Why have some of the most interesting contemporary artists working today abandoned the traditional materials of art to work with rubber, sugar, gold and oil, chalk, soap and shoelaces? Leora Maltz-Leca, Redwood’s Curator of Contemporary Projects explored how contemporary artists like Kader Attia and Pascale Marthine Tayou, Kara Walker and Berni Searle activate the social histories and material politics embedded in their material choices, harnessing the messy materials of the world to plumb the histories and associations of everyday substances like sugar and spice, lambs and indigo.