UK Mall Exhibits Bee Swarm Sculpture

A young artist has been invited to exhibit at a shopping centre in the United Kingdom in a bid to raise awareness for the important role of pollinators.

Entitled ‘Swarm’, Leonie Bradley’s 10-metre (6.2ft) installation is currently on display at Westgate Oxford, a mall featuring over 120 stores in the city centre of Oxford, Oxfordshire, South East England.

The multi-disciplinary artist’s oeuvre consists of around 700 hand-folded fortune teller origamis. Together, the black and yellow pieces of paper are meant to represent a swarm of bees.

The artwork will be on display until this Sunday (16th April). Westgate Oxford managers said customers would have to chance to fold their own origami bees which will eventually be turned into another sculpture.

Swarm creator Leonie told the Oxford Mail: “Everyone remembers making fortune tellers as a child. It’s a playful way to talk about the ecological crisis and to bring people together to discover simple ways to help the bees.”

Honeybees and the various solitary bee species that exist all around the world are threatened by the excessive application of toxic substances and the intensifying sealing of soils.

Research suggests that the annual global economic impact of pollinators surpasses EUR 90 billion (GBP 79 billion).