Uncertain Flora

Uncertain Flora brings together small fragments of heat-altered synthetic fur with a London Plane tree seed ball and its dispersed seeds. Presented together within a vitrine, the manufactured and botanical materials begin to share an unexpected visual language, making their different origins momentarily difficult to distinguish.

The work developed through experimentation with deadstock synthetic fur and the changes that occur when its surface is exposed to heat. Fibres shrink, fuse and disappear, producing small irregular forms that no longer readily resemble the material from which they originated. Instead, they begin to suggest seed husks, fragments of vegetation or other forms of organic matter.

Placing these transformed fragments alongside actual botanical material heightens this ambiguity. The synthetic fur, itself a petrochemical-derived material manufactured to imitate an animal surface, moves through another transformation: from an imitation of nature towards something that appears botanical.

The vitrine encourages close looking, presenting the materials with the attention associated with specimens or collected evidence. Yet rather than providing certainty, examination complicates identification. Uncertain Flora explores this slippage between the natural and manufactured, asking what happens when synthetic and organic matter begin to resemble one another, and the boundaries between one form of matter and another become increasingly uncertain.