Red's Kingdom

Drosera (2026)

As a kid, I was fascinated by carnivorous plants, so whenever I think ‘puppets’, I think about Audrey II—the all-singing venus-fly trap from Little Shop of Horrors. For this much more diminutive prompt, I looked instead at Drosera—or sundews—those no-less otherworldly plants characterised by their filaments and sticky beads. I set about creating a five-fingered…

philgomm

February 25, 2026

1–2 minutes

artist, botany, carnivorous plants, Drosera (2026), Finger Puppet, Horticulture, knitting, Photography, puppets, Short Film, The Kick About, The Kick-About, video

As a kid, I was fascinated by carnivorous plants, so whenever I think ‘puppets’, I think about Audrey II—the all-singing venus-fly trap from Little Shop of Horrors. For this much more diminutive prompt, I looked instead at Drosera—or sundews—those no-less otherworldly plants characterised by their filaments and sticky beads.

I set about creating a five-fingered colony of sundews (cue some inexpert French knitting and some raised eyebrows as I made five phallic-looking ‘sleeves’ with polysterene balls shoved into one end). I finished them off with some wire tendrils and teeny red beads, and then, to bring them to life, I made a short film to see them in action.

I was further inspired by those time-lapse sequences you see of seeds germinating etc, which always have a slightly unsettling ‘agitation’ about them, so, to achieve that, I converted all the video footage from 25 frames per second to 12 frames—which created that glitchier feel.