What the fungi?!

At Singer Instruments, we have access to a fantastic ‘palette’ of microbial strains, a well-equipped lab, and a suite of awesome robots designed for manipulating microbes on agar. We’ve also just developed a new camera — ColonyCam VOGUE, which takes stunningly detailed photos of microbial colonies.

IF ONLY WE COULD FIND AN ARTIST MAD ENOUGH TO DO SOME BIOART!

Enter Zoe Snape.

Zoe Snape is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring transience through bubbles, sea foam, and bioart to provoke emotional engagement with the climate crisis. Based at East Quay in Watchet, UK, she combines fine art, photography, and natural materials to examine control, freedom, and psychological resilience.

After an initial chat, Zoe and I found we had loads in common, and she jumped at my invitation to become Singer Instruments’ first-ever resident artist. She was trained by our science team and got to work, experimenting with her new microbial medium.

“It was a steep learning curve—I even set fire to my sleeve at one point! I contaminated the lab, triggering an emergency deep-clean, and adjusting to my new toolkit felt like painting with invisible, living paint that had a mind of its own. My first experiments looked awful, and for a while, I worried I’d never get the hang of bioart—that the whole collaboration might be a disaster.”

Many months later… not only had Zoe created a spectacular bioart portfolio, she also curated work from Johanna Rotko in Finland and Microbioworld in Brazil!

International BioArt Collaborations

Johanna Rotko

A Finnish visual artist renowned for her ‘living portraits’ or yeastograms, where she cultivates yeast on agar and exposes them to UV through photographic masks. Celebrating a decade in bioart, she has exhibited globally, embracing microbial serendipity in her work.

Microbioworld (Jefferson Brendon, Brazil)

Based at the University of Brasília, Microbioworld explores the Brazilian rainforest for beneficial microbes living inside plants. Combining stunning photography with groundbreaking research, the team seeks next-generation microbial solutions for medicine, agriculture, and beyond.

Somerset Arts Week Festival

Artwork was splashed all over the walls at Singer Instruments’ research and development facility, ‘The Lab’, and we opened our doors to visitors and schools during Somerset Arts Week Festival—an annual celebration of visual arts and craft across Somerset. The festival provided the perfect opportunity and deadline to aim for!

WOW! What a Response!

✅ Opening night attendance blew the lid off our expectations.

✅ Over 500 members of the public visited.

✅ Over 200 students attended through school visits and the Home Education Network.

✅ Zoe also sold a ton of artwork! (Which you can still buy at zoesnape.com).

Glowing Feedback

“Absolutely fascinating. Amazing artwork!”, “I never thought fungi could be so beautiful!”, “So interesting—loved the hands-on activities, the colours, the learning—everything!”, “Pushed the boundaries into the possible & impossible!”

The Impact

In truth, hosting a bioart exhibition was way more work than I could have ever expected, but the feedback made it all worthwhile. On top of this, we formed fantastic new relationships, and the impact has been profound:

🎯 The most powerful thing we’ve done to promote STEM.

🎯 The most powerful thing we’ve done to showcase biology as a tool to tackle the climate crisis.

🎯 The most effective thing we’ve done to promote Singer Instruments as a cool place to work.

🎯 An amazing way to showcase and promote our new high-resolution imager  – ColonyCam VOGUE!

And now, thanks to Zoe, our walls at The Lab are permanently covered in bioart, surrounding us with colourful biology as a daily inspiration—a reminder of the importance of biological research and its real-world impact.

Acknowledgments

🙏 Zoe Snape – It’s been a blast! What’s next?!

🙏 Johanna Rotko – Your living microbial portraits are absolutely fantastic!

🙏 Microbioworld, Brazil – Your rainforest fungi are spectacular!

🙏 Our internal team – Special thanks to Fiona Kemm for your biological wizardry, and Sally Parish for fantastic coordination.

🙏 Somerset Art Works – Thanks for believing in us!

🙏 Arts Council England – Thanks for the funding!