Flight of the Bumblebees

Materials: Bleached beeswax, paraffin wax, paper, black enamelled insect pins

Flight of the Bumblebees takes its title from Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral composition and was developed for Platform at the London Art Fair 2022, curated by Candida Stevens. The title emerged from the dense sound of pollinators moving through blossom trees in the artist’s local park, connecting the visual abundance of spring blossom with the knowledge of the gradual loss of pollinators and the ecosystems they sustain.

The series introduced a more translucent and atmospheric material language into Townsend’s practice, extending her ongoing exploration of botanical forms and material transformation. Blossoms commonly found within the artist’s local environment were reconstructed using translucent wax, melted and fused into wax-soaked paper surfaces, suspended away from their mounts using entomology pins.

Rendered entirely in white, the flowers appear ghostlike and partially dissolved, emerging from and sinking back into the waxed surface. Their translucency reflects both the fragility of pollinator ecosystems and the instability of the natural systems upon which they depend. The works marked the beginning of an ongoing exploration of wax as a material capable of preservation and change, obscuring and disappearing simultaneously.