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Free Display

Materials and Objects

Discover artists from Tate's collection who have embraced new and unusual materials and methods

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The corner of a large room, a chequerboard floor with flat cut out figures standing on the squares and some seemingly hanging in the air.

Photo © Tate (Sam Day)

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.

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Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 4 West

Getting Here

Ongoing

Free

11 rooms in Materials and Objects

Marisa Merz and Nairy Baghramian

Marisa Merz and Nairy Baghramian

See the diverse and inventive approaches to materials explored by artists in this display

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Nairy Baghramian, Scruff of the Neck (LL 23/24b & LR 26/27/28) 2016. Tate. © Nairy Baghramian.

Collage

Collage

Find out how combining everyday objects and materials became a new technique for twentieth-century artists

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Enrico Baj, Fire! Fire! 1963–4. Tate. © Enrico Baj .

Doris Salcedo

Doris Salcedo

Art that reflects on the violence and displacement caused by colonialism, discrimination, poverty and war

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Doris Salcedo, Untitled, 1987. © Doris Salcedo

Doris Salcedo Untitled 1987. © Doris Salcedo

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Fountain, Duchamp’s ‘readymade’ sculpture, was one of the most influential artworks of the twentieth century

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Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917, replica 1964. Tate. © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2023.

A View From Tokyo: Between Man and Matter

A View From Tokyo: Between Man and Matter

Discover how sculptors working in Japan, Europe, and the United States in the 1970s inspired and influenced each other

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Jiro Takamatsu, Oneness of Cedar 1970. Tate. © Estate of Jiro Takamatsu, courtesy Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo.

Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew

Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew

The reliefs in this room explore ideas of recycling and regeneration. The artists transform found and raw materials into carefully constructed abstract arrangements

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Leonardo Drew, 112L 2011. Tate. © Leonardo Drew.

Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada

How does Yto Barrada explore themes of power and strategies of resistance through natural and urban landscapes?

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Yto Barrada, Palm Sign 2010. Tate. © Yto Barrada.

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Pascale Marthine Tayou

The found and discarded materials in this display skilfully combine the spiritual with the everyday

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Pascale Marthine Tayou, Poupée Pascale #07 2014. Tate. © courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana.

Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze

Seamless connects familiar objects from everyday life into a three-dimensional network

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Sarah Sze, Seamless, 1999. © Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze Seamless 1999 © Sarah Sze

Leonor Antunes

Leonor Antunes

These sculptures bring together traditional crafts and modernist architectural forms, reflecting on how materials can divide and articulate space

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View of the exhibition Leonor Antunes the last days in Chimalistac at Kunsthalle Basel, 2013 - Courtesy Leonor Antunes and Kunsthalle Basel, photo Nick Ash

View of the exhibition Leonor Antunes: the last days in Chimalistac at Kunsthalle Basel, 2013

Courtesy Leonor Antunes and Kunsthalle Basel, photo: Nick Ash

Anna Boghiguian

Anna Boghiguian

A close observer of the human condition, Anna Boghiguian draws on the past and the present, poetry and politics to interpret our interconnected world

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The corner of a room with a black and white chequered floor, large cut out figures in bright colours are in the room.

Photo © Tate (Sam Day)

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

1/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

More on this artwork

Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth II  2007

2/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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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

3/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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Susumu Koshimizu, From Surface to Surface  1971, remade 1986

Koshimizu investigates the substance of wood by sawing planks into different shapes, exposing their surface qualities through different kinds of repetitive cuts. Koshimizu was part of Mono Ha (‘School of Things’), which reacted against the embrace of technology and visual trickery in mid-1960s Japanese art. They sought to understand ‘the world as it is’ by exploring the essential properties of materials, often combining organic and industrial objects and processes.

Gallery label, January 2016

4/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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Haegue Yang, Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three  2015

5/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube  1963–5

In the early 1960s Haacke produced works that explored the interactions of physical and biological systems and their natural processes. Although related to the cube form adopted by minimalist artists, Condensation Cube departs from the notion of the static object animated only by the interaction of the viewer. It consists of a sealed Perspex box filled with a small amount of water. Condensation begins to form and to run down the sides of the box, changing according to the ambient light and temperature. The work’s appearance therefore depends upon the environment in which it is placed.

Gallery label, July 2015

6/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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Giuseppe Penone, Breath 5  1978

The clay is modelled on the imagined shape of a breath of air, exhaled from the artist’s mouth. At the top is the form of the interior of Penone’s mouth, squeezed into the clay. The impression along the side of the clay is of the artist’s leg, wearing jeans, as he leans forward. Penone has made many works concerning the impression of man on nature. For Breath Penone has spoken of the influence of mythological explanations of the creation of man.

Gallery label, January 2016

7/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

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Jimmie Durham, Alpine Ibex  2017

‘I wanted to gather the skulls of the largest animals of Europe and bring them back into our world’, Durham has said, describing the resulting works as ‘animal spirits’. This assemblage of found objects incorporates the skull and horns of an ibex, a wild mountain goat found in the Alps. For Durham, the work is ‘more sculptural than representative’
No animal was harmed for the purpose of creating this sculpture. The skull and horns were acquired from a licensed dealer, who only uses materials that arise as a by-product of food production or natural causes, and never from endangered or protected species.

Gallery label, December 2020

8/8
highlights in Materials and Objects

More on this artwork

Highlights

T01777: Fire! Fire!
Enrico Baj Fire! Fire! 1963–4
P20335: Shibboleth II
Doris Salcedo Shibboleth II 2007
T07573: Fountain
Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917, replica 1964
T12822: From Surface to Surface
Susumu Koshimizu From Surface to Surface 1971, remade 1986
T15081: Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three
Haegue Yang Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three 2015
T13214: Condensation Cube
Hans Haacke Condensation Cube 1963–5
T03420: Breath 5
Giuseppe Penone Breath 5 1978
T15201: Alpine Ibex
Jimmie Durham Alpine Ibex 2017

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See all 63 artworks in Materials and Objects

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