I’ve been working on a new multidisciplinary artwork project, ‘Bindweed’, inspired by the Phytocrip Manifesto (a term coined by Dr. Emily May Armstrong exploring intersections between plant science, disability justice, and contemporary art).
Inspired by this movement, I am creating work about the much-maligned bindweed swallowing the end of my garden during recent climate-disrupted heatwaves. I began this body of work with a poem written in the context of having a life overseen by Adult Social Services:
Bindweed, 2026, Genevieve Rudd:
Bindweed tendrils reinforce my legs. When The Panel won’t fund my orthotics. I overgrow their stifled bureaucracy. My gait drips sap as I shuffle on the stagnant office nylon; the Convolvulus won’t touch convulsions as the anti-epileptics are ring-fenced by another pot.
Regarding the photos: The foot cast was made by nurses at Addenbrookes neurosurgery ward as a resting splint for my paralysed foot. It was a surreal experience, creating a duplication of my lower limb while I lay in bed.
It has been truly an act of crip time (navigating fatigue, mobility, and seasonal capacity) to get this cast to the bottom of the garden to photograph it among the bindweed. It’s a phytocrip-style imagining of a future of interdependence through accessible environmentalism—utilising our botanical abundance of ‘weeds’ for disabled adaptation and DIY bio-engineered methods. I’m inspired by reclaiming our realities from medical institutions and embracing the abundant resources we share in our communities.
