在欣赏艺术和设计作品时,有时可能会忽略作品的基础——用于创作它们的材料。维多利亚国家美术馆的一场展览试图通过将材料放在最前沿来改变这种状况。“History in the Making”展示了一些乍一看不相关的物品,但它们被归类在一起,创建关于材料及其在设计物品中产生的对话。
In looking at art and design pieces, it’s sometimes possible to overlook the foundations of the work — the materials used to create them. An exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria seeks to change that by putting materials at the forefront. History in the Making is a showcase of items that appear unrelated at first glance but have been grouped together to help create dialogues about materials and their role in the production of designed items.
这些物品包括坎Campana Brothers设计的皮沙发、Rolf & Viktor创作一件礼服、Lucy McRae设计的落地灯,上面覆盖着看似针叶树皮但实际上是数千根牙签,以及Marc Newson的骨瓷茶具都是从NGV的收藏中精心挑选出来的,引发探讨有关材料使用、天然材料和合成材料之间关系的问题,以及人类对创新、可持续发展,再利用和循环利用系统的责任。
The objects — including a Campana Brothers leather sofa, a Rolf & Viktor ballgown, Lucy McRae's lamp covered in what looks like echidna skin but is really thousands of toothpicks, and a bone china tea set by Marc Newson — have been curated from the NGV’s collection for their potential to raise questions about the use of materials, the relationships between natural and synthetic materials and, ultimately, about sustainability and our responsibility to find or create new systems to produce, reuse and recycle.
NGV 建筑策展人 Simone LeAmon 经过多年对物体和物质的思考,将各类材质以展览的方式呈现。 LeAmon 解释说:“展览试图鼓励思考人类对材料的依赖性,以及现代社会对材料庞大的需求量。现在人类制造的材料已经超过了地球上的生物总量,我们需要仔细思考从现在开始如何高效率使用它们。”
The NGV’s curator of contemporary design and architecture Simone LeAmon put the exhibition together after years of thinking about objects and materiality. ‘I’m trying to discuss this idea that materials are engaged with through the means by which they’re put to use,’ LeAmon explains. “The exhibition is trying to encourage people to think about that, and how we’re placing unprecedented demand on materials and in larger volumes. We’ve now passed the point in history where the amount of human-made materials surpasses the biomass on the planet, and we need to think carefully about how and why we use them from now on.’
LeAmon这次展览的出发点是18世纪瑞典植物学家和科学家Carl Linnaeus提出的生物分类学。Linneaus是第一个将生物分类为动物、植物和矿物的人,展览中LeAmon又增加了一种——合成生物。这种分类有助于我们更好地理解人类与自然世界的关系。一张Sol Shapiro设计的海豹皮椅子,如今已经很少冒险从仓库里出来了,因为使用皮毛是如此有争议,这引发了一个问题:为什么有些动物,比如海豹,是受到保护的,而有些动物,比如牛,是被工业养殖的?展出的其他作品让我们不禁要问,为什么我们用几乎完全由骨头制成的盘子吃饭会感到舒服?为什么我们乐于穿合成服装?因为我们知道它是由石油的副产品制成的;这也是为什么我们愿意砍伐树木来制作一次性物品,比如牙签。
LeAmon’s starting point in curating the show was 18th-century Swedish botanist and scientist Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy of living things. Linneaus was the first to classify organisms as animal, vegetable or mineral, and for the purposes of the exhibition, LeAmon added one more — synthetic. Thi