Soft Rot (2024) is looking at themes of growing up, the queer body and the disconnection of humans from nature, looking at my personal life growing up in Slough. I was interested in how different it felt growing up in a landlocked town, with little to no green spaces near to me, compared to my friends and peers who grew up in and around more green areas.
Whilst Slough has its benefits such as its connections to London, growing up in a cramped industrial town which is infamous for it dull, grey, and dirty aesthetics have altered how connected I feel to the planet.In ‘Soft Rot’ I printed cyanotypes of my own body and pictures of nature in places like Iceland to place onto organic material in order to literally force myself back into nature, and acknowledging the fact that I can have my own personal connection to nature despite growing up feeling distanced from it.
Soft Rot is a type of rotting that is caused by pathogens that secrete enzymes capable of decomposing cell wall structures. It is a common destructive disease that kills plants, vegetation, and trees. The look of the disease really intrigued me as it causes an extreme deterioration in one section of the plant whilst the rest of it looks completely healthy. It had a striking similarity to how Slough trading estate looks on a satellite map.