Art open call

34: THE CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS SHAPING OUR FUTURE

The Museum is seeking to commission a work of contemporary art to coincide with the next Contemporary Science and Society exhibition.

Submission dates: Friday 21st November- Monday 12th January

Exhibition overview

We use raw materials extracted from the earth in almost all of our technology, from tea cups to electric cars. These technologies, and the materials that make them, are critical to our ability to survive and thrive as societies, from communication, to transportation, to health care, to defence. Our entire way of life in the UK rests on the supply of just 34 of these essential substances. But their availability is at risk. As global demand grows, and the UK transitions away from fossil fuels, science and industry are urgently seeking new ethical ways to mine vital raw materials, use them more efficiently, and recycle them effectively.

Governments, responsible for ensuring that their populations have access to the resources they need, designate a raw material as ‘critical’ when there is a risk that they won’t have enough to meet the demand of ever growing and innovating populations. Materials are distributed unequally around the world, and extraction techniques can be environmentally damaging and energy intensive, or rely on unethical labour practices that violate human rights.

The exhibition, ‘34,’ will trace the critical raw materials that are embedded in our everyday lives and explore how our need for them drives research, industry innovation, global investment, and politics. We will see how they are the key to sustainable technologies that might be our best chance of lowering our carbon emissions, and tackle the question of how to extract critical raw materials from Earth without further endangering humans and the ecosystems they call home.

This exhibition in developed in collaboration with researchers across Oxford University from the OxfordEARTH research programme and Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division.