Genesis II

Genesis II is my most recent “miniature” sculpture, completed to feature in the BSU Graduate Degree Show (2025). This work exists as an exploration of worldbuilding, delving into a fabricated future in which Man’s atrocities to the natural world have resulted in the biodiversity mutating with symbiotic species, creating wild hybridised variants of carnivorous plants and poisonous fungus - ultimately resulting in a new aeon, the age of Genesis.

The title “Genesis II” is a playful hint to one my childhood favourite movies, Little Shop of Horrors, whilst also alluding to the idea of a second creation, the origin of the new world in which this botanical abomination exists.

My aim for this work is to create an immersive environment, through the use of soundscapes and projections, with the sculpture situated on a rotating plinth alluding to it being animated and alive. This also allows all sides of the work to be seen, as it has been constructed in a fully three-dimensional and almost fractal pattern, similar to the construction of real plant species and their repetitive base genome.

The plinth is also intended to be decorative and somewhat sculptural in itself, taking on the form of a colossal tower of plastic refuse, almost appearing like a rocky pinnacle from which the sculpture has erupted - and acting as a visual metaphor for our pollution of these plants’ real world environments. The plants in question are all victims of poaching and major habitat loss, due to both the exotic plant trade and environmental changes as a result of our increasing emissions and global pollution.

My aim with this project was to use as many spare/waste materials as I could find, using scraps of tin foil as my armature and left over polymer clay from previous projects, which left unused would only further contribute to plastic pollutants; similarly I have used a number of waste acrylic paints and even a UV setting nail gel acting as a glaze over various elements of the sculpture, closely resembling my real world muse - but only furthering the detachment between the material and that of the subject. The work in itself existing as a monument and a warning to the impacts of our ever evolving relationship with nature.