REVEALED | First glimpse at 'dancing bees' for giant new town clock

Displayed on 1.8 metre LED screens outside Orange Civic Theatre, the $176,000 public art installation will combine footage of dancers wearing bee-themed costumes with high-definition images of real dead critters.

"I'm reimagining a town hall clock ... it's going to be a clock with a difference," Wollongong-based artist Zanny Begg said when the project was announced in August this year.

"It will keep perfect time, but obviously reading it is not going to be like 'Oh, that's two o'clock'. It'd be like, 'oh, that's Blue Banded Bee o'clock' ... it will be a little bit of a puzzle."

Photos and video compiled by the Central Western Daily from across the web this week revealed filming took place at the Orange Civic Theatre in mid-November.

They show abstract performances by a sizable group of men, women, and newborn babies. All are wearing costumes loosely inspired by the aesthetic of bees.

Ms Begg was contacted for comment on progress and if installation is still on track for 2024. This story will be updated with her response.

Total costs for the project as approved are estimated at $176,000. The majority comes via external grants, with Orange City Council contributing $23,000.

The artist has previously said live broadcasting bees onto the clock may be considered in the future.

"There's not going to be another artwork like it anywhere in the world," Bradley Hammond - director of Orange Regional Gallery, which is collaborating on the project - told the CWD in August.

"I think we've been really fortunate to have really high quality artists engaging with our city or our natural environments and offering us things to think about.

"We're seeing a different way of approaching a public art project ... with challenging, interesting new ideas that ask us to think differently about civic spaces and our natural world as well.

"All of them are dealing with the public space, whether it's ... rivers which used to flow into the city and the original pathway of rivers, or getting us to think differently about the structure of a building.

"I think it's also worth pointing out that we're working with a lot of women artists to know the history of public arts and most of much of the world and particularly in Australia and Europe, has always been male artists only."

An earlier version of this article should have credited Kyle Manning/Little Image Co for the images shared on social media by Zanny Begg and Alexi Freeman. We apologise for this omission.