‘Swarming Fever’ was commissioned for ‘NatureMAX’ at GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth, 2021. Curator Paul Carey-Kent writes:

“Tessa Farmer’s matter of fact description of her installation cannot disguise that it is rather extraordinary: ‘fairies, riding in weaponised skullships, flown by enslaved bees, beetles and butterflies are chasing and hunting a fleeing bird. A swarm of one hundred bumblebees spews from the main ship which is constructed from a small caiman skull, crab claws, snake ribs, mouse bones, wormshells, shed snake skin and coral.’ The fairies are sinister and sophisticated – as is consistent with their medieval origins as myth, rather than the adonised version encountered in recent times; or with the behaviour of the parasitoid wasps - studied by Farmer - which lay their eggs in the bodies of others. Perhaps they are some sort of evolutionary link between insect and human. Indeed, while the Boschian dramas mimic the enthralling malevolence of hedgerows using their own inhabitants, Farmer does see them as making a case for insects: they are often maligned and misunderstood, she says, but ‘are actually an essential part of the ecosystem, providing important pollination, pest control, and decomposition services.’  Ignorance of that ‘is perhaps symptomatic of our increasing disconnection with the natural world’. “