Material Strata

Material Strata is a wall-based work created from deadstock synthetic fur transformed through an experimental process of heat alteration. Once soft and recognisably textile, the material has been heated until its fibres shrink, fuse and recede, creating a dense surface of ridges, fissures and compressed layers.

The resulting forms suggest geological strata: accumulations of matter shaped, compressed and altered over time. Ochre and black surfaces evoke mineral deposits, scorched earth or peat, yet their appearance remains difficult to place with certainty. The material seems simultaneously geological, organic and manufactured. This instability of recognition is central to the work.

Synthetic fur is itself a contradictory material: petrochemical-derived fibres manufactured to imitate an animal surface. Through heat, that imitation is disrupted and the material begins instead to resemble rock, earth or geological formation. The process creates an unexpected movement from synthetic textile towards the appearance of natural matter.

Material Strata reflects my interest in the increasingly unstable boundaries between manufactured and natural environments. The work does not attempt to replicate a particular landscape or geological formation. Instead, it occupies an uncertain material territory, where textile begins to resemble terrain and a surface formed rapidly through heat evokes processes of accumulation, erosion and transformation that we associate with geological time.