ARTIST STATEMENT
No matter how hard I try to stop it, it always melts. The sweet pastels would mix, turning brown. It’s ugly. Sitting by the poolside on my own birthday, eagerly waiting for the ice-cream cake to be brought out; the highlight of my day. These memories rot in time, the same way the sugar did to my teeth. Nostalgia is romanticised to hide its bitterness that is hidden in the centre of the cake, only revealed after melting. These photographs may seem beautiful and intricate, but not as beautiful as the cake once was.
ARTWORK PROCESS
I developed this piece by creating a fake birthday cake out of coloured slimes, adapting a recipe from one I found online: PVA glue, borax solution, shaving cream and soft clay. This experimental recipe added a sense of personalisation, to make the slime the way I imagined - vibrant colours and light and flexible, whilst being firm enough to hold shape. I invited my friends to pull apart and ‘ruin’ the cake, allowing them to enjoy the textural qualities whilst simultaneously destroying it. Then, I photographed the results, and used Photoshop to enhance the compelling yet grotesque textures.
