EXCAVATIONS 2012
Part of I DON'T KNOW HOW A ROCK FEELS, a group show at the British
School at Rome16 March 2012 – 24 March 2012.
With Angela Catlin, Colin Darke, George Egerton-Warburton, Nicholas Hatfull, David Lock, Duarte Natario dos Santos, Felix Schwimmer, Covadonga Valdes
My works from Rome in 2012 engage with the idea of archaeology. Using cobblestones (‘sanpietrini’), so prevalent on the streets and lanes of the historic city, I constructed small dioramas to echo familiar sites of Roman antiquity.
Simultaneously, they recall forced perspectives favoured by Baroque architects in Rome, such as Borromini’s corridor at the Palazzo Spada. Thus, actual bits of road, together with their painted clay replicas in diminishing proportions, became building blocks in my miniature reconstructions of some vestigial edifices of an empire in collapse.
CHARLES COOPER
