Artist : Tessa Farmer
Title : The Intruders
Medium : books, wasp nest, wormshells, insects, arachnids, coral, plant roots, bones, hedgehog spines,Portuguese man-o-war polyp in wood and glass case
Dimensions : 53 x 30 x 22 cm


ENQUIRE ABOUT THIS WORK

As artst in Residence in the department of entomology at the Natural History Museum London, I became interested in the insect pests threatening the collections. A drawer of Hymenoptera had been reduced to dust by carpet beetle larvae, retained as a stark warning to curators to be ever vigilant. My intervention in NHM saw my sinister skeletal fairies as a new species, disrupting the established order, causing chaos and cross pollination between the fastidiously ordered collections. ‘The Intruders’ imagines a neglected, insect damaged collection of entomology books reduced to a wasp habitat; wasps have pulverised the pages to create their intricate nest, cemented neatly between the books. Now however, the fairies have usurped the nest, enslaved the wasps and appropriated the habitat, disrupting the knowledge within and wreaking fantastic havoc.”

Farmer is a British contemporary artist born in Birmingham, England in 1978. She currently lives and works in London. Her unique work has attracted global attention. She received both a BFA and an MFA from The Ruskin, University of Oxford. Subsequently, she has been exhibited and collected widely both nationally and internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery, the David Roberts Collection, the Museum of 21st Century Art, Kentucky and The Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania. In 2007 she was Artist in Residence at the Natural History Museum, London. Awards include selection for New Contemporaries in 2004, and a Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award in 2005. In 2007 she was nominated for The Times/ The South Bank Show Breakthrough Award and in 2011 was awarded a Kindle Project ‘Makers Muse Award.