CategoriesStyles and Movements
Contemporary Archaeological
Contemporary work that looks excavated, fossilised or ruined, borrowing the forms and methods of archaeology to reflect on time and loss.
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About
Archaeology offers artists both a look and a method: the broken fragment, the eroded surface, the labelled find, the careful dig. Since the 1970s many have used it to question how the past is recovered, displayed and imagined.
Anne and Patrick Poirier built clay models of ancient ruins. In New York, Charles Simonds left tiny unfired-clay dwellings of an imaginary people in cracks in the street. Mark Dion had volunteers comb the Thames foreshore in 1999, then displayed the finds in a cabinet of curiosities. Igor Mitoraj cast colossal classical heads and torsos in bronze, deliberately cracked and bandaged. Adrián Villar Rojas makes unfired clay sculptures that crack and crumble while on view, like relics from a future already lost. Damien Hirst's 2017 project presented a large group of objects as treasures raised from an ancient shipwreck. Look for fragments, patina and invented history.