Art Competition

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The plight of the honey bee

We are running a competition to encourage current final year art students and recently graduated artists to be inspired by THE PLIGHT OF THE HONEY BEE to create interesting and challenging pieces of art this summer. The McCarrison Society – Scottish Group is running this competition to illustrate the links between the environment about us and the quality of the food we are growing and eating.

We have decided to award cash prizes for works of art (installation / murals /sculpture / performance / land art) on the above theme to current final year students and recently graduated Scottish Art Students (graduates from May 2007 - June 2010).

First prize is £250 and there are 3 prizes of £100. We will also provide up to £1,000 for installation costs towards the selected artist creating their winning proposal in situ in Dundee Botanic Garden.

The entries will be judged by David Faithfull, Edinburgh based lecturer at Dundee College of Art, Joe McIntyre, former lecturer at Dundee College of Art and Anne Bevan, lecturer in Sculpture Edinburgh College of Art.

Proposals should be on unmounted sheets no bigger than A3 size. These could be original drawings, sketches or thumbnail visualisations in any medium including photography, photocopies and digital outputs including text or instructions when and if appropriate. These could be tiled up to make a much larger presentation or sent as a series of individual sheets. They should be posted or delivered in tube or non bendable package to:

Laura Simpson, Assistant Curator
Exhibition Department, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HT
Tel. 01382 3853309
www.exhibitions.dundee.ac.uk

Entrants are responsible for insuring their entries to the competition.

Prizes winning entries and other commended entries will be exhibited at Dundee College of Art. It is our intention to have permanent installations at Dundee Botanic Gardens and other garden sites which will be announced on the website over the summer.

All submissions can be collected in person from Duncan of Jordanstone College after the proposed exhibition of the selected entries at a date to be confirmed in the autumn.

The copyright of all entries and the final remains with the artist. However, the McCarrison Society - Scottish Group, the University of Dundee and the Dundee Botanic Garden reserve the right to reproduce any entry or the final installation for promotional purposes.

The McCarrison Society - Scottish Group reserves the right to withhold prizes in the event of the level and quality of entries not reaching a suitable standard. All submitted entries must be the bona fide creation of the submitting artist.

Winning submissions and work selected for exhibition will be announced on www.foodforhealthscotland.org website in October.

The deadline for for entries is 30.09.2010

Why the Honeybee?

Apart from the fact that we enjoy the honey that these bees produce, we depend on bees (honeybees and bumblebees) to pollinate 80% of our plants. The other 20% is pollinated by the wind. Worldwide there are severe problems affecting the bees. In recent years there have been dramatic losses of up to 50% of hives each winter. In the USA this has been called CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder).

An excellent book called “A World Without Bees - The Mysterious Decline of the Honeybee and What It Means for Us” has recently been written by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum. This book has been well researched from data worldwide and it examines the threats to their survival. There is no proof of a single cause for this dramatic decline, but there are several theories which are examined in detail in this book.

The main suspects are the Varroa mite and it's inadequate eradication treatment, pesticides (in particular neonicotinoids), GM crops and stress factors involved with the trucking of bees over vast distances (in the USA to service 60 million almond trees in california for 3 weeks each spring). Can you imagine doing without all the crops that are pollinated by bees? The list includes apples, almonds, cotton, citrus, soya beans, onions, broccoli, carrots and other foods. The thought of hand pollinating all these crops is mind blowing, although this has already occurred in some fruit crop growing areas in parts of China.

The analogy of comparing the honeybee to the canary in the coal mine giving notice of imminent danger to the environment is very relevant. It could be argued that, just as the death of vulnerable canaries gave early warning to miners of poisonous gasses underground, the widespread demise of bees should be alerting mankind to something seriously wrong in our ecosystem.

What can we do?

What can we do to alter this? Recent research shows that fewer wild plants being available to bees has a weakening effect on their immune systems, so by encouraging more wild flowers in hedgerows and gardens we can help.

This is in fact, one of “10 Things You Can Do To Help Bees”. (available on www.friendsofthebees.com)

Other sources of information

“The Barefoot Beekeeper” by Philip Chandler (available on www.biobees.com)
“The Complete Book to Beekeeping” by Jeremy Evans
“Guide to Bees and Honey” by Ted Hooper
“Practical Beekeeping” by Clive de Bruyn
“The Strange Case of the Vanishing Bees” by Peter Huck (The Guardian June 27th 2007)
“Our Bee Brethren” by Philip Chandler (Resurgence Magazine March/April 2010)

Organisations

Scottish Beekeepers Association (www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk)
British Beekeepers Association (www.britishbee.org.uk)
Welsh Beekepers Association (www.wbka.com)
National Bee Unit (beebase)
CSL National Bee Laboratory (York) (www.defra.gov.uk/fera)
According to the website, CSL became part of Fera in April 2009
International Bee Research Association (Cardiff) (www.ibra.org.uk)

Enquiries: telephone 01241 872614 or email