The New Object & Thing Exhibition Is a Garden of Earthly Delights

That interplay between color, material, history, and space is part of what makes Object & Thing’s approach stand out, even among a recent spate exhibitions that similarly eschew white-walled galleries. “We’re able to present a new take on a historic home by bringing the visions of contemporary artists and designers to be in dialogue with these spaces that have been so thoughtfully considered by their past owners,” Bangser says. “In many ways, a visitor enters a complete environment when approaching the exhibition.”

It’s not just the environment Robert Dash cultivated at Madoo that inspired Palmer and Arai, who both visited the site in anticipation of the show. Dash’s work as a poet informed the objects he collected at the property (such as the unmissable terra-cotta Poetry Pot, which tells the story of the space), and both artists have responded in kind. Arai’s series of framed wall pieces, which treats textile almost as a material for painting, seeks to fuse poetry and dance, as expressed through titles like jeté, tempo, and chassé. Meanwhile, Bangser observes that Palmer “considers the entire garden as a poem, with the different garden rooms as stanzas.”