Daffodils Baptized In Butter
— The Arts Club London 25 September 2024 — 19 January 2025

Daffodils Baptized In Butter features works by more than 36 artists from across the globe exploring the countless symbolic, mystical and art historical meaning of flowers, while underscoring their prevalence in contemporary practice. The exhibition is the largest in the club’s history and first to be displayed across multiple floors of the Club – ground floor, grand staircase and first floor.

Drawing on the prevalence of flowers not only in recent contemporary art, but going back more than 70 years – with artists from very established to newly emerging, and a number of once marginalised artists now gaining in art historical reputation – Daffodils Baptized in Butter takes a broad view of how artists have commanded flowers in their practices. They are variously used to represent body parts, witchcraft, political symbols and vanitas motifs on the transience of life. The evoke the glories of nature in contrast to the manmade, or represent emblematic studies in beauty and love.

Defying the idea of the flower as pretty – the flowers in this show are in turns tough, stubborn, dried, dying, magnificent, elegiac and profound in their gorgeousness. They dive head-long into the depths of our psyches while also taking us out of ourselves and into various modes of contemplation. Flowers are among the most persistent motifs throughout art history; and these contemporary perspectives offer profound reinterpretations of this iconic motif.