Making the butterflies 
Butterflies suspended from a net
Being the last in our MFA group to do this term’s small group show feels to have been both a blessing and a curse. It meant the luxury of more time to develop the work, equally there is a weight of responsibility to build on the efforts of my fellow artists over the last few months. I hope I have managed to make the most of experiencing the shows and crits to date.
My first response to the brief of ‘Missing Link’ (ML) was to think of evolutionary biology and that’s were I started my research. When we met as a group things took a more magical turn and we thought about our viewers and what if we limited the information we gave them. After discussing magical realism and books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland somehow we arrived at an idea where a book with no title and no pages would be at the centre of the exhibition (the missing link). Individually, we would create work in response to it. I liked the idea of something fantastical and playful, given that my work can often have dark existential undertones.
I initially thought I would create some sort of installation piece with collections of objects, possibly linked by Alice – drink me bottles, eat me cake and so on. I did a few sketches but wasn’t convinced this gave me enough to work with beyond simply reproducing the Lewis Carroll tale. I then went back to the evolutionary link and found that the concept of the ML was not universally recognised.
Missing link is an outmoded term in biology, which I have to say most of us think should be forgotten and never used. [Paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin]
It seems that palaeontologists find the term unhelpful because it implies a linear progression denoted by a single linking species. Whereas the tree of life is branching with many lines of development. There is a preference to refer to a transitional or transformational species and that got me thinking about symbols of transition. Initially, I thought of moths as I had worked on that form in the past but then decided to move on to Butterflies. The Butterfly is seen as a symbol of transformation across many cultures and that’s what I decided to work with.
I created the blank book from an old Encyclopedia of Gardening, hollowing it out and recovering the spine so it had no title and no pages. This left me with lots of cut out pages and they seemed perfect to create the butterflies from – the pages of this mysterious book transforming into little winged creatures. I had a vision of them rising out of the book and suspended in some way that gave the illusion of floating. I then got a bit stuck because I wasn’t sure where to go next – maybe one large collage using the remaining pages, maybe a painting that draws on the butterflies?
I let it simmer for a bit and then decided to link back to my more usual digital formats and using one of the butterflies make some glitched photos as the image undergoes more transformation. I used the Glitch app and then worked on them more in Photoshop, a velvet black background bringing the image to the fore. I had also bought a child’s toy – a butterfly in a jar that when you tap the top it flutters around. I wasn’t sure how to include it but I thought it could add more mystery and magic, as well as a little darkness.
I thought that was where I would stop but then seeing the Maiolino show I was inspired by one of the pieces and wanted to add something more. I enjoyed watching people touch and explore my vessels from Open Cut and had wondered about something more interactive. At the Maiolinoshow there is a piece with a series of paper discs that rise up and are suspended across the room. I liked the concept and thought I would do something similar with a series of butterflies on a string. I talked to the gallery assistant at the Whitechapel and he explained that while people couldn’t touch the one in the show they had made a smaller one that children could handle, he described Maiolino’s intention of people being able to unwrap the art and then release it. I loved the idea and it seemed to be a good link between the flying butterflies and the one in the jar. I designed and created a portfolio structure and got close to producing what I had in my mind’s eye. In terms of displaying it I thought I would put it on a low plinth and add a series of clear hooks on the wall so the audience can choose where to hang them.
This is very unlike any work I have done before and I am enjoying the construction/3D elements. I am a bit nervous that the butterfly motif might be seen as too twee or a bit pretty but I am hoping the combination of the various works offset that.
I’ll find out next week how it is received.