Matters of Art and Reality – Artworks as Things Led by Valentina Ravaglia

What kind of things are artworks? Why – or how – do they matter? Taking inspiration from the new Collection Display wings, this course focuses on notions of materiality and objecthood through the filter of the artistic production of the past century.

Entirely based within the Galleries and deeply rooted in the physical presence of artworks, these four sessions will offer participants an intuitive introduction to new materialist philosophies. Questioning how on the one hand immaterial information exchanges seem to dominate our lives whereas on the other the depletion of limited material resources is putting humanity itself at risk.

Led by Valentina Ravaglia, Assistant Curator of Displays at Tate Modern, this course proposes different ways of interpreting the stuff of art, from the micro- to the macroscopic scale, from its immediate reality to the abstract connections leading far beyond the walls of the gallery. This course welcomes all those interested in learning about, and through, contemporary art theory and philosophy. No prior knowledge required.

Week 1 – 15 February 2016

Beginning with a walk across the new Material Worlds collection wing we reflect on the reading materials and define the main terms used around ideas of materiality and ‘thingness’. We examine a range of artworks spanning a whole century, from Picasso’s collages to recent works by Sheela Gowda and El Anatsui, via Duchamp’s Fountain, Mono-Ha and Arte Povera. 

Week 2 – 22 February 2016

Looking at works on display in the Citizens and States wing, for example those by Theaster Gates and Teresa Margolles, this session reflects on how objects can be used as fragments or signifiers of history, and uncover hidden traces of artworks from Tate Modern’s past. We also consider ideas around archiving and collecting, the role or the museum as a repository of objects with social and monetary value, and the notion of the ‘aura’. 

Week 3 – 29 February 2016

Do objects have agency? Taking inspiration from Liquid Crystal Environment, we consider Gustav Metzger’s notions of ‘auto-destructive’ and ‘auto-creative’ art. Connecting other ideas found in Metzger’s writings with issues raised by Abraham Cruzvillegas’ Turbine Hall commission, we also reframe the environment as an ‘ecology of objects’, and dig deeper into the etymology of the word ‘thing’ via the writings of Bruno Latour. 

Week 4 – 7 March 2016

We consider more ‘dematerialised’ artworks, from Cildo Meireles’ Insertions into Ideological Circuits to other conceptual and performative practices found across the collection wings. What happens to the artwork as an object when the work itself is dispersed across networks of relationships, or situated in behaviours or exchanges of ideas? How does the museum deal with an art of pure data?