you tell me a little about why this interests you?

My father was an Indian-Malaysian and my mother is of Swiss-Anglo Australian heritage. As a child our family lived between Malaysia and Australia. This early awareness of migration and change is fundamental to me as an artist.

I am concerned with narratives that lie adjacent to historical canons: to understand the people and places caught in-between definitions, or hidden within someone else’s story. Through my works, I evolve a continuous narrative centred upon the relationships between migrant communities to their homelands, and life in Australia.

Living in-between spaces has led me to use the motif of shadow (formed between lightness and darkness) to illustrate eclipsed and marginalised presences.  

JM: You spent time in Italy, where the seed of this work emerged. Can you tell me about how your research into textile production and your experience of the Millefiori tapestry in Pistoia influenced you? 

SS: Last year I was in Prato, Italy for three months, as artist in residence as part of the Monash University Visual Residency program. I was researching textiles and became absorbed with a tapestry that hangs in the civic museum of Pistoia – the Palazzo dei Vescovi. The Millefiori or Adoration tapestry was made in Flanders in 1500 and follows a thematic of other famous millefleur (thousand flowers) tapestries, such as The Unicorn Tapestries.  

Woven in silk and wool at an impressive scale of 267 x 790 centimetres, the tapestry depicts a natural scene on a black background, with countless plants, leaves, fruits and flowers (hence the name). Springing between the foliage are hares, deer, wolves, fawns, birds, even a unicorn. Among the profusion of flowers, there are dog roses, foxgloves, common daisies, irises, violets, primroses, carnations, bluebells, lilies, poppies, lilies of the valley, daffodils, corydalis, clovers and tulips. The list goes on. Researchers and historians have worked to identify as many specimens as possible.

This search for botanical identification, the beautifully rendered flora and fauna alongside the somewhat ‘unknown’ historical provenance of the work, had me hooked.

I loved my visits to Pistoia – standing in front of this wonderful, handcrafted work in which the naturally dyed yarns still glowed with colourful exuberance. 

JM: Alongside botanical illustrations from the Millefiori tapestry, this work draws on the story of a group of young Italian immigrants selling flowers on Princes Bridge in the early 1900s. Can you explain the title of the work and how it relates to this story? 

SS: The title of this work draws upon various subjects and connections I have felt since beginning this project. 

While I was reading through research undertaken into various histories of the site where Fed Square now stands, a poignant narrative sprang out. I learnt of young Italian boys who sold flowers along Princes Bridge and Flinders Street Station in the early 1900s. These boys appear to have been contracted by other (often quite young) migrant men whose names are listed in housing records around Carlton and North Melbourne. 

One in particular, Angelo Russo, from Malfa, Sicily was himself only about 16. At the turn of the last century, and with the White Australia policy to become legislation in 1901, I was surprised to read of this stage of Italian migration. The ensuing racial policies would restrict people from southern European countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain, and the newspaper records of the time often conflated differing cultural backgrounds with ignorance. 

There is little remaining evidence of those young lives. What has been recorded relays a tough existence: brawls and scuffles between gangs of boys fighting for their living. Stories of a young flower seller stabbed by a fishmonger; another aged 18 who ended his own life.

These boys were itinerant vendors, selling their posies against the law and to the fury of many of the legal stall holders around Princes Bridge and Flinders Street. Who were they? Which Italian cities did they come from? And what about their families?   

The title of this work is part Italian and part English language. The I ragazzi dei millefiori literally translates to ‘the boys of the thousand flowers’ and as such contains the reference back to the ‘thousand flowers’ Millefiori in Pistoia. The English section the flow’rs of song and story comes from a line in the poem ‘The Flower Boys’ by the poet Joan Torrance published in the Herald newspaper in October 1900. 

Torrance’s poem, alongside other published evidence, points to a reality that these children worked hard, often malnourished and needing to support family members. These fragments of young lives seemed so flimsy and as transient as the flowers they pedalled. 

JM: Flowers and plants hold complex meanings and social value. Historically they have had symbolic import in their representation in artworks; they have medicinal and cultural properties; they connect us with memory, and with social and cultural history. How does your work engage with the cultural significance of plants? 

SS: I came to working with plants through colour. Several years ago, I realised I didn’t have a handle upon the colour sources we use as artists. I wanted to understand how the pigments and paints we take for granted were developed. This led me to the production of colour from plants, insects and minerals, which were the main source of colour production before the developments of synthetic colour around the early 1900s and beyond.

Following this path, I began to see that colour – one of the essential tools of an artist – was caught up in an intricate matrix. These early hues reflect and resonate complex patterns of trans-continental trade, colonial agriculture, enterprises based on slavery, revolutions in industry, European rivalries and political relations. 

Following the trail of natural blue – woad in Europe, indigo in India – led me to Heather Thomas in Australia. Since then, we have collaborated on many projects. Heather has been my guide to the world of natural colour, derived from mordants mixed with colourants from plant material. We make work that, for me, speaks to the journey of particular hues. Colour travels the globe metaphorically and practically. It has enraptured people and trapped them in trade and commerce as much as the clothes and fabrics that were made by and for them. Flowers and plants were a central component of this trade in colour.  

When Heather and I began working together, I was tracing the colonial arc of Indian indigo to create an installation that spoke to the landscape of the TarraWarra Museum of Art for which the work was to be presented. Heather introduced me to various native plants that create glorious yellow hues.

Across the blues of indigo and native yellows we created a landscape of blues and greens and golden light that reflected upon the many journeys of migration and settlement around the Yarra Valley, on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. We have continued working together since then, using plants to create colour. 

JM: You completed a residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop earlier this year, where you and Heather continued your experiments with natural dyes. What is the material process of creating an installation like this?

SS: The residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop where Heather now works as their natural dye expert was a wonderful incubation period for us.

In this period, we had the time to explore a range of techniques and applications with natural colourants at a broader level than previously. I wanted to truly begin exploring and learning about the layering of colour and to build depth and space with colour. The trials and tests we began here informed this installation; the skills I gained to paint with the mordants I used to develop the portraits of the young boys, and then the reverse resists and mordants we have used to create the imagery that draws upon the Millefiori tapestry in Italy. 

This is also the largest project we have embarked upon so all the preparation and planning that was undertaken at the Australian Tapestry Workshop was very necessary. Each panel is a bit over seven metres before they are finished; these are huge lengths to physically manage to ensure they are evenly dyed. For this project we will have hand dyed and hand painted around 330 metres of fabric! 

JM: How do you imagine or hope that people will experience this work? 

SS: While I was in Italy, a foreigner from Australia, I started thinking about the hardships of these boys whose lives were surrounded by and dependent on flowers. What must they have endured? I stood in front of the tapestry in Pistoia, and I wondered what flowers might they have sold? Where these children may have ended up? I thought about the influence that flowers and plants hold in our lives – through cultural meaning, through social histories. Over the last few centuries, plants have travelled the globe deliberately and by accident – they tell a story of colonisation, of migration, of transplantation and hybridity.  

This installation is an ode to some of the lives that have striven and continued to thrive in this place. It is a gesture to these young boys who travelled so far at the turn of the last century, like many of the plants they sold. Illustrated on panels of fabric donated by Beste in Italy, it celebrates the ongoing relationship between Australia and Italy, of past and present, of peoples and plants. 

This article is an edited version of an interview printed in a newsletter, designed by Zenobia Ahmed and published by Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation. Printed copies of this newsletter are available to pick up in the Atrium, beside the work. I ragazzi dei millefiori: the flow’rs of song and story was commissioned and presented by Fed Square, with the Australian Tapestry Workshop. It is on display in the Atrium until 31 January, 2026.