In 2019 I opened a new line of enquiry under the umbrella TO FILL THE HOLLOW; focusing on terracotta, female votive figures of the 6th to 2nd centuries BCE. These terracotta figures, dedicated to ancient deities, were produced in vast numbers across southern Europe, north Africa and Britain in pre-Christian times.
I’m interested in the performative exchange economy that surrounds these artefacts along a timeline that extends from the relationship between female deity, devotee and coroplast (maker of ceramic figures) in ancient Italy; to global museological trade in the 18th and 19th centuries CE; to display and research techniques of the 20th and 21st centuries. Within this interplay of human cultural practice across millennia and continents, I’m also interested in the intimate relationship of hand to held figure through the texture and weight of the object; the evidence of manufacturing (casting and recasting) and subsequent fracturing; and the stark contrast between the figures’ detailed fronts and their roughly finished backs.
In July 2019 I visited the American Academy in Rome (AAR) to photograph their collection of terracotta votive figures. The first five large graphite on acrylic works on paper were made as a result of this initial visit. The series has been added to with a further visit to the AAR in 2022 and to the archaeological collections in Australia.
Images