2010 Relics
Inspired by the thousands of tiny fragments housed in Villa Giulia, Rome’s museum of Etruscan antiquities, these drawings explore the potential for mere pieces of stone, clay and marble to evoke the same emotions as a real flesh-and-blood human body. Glimpses of faces and figures stir up memories of a once vigorous and youthful being now aged and weary, fragments of stone and marble are like broken bones and worn teeth, and the weathered surfaces of ancient walls and roadways are like a scarred and wizened skin: these are all that remains of a once-powerful individual now reduced almost to ruins.
Almost unintentionally, the grouping of figures in each work suggests an interaction between them, forming mini-narratives that could potentially relate to our own lives today. In a contemporary twist the works have been given titles relating to issues we face in our current times, alluding to the fact that society will always deal with the same themes again and again. The capacity for these thousand-year-old fragments to illustrate highly topical political, social and environmental issues creates a dialogue between the past and the present, and one must wonder whether we’ve actually progressed at all or learnt anything from our predecessors.
These are the relics of a civilisation long passed into the archives of human history – what will be the relics that we leave behind to be preserved and treasured by a society that exists in thousands of years’ time? And despite the changes that will inevitably arise from the development of technology, will the issues in such heated discussion now ever really leave the realm of public debate and be resolved?