Ten Thousand Mayflies. How Do You Cherish Time?

- Written by Miranda Nicholson, 12 May 2025

“If you only had one day, what would you do with it?” 

That’s the question artist Katarina Prior wants you to consider as you walk into Mayflies: Swarm - her largest installation yet, featuring 10,000 hand-cut mayflies and a collective call to cherish your time.

No stranger to derelict spaces, Kat discovered the Barnton Bunker when researching venues in Edinburgh. She’s previously exhibited in an elevator, a paper mill, a library, a church, and Rheged - a petrol station that’s also a tourist centre, exhibition space, and play area. So, naturally, the bunker fit the bill. 

“I love rough places”, she said. “Not dangerous, just... where you can see the marks of history. From the gate, it feels humble - but then you hit that tunnel and suddenly it’s like: okay, it is a bunker. The temperature drops, the smell changes. You know you’re walking into a different world”.

Kat’s late mother and gran were huge inspirations. “Art's just been there since forever. I grew up in a creative family. I was really lucky”. As a kid, she wanted to be a vet - until she realised it wasn’t all cuddles. “It was surgery,” she said, “and I didn’t want to do that”. Instead, she brings the natural world into her art. “If I had to choose, I could live without art - but not without nature”.

Kat describes her own attention span as quite short, and when she goes to exhibitions she struggles to give each 2D piece the concentration and attention it deserves. “We went to an art show [in university,] that was just… a room. I was like, ‘Wait, this is art? Yes please!’” She finds immersive works more accessible. “When I go into an installation, I don’t have to concentrate - all of my senses are already on fire”. That’s what she wants for this show: something overwhelming but safe, vast but intimate. “There’s something emotional about repetition. You can’t look at thousands of the same thing and not feel something”.

Kat made her first Mayflies in 2011, as a final-year art student. “I was miserable, trying to think of a project,” she recalled. “Then I remembered how much I love nature - and suddenly, Mayflies came to mind”. Kat described always being fascinated by mayflies “They live a long time underwater - but when they become a mayfly, some only live for a day, an hour, maybe a couple of weeks. They’re so connected to the idea of cherishing time”.

This will be Kat’s largest installation to date - twice as big as anything she’s done before. Her previous record? Around 5,000. “This is one of the only pieces I’ve ever made that I’m 100% confident in,” she said. “Even if someone hates it, they’ll see the hours. I respect that”.

She hand-cut 2,000 of them for that first show (yes, by hand). “People always ask why I don’t laser-cut them. But that would defeat the point. Cherishing time is what this work is about”. Kat says one of the greatest challenges is the repetitive strain, and seeing it in action - there is a lot that goes into making just one Mayfly. The folding, drawing, cutting. And then there’s the installation - which is massively physical, “I’m older now. It's been ten years [since the last installation of Mayflies]”. Kat has been making Mayflies since 2016 and said (semi-confidently), “I think I can do 500 in three/four hours”. 

She’s no stranger to overwhelming work. One of her earlier (bittersweet) pieces involved 1,023 tiny plaster pigs, squeezed together to suggest a factory farm. Each pig was hand-cast, slightly deformed, and physically exhausting to make. “They were crammed, broken,” she said. “It was about making people think - what are you eating?”.

1,023 tiny plaster pigs

This time around, the off-cuts and leftover Mayflies will be repurposed for her community sessions. Think making sheets of paper and painting them, paper clay for some sculpture, or paper lace - there is really no end to what we’ll be able to create and it has to be paper because of that renewable aspect. 

Her community work at  WHALE Arts, blends both nature, psychology and people. “I love psychology,” she said. “I realised I could explore it through art. Community art is basically art therapy, just without the expensive degree”.

Alongside the Mayfly exhibition, there is a chance for visitors to sit and reflect on how they want to cherish their time. This “advice” will then be made into a book. ”Obviously cherishing your time I think, always links with grief because often you cherish your time because it's short. You cherish your time because you don't have a lot of time with somebody or with something, and so having to think now about those tiny little things that you'll really miss or you know those things you love and you don't have time for... having to think about that”. 

Kat’s advice to anyone who’s creatively blocked or afraid to start making art? “Make mess”.  “I think the idea of a blank sketchbook is really stressful. What you can do is tear it, roll it into a ball, flatten it out, scribble on it - whatever. Throw it in the bin if you want. Just have a play. Use those materials that you've put in the cupboard for ages and are too scared to get out because they were a little bit expensive and a bit precious. I think art is for everybody, and everyone can enjoy it”.

Kat has set aside a week for the installation process alone - this will be the first installation at height and she’s going to need a hand. You can volunteer to get involved here!

Curious? Come to the private viewing on Friday 6 June by registering here. The exhibition will remain in the bunker until the 15th of June, and bookings are required (so we can show you around the bunker and you can chat with Kat herself)!

- Images by Ludwing Perez, Rob Lockwood and Stephen Prior.