This summer fairies are taking over the Museum! Tessa Farmer’s remarkable fairy sculptures are less than 1 cm tall and are painstakingly hand-crafted from desiccated insect remains and dried plant roots.

However, these are not the pretty fairies of children’s books. They are sinister skeletal creatures that wage mischievous war on a minuscule scale.

Tessa Farmer’s sculptures will be subtly displayed within the Museum’s permanent collections. To spot them, you will have to look very carefully, as their meticulously intricate detail is visible only through a magnifying glass. You might find them sitting on a miniature bronze sculpture, a sixteenth-century spoon or flying between the vases.

Tessa Farmer’s work has appeared in many exhibitions, including the recent Odyssey at Bath Abbey and Victoriana at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery. In 2007 she undertook a residency at the Natural History Museum in London. Her work is in collections worldwide, including those of the Saatchi Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum and the David Roberts Collection.

All Photographs © Evoke Pictures