LONDON, ENGLAND.- 'The Stuff of Life', the fourth in the National Gallery's series of touring exhibitions, comes to London following two highly successful runs with our regional partners: Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne. The exhibition will give visitors to the National Gallery a rare opportunity to see favourites from the permanent collection such as Van Gogh's 'Chair', Chardin's 'House of Cards' and Velázquez's 'Kitchen Scene' alongside works by celebrated contemporary artists, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gavin Turk and Peter Blake, as well as loans from around the country.

Supported by generous grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation these touring exhibitions allow masterpieces from the National Gallery, accompanied by important loans, to be seen in the regions as well as in London. They have proved exceptionally popular with the last three exhibitions, 'Light' (2002), 'Paradise' (2003) and 'Making Faces' (2004) each attracting over 300,000 visitors across the three venues.

This exhibition of works from the 16th century to the present day considers the development of still life but also focuses on the depiction and meaning of objects in art, where even the most ordinary objects can carry the most extraordinary significance. The inclusion of objects in portraits can suggest the interests and achievements of their subjects or act as attributes to identify a saint or hero. Van Gogh's 'Chair' with its pipe and tobacco pouch is a disguised self portrait; the beautifully spare still life of a rose, cup of water and silver plate by the Spanish painter Zurbarán can be read as an image of the Virgin Mary; while Peter Blake's collection of miniature alcohol bottles stands as a symbolic portrait of Damien Hirst. Indeed, as this exhibition shows, objects in paintings always suggest some meaning, whether derived from their use, appearance and context or their symbolic resonance.

One of the most important impulses in painting objects is for the artist to demonstrate their ability to reproduce the visible world and included are many extraordinary demonstrations of painterly skill. In both Van Mieris's 'A Woman and a Fish-pedlar in a Kitchen' and Steenwyck's vanitas still life, 'Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life', no brushstroke is visible and the different textures of fur, feathers, fish, cloth and metal and glass are miraculously rendered. Some paintings mimic reality itself, such as 'The Old Cupboard Door' by the 19th-century American artist William Harnett, perhaps the greatest trompe l'oeil painting in the country (on loan from Sheffield) as well as Gavin Turk's more recent 'Bag', a perfectly rendered and painted bronze cast of a bin-bag.

Perhaps the most common symbolic role that objects play in paintings is as reminders of transience and fragility. In vanitas paintings the material world is shown as fragile and short-lived in contrast to the eternal world of the spirit. This message is evident in many of the images in the show including one of the most recent, a video piece by Sam Taylor-Wood, 'A Little Death' (2001), showing the speeded-up decomposition of a hanging hare.

The exhibition is accompanied by a short film. A 20 page fully-illustrated colour booklet is available priced £3.50.