A bee’s-eye view: art installation beside the Thames celebrates crucial pollinators

From the outside, it looks a little like something out of the Teletubbies.

In fact, the new installation by the Bristol artist Luke Jerram represents a grain of pollen, and the inside is an insect’s eye.

Jerram wants the Pollenarium, which appeared on the banks of the Thames in east London this week, to entertain but also draw attention to the alarming rate pollinators are vanishing from the world.

“I hope it will make people think about how we need to protect pollinators,” Jerram said. “There has been a massive drop in insect numbers. Flying insects in the UK have declined by 60% in 20 years, which is mad.”

He said he was concerned that UK farmers still used some neonicotinoid pesticides. “A minuscule trace can disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate and reproduce, with long-lasting consequences for their survival.”

Best known for touring large scale sculptures of the moon, the sun and Earth, for this new piece Jerram scaled up a microscopic grain of pollen to the size of a small building. It is made of brightly coloured nylon inflated into a 6m metre high dome.

“When we had a test inflation in the car park at Paintworks [where his Bristol studio is based], people streamed out of offices to see what was going on,” Jerram said.

Inside the structure, there are more than 100 lenses, each acting as a camera obscura to create a “mosaic” of the world outside. The idea is to give an idea of how an insect might perceive the world through a compound eye. “I’ve created Pollenarium to be a bit like going inside a bee’s head,” he said.

Pollenarium, which was commissioned by Creative Barking and Dagenham, can be seen on Saturday at the Emerge East festival at Barking Riverside. It is free to visit from 11am.

It will be making an appearance at the University of Bristol after its east London debut, before embarking ona tour of the UK, accompanied by a programme of activities and workshops.