Admiranda tibi levium spectacula rerum.
I’ll tell of tiny things that make a show well worth your admiration. 

– Virgil

Bugonia is an exhibition of prints, paintings and sound art by creative entomologist Nessa Darcy. Nessa aims to reintroduce humans to their natural habitat through colourful encounters with insects. Much of the work was created during the Bee Time artists’ residency, where a hive of diverse artists engaged with the themes of natural beekeeping and the bee’s relationship with its environment, through discussion, meditation, movement, skill sharing, storytelling, art making, shamanic practices, farm visits and simply “asking the bees”.

Bugonia is an ancient ritual based on the belief that bees could be spontaneously generated from the carcass of an ox, as described in Virgil’s Georgics. To the artist, it represents our tangled relationship with nature. Humans feel, simultaneously:

• a detachment from factual ecological knowledge;
• wonder and fear at the forces of nature;
• and a longing to restore that which we need but have destroyed.

The word also sounds like an appropriate name for an insects’ utopia, which we have the power to preserve and create. Both wonder and knowledge are key to rescuing insects from the rapid decline they are currently suffering “because we don’t love them enough” (Roger Druitt). To love insects requires understanding who they are and what they need.

Nessa’s work draws people in to familiarise themselves intimately with insects. For more information on Nessa’s work, visit her website.