A pair of renowned body painters created microbe-themed designs on husband and wife models to mark the Eden Project’s major new Invisible Worlds exhibition.

Wolf Reicherter and Jenny Marquis spent eight painstaking hours painting the intricate designs on the bodies of Emily and Neil Ellis. 

The couple then displayed the amazing head-to-toe art work in the outdoor gardens at Eden.

The Core is the base for the permanent exhibition Invisible Worlds, opening on May 25. It will reveal the world beyond our senses: too big, too small, too fast, too slow and too far away in space and time.

A timelapse video of the painting process is available at  https://youtu.be/KhC4v7UY50o .

The centrepiece of the Invisible Worlds exhibition will be a towering 8.5m-tall ceramic sculpture of cyanobacteria, one of the first organisms to create oxygen, which will be unveiled in the Core. It is now nearing completion.

Invisible Worlds opens on May 25 for a week of half-term activities, including an opera starring singing mushrooms and a roaming band of human fruit flies.