Veneer

Veneer is a wall-based installation composed of tiny fragments of green synthetic fur, individually positioned and held directly against the wall using fine dressmaker’s pins. The fur has been lightly altered through heat, disrupting its original softness while retaining traces of its manufactured, fibrous surface.

Carefully positioned across the wall, the fragments begin to suggest forms that might belong to the natural environment: lichen, moss, cellular growth or small organisms colonising a surface. Yet this apparent organic growth is constructed from petrochemical-derived synthetic material. The work deliberately holds these contradictory readings together, allowing the material to move between the botanical, biological and manufactured.

The title Veneer refers to a surface or covering, but also to something whose outward appearance may conceal or complicate what lies beneath. Here, the gallery wall becomes a ground upon which synthetic matter appears to grow.

The work develops through the accumulation and placement of individual fragments rather than a predetermined composition. Each installation can respond to the architecture it inhabits, expanding or contracting across the wall. Through this quiet material intervention, Veneer explores how little information is required before we begin to recognise something as natural, and how easily that recognition can become uncertain.