Art & Installations
When materials become art: our founder’s work at Tate Modern
How Oliver Dredge, founder of SFXC and Foundry & Merchant, helped develop the heat-sensitive floor for Tania Bruguera’s 2018 Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern.
A material can do more than define how a space looks. It can change how people behave within it.
In 2018, Foundry & Merchant founder Oliver Dredge helped develop the smart-material element of Tania Bruguera’s Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern through SFXC, the smart-materials brand he founded. At the centre of that contribution was an unusual challenge: helping turn the artist’s vision into a floor that responded to the warmth of the human body.
An artwork revealed by people
Presented in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall from 2 October 2018 to 24 February 2019, Bruguera’s commission explored migration, community and our responsibility towards one another. Its title began as 10,142,926 and changed as the figures behind it increased.
A hidden portrait of Yousef, a young man who had moved from Syria to London, lay beneath a heat-sensitive surface. Visitors could reveal parts of the image by warming the floor with their bodies. Bringing the portrait into view called for people to act together.
The material gave physical form to the idea: participation became part of the work itself.
Turning an idea into a working surface
The artistic concept was Bruguera’s. SFXC’s role was to help realise its colour-changing surface, working with the artist and Tate’s team on material development and application.
According to SFXC’s project account, the process involved exploring different colour-changing approaches, testing a thermochromic ink and considering both the gallery’s temperature and the demands of repeated public contact.
Thermochromic materials respond to changes in temperature. Here, warmth caused the ink to become clear, exposing the image beneath. The team also worked through the practical construction: printing onto durable interlocking tiles, applying the responsive coating and protecting the surface.
For Oliver, this is an example of the connection between material knowledge and creative ambition that underpins his work: understanding an idea, exploring what a material can do, and helping make the result possible.
Experience behind Foundry & Merchant
Before Foundry & Merchant, Oliver founded the SFXC brand, specialising in smart materials and colour-changing effects. The Tate Modern project forms part of the experience he brings to Foundry & Merchant today.
Our approach to art and installations begins with the relationship between an idea, its setting and the materials that can give it form. That might involve a responsive surface, a sculptural structure or a carefully developed finish. The work is in bringing creative intent and practical making together.
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