BUTTER FLIES
Trophy Hunting for the Lactose Tolerant
Butterfly collections have always felt faintly absurd. The posture of conquest applied to something that weighs less than a paperclip. Trophy hunting, if Wallace and Gromit ran a safari.
So this is a version of that tradition, without the net. Origami butterflies, folded from butter wrappers.
Butter. Flies.
What began as wordplay became a wall of kaleidoscopic specimens, each formed from the foils of international butters. A celebration of packaging design and dairy in an attempt to elevate the ordinary and overlooked.
Wrappers were sourced: supermarkets, farm shops, corner stores. Holidays became an International Butter Smuggling Ring. Friends became supply chain accomplices sending local favourites from their own regions and neighbourhoods. Before long the fridge housed anonymous butter blocks stripped of identity. Less like a larder, more like a stash of chilled Semtex.
The online origami community provided technical rigour, guiding increasingly intricate folds until repetition turned process into practice. Production gathered pace: part art, part dairy, all cholesterol.
“Butter Flies” became the umbrella title. Individual works required something more specific. Metamorphosis suggested a lineage, which led, inevitably, to the patron saints of transformation: Boyz II Men. Each butter-fly collection carries the title of a track: Four Seasons of Loneliness. It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday and of course End of the Road. Abstract, aloof, technically a tribute.
They flutter. They rustle. They carry a faint note of toast. Not from the rainforest, but from aisle four.
Say no to big game. Say yes to big dairy and trophy hunting for the lactose tolerant.
Four Seasons of Loneliness
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday
End of the Road
