Luke Jerram Pollenarium, a new artwork by Luke Jerram, commissioned by Creative Barking and Dagenham, has it's world premiere at Barking Riverside’s Emerge East festival this weekend. Barking Riverside, London. (Photo: David Levene)
A giant pollen grain has landed beside the Thames in East London. British artist Luke Jerram created Pollenarium, an immersive installation that invites visitors to experience Barking Riverside from an insect’s perspective.
The artwork, which premiered at Emerge East on September 12, 2026, resembles an enormous grain of pollen. Its inflated, faceted surface forms a geodesic dome. A curtained entrance leads into its 6-meter-wide interior, where more than 100 glass lenses cover the walls. Each lens acts as a camera obscura. It captures a small portion of the landscape outside and projects the image onto the inside of the dome. The images appear upside down, buildings tilt across the curved surface, plants and sky overlap. The familiar Thames-side landscape becomes something strange and otherworldly.
Jerram created Pollenarium with U.S.-based design studio Pneuhaus. The project takes his long-standing interest in scale and visual perception into the microscopic world of insects. And Barking Riverside is a prime location for his project as it has become an important habitat for pollinators, with 10 species of solitary and bumblebees living in the area. These include the nationally rare shrill carder bee and the nationally scarce pantaloon bee. The site also supports more than 40 other invertebrate species, including butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, and wasps.
Behind the playful experience sits an environmental concern. The project cites a nearly 60% decline in UK flying insect abundance over the past 20 years. Pollinators play an essential role in ecosystems and food production, making their decline a concern that reaches far beyond the insects themselves.
For Jerram, the project is ultimately about making the overlooked visible. A tiny grain of pollen becomes a building-sized environment. A familiar stretch of the Thames becomes a kaleidoscope of upside-down images.
To see more of the artist’s work, you can follow Luke Jerram on Instagram.
Luke Jerram brings a giant pollen grain to Barking Riverside in East London.
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
More than 100 lenses transform the Thames landscape into a bee’s-eye view.
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
The immersive artwork reveals why pollinators matter and what they face today.
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
Photo: David Levene
