SAMMY HAWKER

Conversations with bees

Goulburn Regional Art Gallery | 22 nov. 2024 — 1 feb. 2025

This exhibition was nominated in the exhibitions category of the 2025 IMAGinE Awards - presented annually by Museums & Galleries of NSW (MGNSW). 

Exhibition Install:

video script:

[heartbeat] 

You can now listen to your saved messages or to return to the main menu press star twice.
Received on Tuesday December 12th at 6.18pm.

[beep]

"Hi Sammy, it's Dad. I was at bridge today and one of the bridge players had a story about bees leaving the hive after the guy died...he used to look after two beehives and they both left the day after he died. Anyway, just thought you'd like to know. See ya, bye."

Conversations with bees

The practice of telling the bees is a European tradition in which bees are told of deaths and departures. If the bees are not 'put into mourning' it is believed the bees might leave the hive and follow the deceased into the afterlife. It is understood the practice has its origins in Celtic mythology where bees were regarded as messengers between the material world and the spirit realm; a portal connecting the living and the dead.

Over the past years, I have been delivering photographic negatives to two hives of honeybees cared for by my friend Oli. These photographs are from around the shifting shorelines of Ngungara/Weereewa/Lake George - an endorheic lake that lives between me and the bees. The imagery of the lake bears witness to ecologically disturbed sites - caused by both phenological shifts in a changing climate and the ongoing effects of colonisation.

Delivering these photographs to the hive is to "tell' the bees of the mass disappearance of more-than human lives in the roar of the Anthropocene.

Ngungara/Weereewa/Lake George. A mercurial lake, 5 million years old, periodically filling and then emptying with water. A few years ago I spent a day at the lake with my friend, Ngunawal Custodian Tyronne Bell.

He told me how Ngungara is a significant site for the Ngunawal/Ngunnawal people as it is where the creator serpent Budjabulya lives. Visiting Ngungara with Tyronne that afternoon, the energy was palpable. I felt how the fabric of Country resonates with the presence of his ancestors and culture.

Since it was colonised in 1820, the lake has been the site of many atrocities. This includes massacres, intentional poisoning of water-birds, drownings and the deterioration of ecologies. The shorelines are now dominated by introduced species. Scotch thistle and European blackberry strangle the fence lines that disappear into the water.

On this continent, blackberry and thistle are considered noxious weeds. However in Europe they maintain a rich cultural significance. I find a four-leaf clover and wonder if it still carries the promise of good fortune when found growing somewhere it is considered a weed.

Honeybees are also an introduced species. They were first brought here by European colonisers in 1822, aboard a ship named Isabella, two years after Ngungara/Weereewa was renamed after King George III by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. While honeybees are considered an important pollinator, they outcompete native fauna for floral resources and displace endemic wildlife from tree hollows. The impact of colonisation remains entangled within both our landscapes and our thinking.

Similar to the wording around the act of photography, colonial and capitalist language dominates the rhetoric around bees - we take, shoot and capture photographs - the colony of bees are described as busy and monarchical.  Ongoing scientific research into the sentience of the more-than human world challenges a human-centric worldview. Recent studies (Chittka, 2024 & Buchmann, 2023) have shown bees as self-aware, having complex feelings, and the ability to plan and imagine. Ang Roell, beekeeper and founder of They Keep Bees, invites us to think about how we might understand beehives beyond an extractive, anthropocentric gaze. Roell believes humans can learn from the ritualised, seasonal, collective work of a beehive and the reciprocal communication between bees and the plants that they tend to.

Understanding our position within a conscious world encourages a practice of deep listening to the plants, insects and animals that live around us. Bees communicate through vibration, movement and pheromones. When communicating with bees, Roell encourages us to listen with all of our senses. For me, the ritual of telling the bees has been a practice in communicating and grieving the losses of a changed and changing landscape.

Active grieving creates space to accept that which we cannot change and to consider how we respond to that which we can.

Process Imagery:

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