© Lee Mawdsley
Discover artists from Tate's collection who have embraced new and unusual materials and methods
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.
See how two artists have used non-traditional art materials in very different ways
Find out how combining everyday objects and materials became a new technique for twentieth-century artists
Doris Salcedo’s sculptures and site-specific installations reflect on the violence and displacement caused by colonialism, discrimination, poverty and war
See one of the most influential artworks of the twentieth century and investigate materials and objects
Discover how sculptors working in Japan, Europe, and the United States in the 1970s inspired and influenced each other
Intrigued by the unexpected and the inexplicable, Tunga explores the transformation of materials and the magical properties of hair
Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee transformed an everyday material, natural rope, into extraordinary sculptural forms
Michael Snow explores the characteristics of a range of media, and raises questions of time, movement and perception
In the decades following the Second World War, find out how artists explored a number of radical approaches to painting
