Object Theory

Birch resin refined into adhesive. Sophisticated ‘factories’ for making tar. Collections of feathers. Pigments made from ochres. Snapped-off stalactites arranged in an eerie, unknowable configuration. Overwhelmingly, distinctive broken and fashioned stones. Bones, both theirs and their numerous prey.

These artefacts are what remains, after millennia, of a culture and people whose status is constantly changing with each new research discovery. They are the material evidence, what we have retrieved of the work/art/play of a lost world. What has vanished entirely are the more perishable traces: leather- and woodwork, tattoos and body painting, basketry and other things, unimaginable to us.