In 2022 I was invited to be one of 7 British artists to design and decorate a giant sculptural egg to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. Each egg depicted a decade of the late Queen’s 70 year reign and was to be auctioned in aid of The Elephant Family (patron The Queen Consort). The eggs were mounted on plinths and displayed around Chelsea in London during the months of April and May, in time for the world-famous Chelsea in Bloom. The egg which I designed was to be situated in pride of place in Duke of York’s Square, on the King's Road.

I was awarded the 80’s decade. Luckily as that was the decade of my teenage life!  Putting together a mood board of everything I remember about the decade, all my photographs pointed to music.  Pop music during the 1980s was part of everyone’s everyday life.  Soundtracks to movies, pop groups becoming more famous than the Beatles, the music suddenly gave us a type of psychedelic freedom that we had not seen in any previous decade.  Most of the bands we adored are still touring today, and we all still love them just as much.

Once the egg was painted a vivid baby pink (I called it Club Tropicana after Wham’s infamous tune), I covered it with over 250 different-sized aluminium butterflies.  Each was hand-painted with varying shades of a retro pastel palette, their wings were engraved with a song from the 80s with the year.  The idea was to get onlookers stopping, remembering the tune and singing or maybe even dancing. The engineering side of this creation was quite a challenge, but as the photos show, it brightened up the typically English heavy rainstorms during the month of May.