MANCHESTER.- ‘If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.’ Responding to these unsettling words attributed to Albert Einstein, the latest exhibition at Manchester Museum (part of the University of Manchester) After the Bees, presents a series of artworks exploring a poignant narrative of loss.

Artist, photographer and filmmaker Megan Powell creates a unique form of storytelling that speaks of the beauty and appeal of Manchester’s beloved emblem, the bee, and the haunting consequences of an imagined world bereft of pollinators. Photographing and filming urban honeybee hives across Manchester, After the Bees draws upon the coupled histories of beekeeping and photography. Through interviews with academics, ecologists and specialists, the artworks delve into and dissect the language of the hive.

The exhibition features highly detailed, magnified images of specimens from the artist’s collection, captured using electron microscopes at The University of Manchester’s School of Materials. Close-up shots of taxidermy birds from Manchester Museum’s collections suggest the repercussions of environmental change across species.

After the Bees coincides with the museum's current temporary exhibition Extinction or Survival, and explores related themes around the impact of humans on the natural environment.

Megan Powell is a photographer and filmmaker who received her MA from the Royal College of Art. For her eye for seeing the unseen, she was honoured with a residency at Winterbourne House and Gardens, where she completed a 2014 project (photography and film) on the individual bee’s relation to the hive entitled Bee. In 2015, Powell received an Arts Council Grant for a large-scale eighteenth-month project entitled After the Bees. Informed by beekeepers, ecologists and sustainability experts,

After the Bees is an affecting story of bees told through film, photography, writing and collage. The work will be shown in its entirety during 2016-17 at Manchester Museum.