Materials and Objects

This work, signed with the pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’ in black paint, is an example of what Duchamp called a ‘ready-made’ sculpture. These were everyday mass-produced objects presented as artworks. The title Fountain is a playful nod to how urination can resemble a fountain’s spurt of water. Duchamp’s use of a pseudonym, the title, and the reorientation of the urinal from its usual upright position, all point to his interest in double meanings, words and role play. Like cruising, Duchamp described the selection of a ready-made artwork as a matter of timing and ‘a kind of rendezvous.’ The original work is now lost. This is a 1964 replica made from glazed earthenware and painted to resemble the original porcelain.

Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002 is composed of 12 room installations that can be shown individually or in groups. Through the work he invites conversation about how museums in Europe and North America show and collect African art. The work is flexible, representing more of a conceptual museum than a physical one. It is a provocation to acknowledge contemporary African art and its exclusion from the Western art historical canon. Gaba has said that ‘my museum doesn’t exist... it’s only a question.’

In this installation Gaba brings together over 75 objects related to various world religions and cultures. Symbols of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Vodún and other traditional African faiths are arranged on shelves of a cross-shaped wooden structure. It also includes a table and chairs used for Tarot card readings. Art has long played an important role in the teaching and dissemination of religion. Gaba comments that in contemporary Benin, where he is from, most people are poly-religious: ‘Catholics brought Christianity, but for my ancestors Catholicism and Voodoo are not different ... You will see sculptures of angels, of Jesus Christ, and the Mami Wata all in the same house.’

Nalini Malani’s ‘video shadow plays’ combine video, shadow and sound to tell multiple stories. In this work, she creates a tribute to women’s lives forgotten throughout history. Each cylinder in In Search of Vanished Blood is reverse painted and features images of dispossessed people, mythological figures and surgical instruments. The artist draws inspiration from a range of sources. We hear Cassandra, a figure from Greek mythology who predicts the future but is cursed, so no-one believes her. Referencing texts from German writers Christa Wolf and Heiner Müller, Indian writer and activist Mahasweta Devi, Irish author Samuel Beckett, and others, Cassandra anticipates violence against women during periods of political upheaval.

The title of the work In Search of Vanished Blood is from the poem Lahu ka Surag 1965 by Pakistani writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Lines from the poem appear over Cassandra’s veiled face. Malani’s work reflects her commitment to feminist activism. In Search of Vanished Blood amplifies women’s voices to express Malani’s belief in humanism – the strength of what we have in common rather than what divides us.

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.

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.