Object/Conversation/Performance
The British School at Rome
Roma, Italia
July 2024
On July 1st 2024 I returned to the Roman research institute, The British School at Rome, to begin a 1 month Artist Residency. Previous visits to Rome have all led me to the incredible array of Etruscan objects housed at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia (National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia). My fascination and appreciation for the objects, culture and politics of the Etruscan People has fuelling various streams of research over many years. For this residency I chose to explore the production of unfired clay objects influenced by the forms, techniques and eroticism of Etruscan ceramics. The underpinning concept for this project born out of inquiries into the systematic cultural/historical erasure by the status quo experienced by Etruscans and Queer people.
The resulting assemblage of objects (a human powered disolving water fountain) was ‘activated’ during a public performance on June 26th 2024. Participants at this event were encouraged to record their observations on their mobile phones, the resulting media was generously shared with me and has been edited into an experimental documentary film.
Artist and Academic Dr Ash Tower (also resident at the BSR at this time) has generously provided a thoughtfully considered accompanying exhibition text and narration for the film.
Thank you to The British School at Rome, Ipswich City Council for RADF financial support, and to all those in residence at the BSR for their support, friendship and shared fun times.
Genital cups
unfired clay
2024
Water urn (Hydria)
unfired clay seasoned with linseed oil and coated in wax/tar
2024
FOUNTAIN/FONTANA
unfired clay, salvaged satelite dish, tensegrity tripod stand, water, plastic bucket, wine
2024
Weeping breasts
unfired clay
2024
Dribbling penis
unfired clay
2024
Cup of tears
unfired clay, wine
2024
Vulva bowl
unfired clay
2024
Penis pot
unfired clay
2024
Spitting Kylix
unfired clay
2024
'Costume'
disposable 'church' skirts, various Roman street salvaged objects, polyester thread, paper clips
2024
FOUNTAIN/FONTANA
the tears of others have both wounded and fed me
in those beautiful moments where my body meets another
and a once-distant inland sea laps at my shores
and spills over with salt water
which runs into the crook of my neck
and over my shoulders
and onto my lips
in those beautiful moments where my body meets another
and a once-distant inland sea laps at my shores
and spills over with salt water
which runs into the crook of my neck
and over my shoulders
and onto my lips
Lincoln tells me that these vessels emerge from a love of Etruscan ceramics, particularly their depiction of their
uninhibited, suggestive, or downright pornographic revels. The Etruscans were an ancient civilization in middle-
Italy from around 900 BC to 27 BC. Their history is deeply politicised, and there are relatively few accounts of
Etruscans recording their own history. Instead, we rely on Greek and Roman accounts to fill the blanks, which
often cast the Etruscans as politically convenient precursors, used to legitimise various stories the Greeks and the
Romans tell about themselves. Indeed, Etruscology itself might be considered the study of the “…manipulation
of a people’s history for political advantage and ideological ends” 1 — suggesting that much of Etruscan history
may, in fact, serve as proxy for Greek and Roman histories by another name.
uninhibited, suggestive, or downright pornographic revels. The Etruscans were an ancient civilization in middle-
Italy from around 900 BC to 27 BC. Their history is deeply politicised, and there are relatively few accounts of
Etruscans recording their own history. Instead, we rely on Greek and Roman accounts to fill the blanks, which
often cast the Etruscans as politically convenient precursors, used to legitimise various stories the Greeks and the
Romans tell about themselves. Indeed, Etruscology itself might be considered the study of the “…manipulation
of a people’s history for political advantage and ideological ends” 1 — suggesting that much of Etruscan history
may, in fact, serve as proxy for Greek and Roman histories by another name.
The relative lack of Etruscan accounts of their own lives leaves vast absences in the archive with much to be
speculated. Recent critical analyses of Etruscan attitudes towards gender have revealed there might have been
surprising differences with the later Greeks and Romans (particularly in their more progressive attitudes to
gender equality and androgyny). It’s not such a vast leap to see a relationship between the erasure of Etruscan
attitudes towards gender and more recent erasures of queerness within closer histories. It calls to mind this
period of queer revisionism in which we stare into the rippled mirror of history in search of our precursors and
ourselves.
Lincoln’s fountain is a monument to these Etruscan absences in the archive, but also a consideration of what
other absences might be underway. With this in mind, I attended the performance of the fountain, to witness its
first and last operation. As unfired clay, it’s susceptible to moisture, and will bear its function of a fountain for
only a short time. I think I was expecting a solemn ritual, but was met instead with an intimate spectacle, laced
with tentative uncertainty. We gather around the leaking fountain, softly chatting and watching the water wear
courses in the carefully honed clay. The breasts, penises, and lips of the fountain carry the water from one to
another, viscerally evoking bodily fluids and their passage between different orifices and organs. The fountain
holds the ‘crude’ and the ‘intellectual’ together in a wilful dismissal of the boundaries we maintain within
ourselves. I recall a lurid impulse to jeer at these things, but it’s accompanied by a desire to touch these profane
forms and their waxy-smooth surfaces. The chaotically-tangled and lovingly-burnished shapes capture this
double-desire so effectively that I found myself acutely aware of my body and gaze in relation to the genitalia
and soft blue-grey forms.
As the forms weep water, I can’t help but think of Jesus’ first miracle—the turning of water to wine. I think of
the beautiful baroque variations of wine to blood, blood from stone, and the weeping of statues as faded or
furtive miracles. Unlike the devout modesty of religious statues, this fountain holds the sacred and the profane in
a vibrating intensity, able to be broken down and reformed. The unfired clay is shaped by the very water it
contains and expresses, and the water slowly carves channels through clay, punctuated by dull earthy cracks as a
vessel or a limb gives way and splashes into the gathering water below. I watch the mouths dribble water, and
slowly open as the channels between their lips are worn wider. I’m reminded that the way that we use our bodies
changes our bodies. There is something quite significant in that notion, for those of us who have been told in
some time or place that we are unnatural.
contains and expresses, and the water slowly carves channels through clay, punctuated by dull earthy cracks as a
vessel or a limb gives way and splashes into the gathering water below. I watch the mouths dribble water, and
slowly open as the channels between their lips are worn wider. I’m reminded that the way that we use our bodies
changes our bodies. There is something quite significant in that notion, for those of us who have been told in
some time or place that we are unnatural.
We are invited to drink red wine from earthen cups shaped into little bodies, which adopt a taste of silt and
sediment. Even the rigid notion of a ‘vessel’ is quietly upset as my wine mixes with blue grey earth in a slow
contest of which will disappear first. I wonder if the wine was transparent, could I use the silt to divine the
future? Like tea leaves? As the fountain deconstructs itself in dramatic fits and bursts, I imagine it collapsing
completely into the earth beneath it, as a simple configuration of dirt and water. Dirt and water which has been
asked to bear the weight of history and politics, lovingly arranged and lovingly released.
1 Corinna Riva, A Short History of the Etruscans.
Dr Ash Tower 2024