OPEN CALL for artists of all disciplines to produce a creative response to the ecology of individual British bees.

Lydia is a textile and mixed media artist from Somerset, UK working with found, salvaged and beach-combed materials combined with wool and stitch.

All of her work has an emphasis on the environment and sustainability and her current major creative project is called, ‘FIFTY BEES: The Interconnectedness of All Things’ and was devised to showcase the plight of the British bee; her focus throughout the project is to research and to learn as much as possible about our bees. 

To this end, she sculpts small, individual art pieces from wool and thread inside a range of wonderful vintage containers; so far there are one hundred sculptures but she is aiming to complete 275, one for each of Britain’s species of bee.

For each of the FIFTY BEES exhibitions, another fifty artists, makers, writers and musicians produce one new work in response to one of the bee pieces, in order to give a fuller illustration of the diversity of our bee population, how endangered it is and how our pollinators are completely interlinked with our ecosystem.

This application is to be one of the next fifty companion artists.

Before you begin to complete your application, we recommend that you take a quick look what has been created for the past three FIFTY BEE exhibitions if this all sounds confusing.  FIFTY BEES has it's own Intagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Then, please read the following information:

• You will need to prepare a short statement of no more than 250 words about your work and how it may link to the themes of ecology and our pollinators, or how you would like to develop you work to fit this brief.
  
  
• We also require a CV but please do not be put off if your art practice CV is limited; we welcome applications from new and emerging artists as well as established artists.
  
  
• We will need to upload 4 images or photographs in support of your application.  These need to be JPG, GIF or PNG format.  These should be no more that 4MB in size. 
  
  
• An application fee of £10 will be paid via PayPal to the account of fiftybees@gmail.com before submission of your application - you do not need a paypal account to do this.  Please include your PayPal transaction number in your application.
  
  
• Please also note, this is not about making a piece of art with a bee on it. In fact, we are not looking for any imagery of bees.  The pieces that the companion artists make are about the flora, the fauna, the ecology that surrounds your given bee.  
  
  
• Artists will be selected from a range of disciplines in order to present a varied, stimulating & interesting exhibition.  Therefore, please select images that help us to understand you practice in relation to the FIFTY BEES project.
  
  
• Successful entrants will be notified by 10th August 2019. Should your application be successful, you will need to create work specifically for the FIFTY BEES exhibition in response a bee species allocated to you, we will not except work created previously.  At this point, they will be allocated their bee so that they can begin researching and creating the piece.  The deadline for completion of this art piece is 20th December 2019.
  
  
• If you do not hear from us by 31st August, unfortunately you have been unsuccessful. Please do not be put off, there will be another opportunity next year.
  
  
• The decision of the Curator is final and they will not enter into any correspondence or discussion over the decision made.
  
  
• The work will be exhibited in Frome, Somerset in February 2020 (approximate dates).
  
  
• Artists will be responsible for coordinating and paying for the safe delivery of their work to the gallery on a specific date to be confirmed and for the collection soon after the exhibition closes.
  
  
• There is a hope that the majority of artists will help with stewarding at the exhibition on one day – please consider whether you will be able to do this.
  
  
• It is expected that the work will arrive ‘gallery ready’ and not need addition fixings or repairs by the curators.
  
  

APPLICATION DEADLINE: July 31st 2019