Cheryl Nelson Costumes

For some strange reason that I can no longer remember, although it was probably connected to my exploration of the macro world (memo to self: keep better notes)I decided to buy some petri dishes and experiment with growing mould. I used a cotton bud to collect samples from places such as the floor and sink, while other dishes were simply left open for a day before being sealed and placed in a dark and dry drawer to see what would grow.

What I found fascinated me. These tiny colonies of mould began to look like miniature galaxies, each one developing its own colours, textures and patterns. I had never really considered how much microscopic life exists around us, much of it simply suspended in the air we breathe or living unnoticed on everyday surfaces. Seeing it develop in front of me made this invisible world suddenly very real.

Some of the colonies were delicate and almost perfectly contained within small circles, while others became large, fuzzy growths that seemed determined to take over the entire dish. I found myself becoming increasingly interested in the differences between them and in how something I would normally find unpleasant could become visually beautiful when viewed differently.

I could not identify the different types of mould simply by looking at them, as this would require further testing. In a way, however, that did not matter. What interested me was the unexpected variety I had discovered within such a small experiment.

It felt like discovering an entirely new world that had been there all along but that I had never noticed. It was fascinating, beautiful and, at the same time, slightly unsettling to realise that this hidden world surrounds us every day, largely invisible to the naked eye.