Love Bugs at Sheffield
Garden Prints, John Dilnot (photo: John Dilnot)
This year Museums Sheffield launches Love Bugs, a new programme of events and exhibitions celebrating both innovation and – more surprisingly - the lowly bug. First up is The Bug Bazaar at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery (until 26 April).
Pairing insects and innovation gives the curators a chance to present a weird and wonderful Noah’s Ark of bugs showing how these often despised creatures have in fact been a source of inspiration for artists over the centuries. The exhibition is a light-hearted homage to this inspirational power of the creepy-crawly, taking in craft, design, fashion and film on the way. It features a huge range of objects from John Dilnot’s colourful insect prints and Micromagic System’s Hexapod robots (which recently starred in the Harry Potter films) to Stephen Webster’s glitzy gold and sapphire bug jewellery and Georgina Griffiths yellow and black glass take on a wasp. There’s also good selection of work by contemporary artists – look out for work by Mark Wallinger and Cornelia Parker, part of the Byam Shaw School of Art’s Bugs Portfolio project – as well as some historical items such as a pair of Turkish slippers embroidered with metal thread and shiny beetle wings.
The bug theme continues with the Big Bug Show (opening on 7 March) at Museums Sheffield’s Weston Park, which will feature some of the animals depicted in Bug Bazaar in the flesh courtesy of the museum’s natural history collections.
www.museums-sheffield.org.uk
