The Thing: Do you believe in things?

Feature article on 'things' and 'Belief' in contemporary art.

Abstract:

In a western world dominated by immaterial labour, and where scientists and philosophers have thrown into doubt our understanding of physical objects, how have artists – from John McCracken and John Hilliard to Wood & Harrison and Andrew Dodds – questioned and defended the nature of things?

'Sculpture, of all the arts, must surely be responsible for mapping the various journeys of thinghood. "What is a Thing?" – the question Heidegger asked in the 1920s – turns out to be a question that we have to keep asking.'