Materials

The exhibition organizes things by material ­­– which is to say, by the natural resources exploited for each thing’s production. Wood, from felled and living trees, was burnt to process many of the other materials, but also worked to produce a vast range of items. Plants were harvested to produce textiles, dyes, paper, derived from plants. Minerals and ores were mined and smelted to produce metals, such as copper, lead and silver, produced massive and widespread lead pollution. Stone, including marbles, was quarried, clay extracted for ceramics and other vessels, and sand melted to manufacture glass. Creatures great and small, marine and mundane, were sacrificed for the production of dyes, their deaths witnessed at games, their bones carved to give pleasure. Water, the first thing but the last we shall study, was given form by many of the others. Many of the things exhibited have undergone materials analysis, their materiality explored scientifically. The results will be presented and interpreted, as in this case study.