The Motheaten Hierarchicies is where I tried to examine how humankind places value judgements on both humans and wildlife.
It posed the question “are there really heroes and villains – who or what has the highest value or worth?”
It grew out of conversations I was having during the FIFTY BEES exhibitions about insects which went something like “bees are good. Wasps and flies are bad”. An oversimplification you might think but these were real conversations.
What makes a good moth? One that is pretty and doesn’t eat bits of my garden.
What makes a good fly? A dead one.
But without bluebottles, we would be up to our eyeballs in dead matter.
And my thinking was, in this time of species extinction, major concerns about the massive decline of invertebrates, I wanted to celebrate insects, especially those which we might struggle to appreciate. Because if we don’t recognize and celebrate them, we’ll lose them, and WE NEED THEM!