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The Materials and Objects display on the third floor of Tate Modern showcases ways in which traditional art materials have been challenged since Duchamp’s Fountain was originally exhibited in 1917.  It exemplifies the revolution of the last 100 years and provides an exhilarating and wide-ranging impression of the century.  Numerous women artists are represented.

 

Here is Nairy Baghramian’s abstract piece, Scruff of the Neck 2016, made of industrial materials  - polished steel surfaces, porcelain sections like teeth, and sharp wires.  The appearance is both strange and familiar and, as a result, exerts an emotional pull.  A good starting point.

 

Marisa Merk,  the only woman attached to the Arte Povera group is also in Room 1.  She uses wires, often knitted, such as in Little Shoe,  poignant, maternal and domestic.

 

In contrast, Doris Salcedo’s Untitled 1987 is one of her hard steel sculptures, appearing to be perhaps a set of bunk beds in a prison camp.  Rather like Mona Hatoums’ welded cots and cages, it alludes to violence, torture and war.  

 

Giuseppe Penone, also from the Arte Povera movement, uses clay for his piece Breath, made in 1978.  He often connects humans and nature (in this case air) by forming the shape of breath exhaled from the inside of his mouth and down his leg.  It mirrors a mythological explanation for the creation of human beings.

 

There are numerous contrasts - carpet and draped wallpaper, upright tree trunks and hanging cages.  The place is a delight for the lover of materials.