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 also engaged with the idea of archaeology. I used cobblestones (‘sanpietrini’) characteristic of the streets and lanes of the old city to construct small dioramas to echo familiar sites of antiquity. Simultaneously, they evoked the forced perspectives favoured by Baroque architects in Rome, such as Borromini’s corridor at the Palazzo Spada. Thus, actual bits of road, together with clay replicas in diminished proportions, became building blocks in my reconstructions of vestigial edifices of an empire in collapse.
CHARLES COOPER