Free Display
Materials and Objects
Discover artists from Tate's collection who have embraced new and unusual materials and methods
© Meschac Gaba / Photo © Tate (Jai Monaghan)
The Materials and Objects display looks at the inventive ways in which artists around the world use diverse materials.
Increasingly over the last hundred years, artists have challenged the idea that certain materials are unsuitable for art. Some employ industrial materials and methods, while others adapt craft skills, or put the throwaway products of consumer society to new uses.
9 rooms in Materials and Objects
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917, replica 1964
Fountain is Duchamp’s most famous work. It is an example of what he called a ‘ready-made’ sculpture. These were made from ordinary manufactured objects. He then presented them as artworks. This invites us to question what makes an object ‘art’? Is this urinal ‘art’ because it is being presented in a gallery? The original 1917 version of this work has been lost. This is one of a small number of copies that Duchamp allowed to be made in 1964. Do you think it makes a difference that it is not Duchamp’s original urinal?
Gallery label, July 2020
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Enrico Baj, Fire! Fire! 1963–4
Baj’s works were influenced by the absurd humour and unconventional techniques of surrealism and dada. He was also associated with CoBrA, a group of European artists who adopted a highly expressionist painting style inspired by children’s art. In the mid-1950s Baj started painting caricatured figures on found fabrics, adding details made from collaged objects. In Fire! Fire! pieces of Meccano construction toys form a figure, while the leaves on the woven fabric are suggestive of flames. Other works of this period poke fun at ideas of power and authority, such as Baj’s portraits of military officers ‘decorated’ with real medals.
Gallery label, November 2021
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Leonor Antunes, discrepancies with T.P. (II) – random intersections #29 – Lena #8.1 2012–23
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Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood 2012–20
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Robert Gober, Untitled 1989–92
This is one of about ten leg sculptures Gober made in a two-year period. They were inspired by two formative experiences – a story his mother, who had been a nurse, told young Gober about being handed an amputated leg in the operating theatre. The second was as an adult, seeing a sliver of bare skin exposed by a fellow passenger crossing their legs on a flight. The artist said of his making process: ‘The hair on the leg is human and purchased from a wig supplier. The leg is a bleached beeswax cast of my lower leg. The hairs are implanted into the warmed-up beeswax, one by one, with a tool we crafted through trial and error in the studio.
Gallery label, August 2024
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David Hammons, Untitled from Flight Fantasy series 1995
An earlier iteration of this piece was made for A Gathering of the Tribes – a New York salon, gallery and performance space based in the East Village tenement home belonging to Hammons’ friend, the poet Steve Cannon (1935–2019). In the late 1990s and early 2000s the success of the East Village arts scene led to rising property prices and the gentrification of the neighbourhood. In 2014, Cannon was forced to leave his building. As a result, the wall on which the original artwork was created became subject to a planning dispute, prompting a debate about cultural heritage, value and what constitutes an artwork.
Gallery label, August 2024
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Highlights
Marcel Duchamp
Fountain
1917, replica 1964
Enrico Baj
Fire! Fire!
1963–4
Leonor Antunes
discrepancies with T.P. (II) – random intersections #29 – Lena #8.1
2012–23
Nalini Malani
In Search of Vanished Blood
2012–20
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