An installation of multiple hives each hiding a unique, unexpected interior world. Audiences wander amongst the honey-perfumed Bee Colony, occasionally cloaked in smoke, finding a variety ways of viewing and interacting with the contents. In each there is a surprising conceptual twist, which challenges, charms and confounds expectations – you may find yourself looking into the vastness of space, or teased by a telescopic hive soaring into the air. The installation is tended by ethereal beekeepers and atmospherically lit when performed at night.
The Bees is designed to be multi- sensory, engaging spectators through taste, smell and touch as well as sight and hearing. It presents a clear and resonant image, but with a frisson of danger – the hives are realistic and might just contain stinging insects - do you really want to put your eye up to that hole?
The set and PA can be used for a variety of purposes: we can provide an in-house cabaret and MC; it can host guest acts and community performances or work as the focus for a whole day’s events, creating a real impact in a park or large urban space and at night it creates an illuminated spectacle.
The Bees can be sited in almost any location from a city street or square to parks and woodland. The piece is made for the outdoors – flexible, robust and showerproof. It uses minimum language and is accessible and engaging for both children and adults. Technically self-contained during daylight and requiring only minimum power at night, The Bees runs for three hours a day to audiences of up to 2000.
"A surreal, charmingly wacky installation..something different and distinctive”
Lyn Gardener – The Guardian
“Clever, I thought, and pretty cool”
The Daily Telegraph