Neither Natural

Neither Natural is a solo exhibition by Claire Barber, with sound by Monty Adkins, presented at the Ground Floor Gallery of The Hub, Sleaford. The exhibition comprises a series of installation works that explore the quiet entanglement of natural and synthetic materials through the use of shoelaces, grasses, stone, pins, and sound.

Factory-second shoelaces, composed of petrochemical fibres, are melted and fused onto heather, chalk, and Yorkshire gritstone. Through the application of heat, these everyday materials collapse into dense, root-like formations that appear organic while retaining traces of their synthetic origins. The works evoke emergent “fourth nature” environments, in which industrial materials permeate soil, plant life, and geological matter, destabilising distinctions between the natural and the manufactured.

Grasses and heather, bound together with melted shoelaces, suggest the pervasive yet often invisible presence of microplastics within living systems. Pins hold these delicate structures in tension, their reflective surfaces resembling spores or signals—markers of fragility, care, and vulnerability.

Sound, composed by Monty Adkins in close dialogue with the installations, is experienced through headphones as an intimate extension of the work rather than a discrete accompaniment. Functioning as both texture and temporal field, it shapes visitors’ perception of scale, rhythm, and duration.

Collectively, the installations invite slow, contemplative modes of looking and listening. The exhibition creates a space in which endurance and damage, wonder and unease, coexist within landscapes increasingly marked by synthetic traces.