Mark Dion - Research

During a sixth-form trip to London in 2000, i visited the Tate Modern where i saw an exhibition by Mark Dion called 'Tate Thames Dig'. The exhibition comprised of a large wooden cabinet containing hundreds of artifacts found in the Thames by a team of volunteers. This was a fantastic exhibition and is very relevant to the 'Museum of The Ordinary Brief'. The cabinet was in the style of display furniture you would expect to find in an old pharmacy (see pic). It has large windows, and draws that could be pulled out so you could see all the various artifacts, allowing the public to interact. I remember there being a large number of passports that were found, and i remember thinking that this seemed very sinister for some reason, that these peoples identity's had ended up at the bottom of a river. Dion refrained from labelling any of the artifacts so it was left to the viewer to decide on their opinions. This is also very much like the 'Found' website and books, which instead of concentrating on finds from just one area, they gather 'finds' from all over the world. Dion has also done many other similar works using the same idea of exhibiting found objects.


websites used
www.tate.org.uk