In Trace of Time you will find artworks which explore ideas about memory and histories. All the works use interesting and evocative materials, which help to encourage visitors to think about their own associations with these themes. This room is huge and displays work by four different artists: Miroslaw Balka, Anselm Kiefer, Giuseppe Penone and Rachel Whiteread. All these artists are alive today.

The room is great to work in because the works are big and dramatic, use interesting materials and there’s plenty of space for the group to move around and discuss. We have used this room with a wide range of groups who are comfortable using language and reflecting on ideas. It works particularly well if members of the group are also involved in making their own artworks.

Materials and Handling Objects Activity

In this activity the group makes their own associations between handling materials and the artworks on display. You will need a box of handling materials which you bring with you to the gallery.

In previous workshops we have used a range of handling objects and materials that make links with the artworks through colour, texture or metaphor. We suggest you visit the gallery before you bring your group to see if you have your own ideas about which objects to use. You may have interesting materials at your workplace or objects you have gathered from second-hand shops or markets, or from trips to the sea or countryside.

Activity:

• Ask people to work in pairs or groups of three or four.
• Give each group a different type of handling object to hold

Here are some examples of objects we use. They are full of suggestions and links to the artworks without literally copying the materials the artists have used:

• Ask everyone not to look at the text panel or labels on the wall until they have all done this activity so that they really explore their own ideas about materials, not other people’s ideas in the wall text!
• Give the groups about five minutes to explore the room, each member of the group getting the chance to hold the handling object, and share ideas together, making notes or drawing if they want to. The aim of the activity is to use the handling resources to make a link with one or more of the artworks in the room. Notes or drawings need to show these links for the discussion part of this activity.
• Finish by meeting up as a large group to share ideas.

Typical Comments:

Why do we suggest not looking at the labels before you start?

Using handling resources and objects leads to a different method of inquiry. We suggest that you don’t use wall texts and labels until the end of a session to ensure that your group’s own investigations lead their inquiries. It is useful to allow your group time to explore the room with the help of handling resources that prompt their own ideas about the work.

Artist Information:

All four artists in Trace of Time have used materials which help us think about the physical nature of the artworks.

• Miroslaw Balka is mysterious with his use of the metal veil which screens a cage-like space. The size of his structures are based on his own physical dimensions to represent the body and the traces it leaves behind.
• Anselm Kiefer has made heavily textured and highly symbolic paintings. Using his studio as a setting, he combines mythology and personal imagery in two paintings that borrow elements from Parsifal, Richard Wagner’s last opera, and its source in myths of the Holy Grail.
• Guiseppe Penone used a chainsaw to cut back the layers of growth within a single timber beam. Reversing the passage of time, he reveals the shape of a young tree.
• Rachel Whiteread groups together heavy concrete casts to remind us of institutions; this also can prompt our own memories of school or lecture rooms.

Other artworks which can be used to support this activity:

• The Anselm Kiefer room in the Landscape/Matter/Environment suite on Level 3. The artworks in this room also use evocative materials, such as recycled copper wire or dried red roses, which can have range of associations for the viewer.
• Doris Salcedo, whose use of human hair and domestic furniture has poetic and political associations that link with the artworks explored above. Salcedo’s work is not currently on display at Tate Modern but you can find information about it on the Tate website.
• Arte Povera – an art movement based in Italy in the 1960s, in which artists explored the value of ordinary materials and objects that are part of everyday life. Giuseppe Penone, who created the tree sculpture in the Trace of Time room, was part of this movement. In 2001, there was large exhibition at Tate Modern called From Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-72.