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lithopedion

Artist: Bell, Jackie · b. 1959

lithopedion

The piece was inspired by the artist's response to visual stimuli on her 2023 RSA John Kinross Scholarship to Italy; in particular in the Ospidale…

The piece was inspired by the artist's response to visual stimuli on her 2023 RSA John Kinross Scholarship to Italy; in particular in the Ospidale degli Innocenti. Etruscan ceramic funerary wares in the Etruscan Museums in Fiesole and Volterra prove a further source of inspiration.

Her interest lay in the concept of the loss of personal identity and its never being reclaimed, and the power of the transitional object.

At college she had worked on a fairly large scale and with a particular interest in sculpting in metal.

Her Scholarship saw a change in her artistic approach, working on a smaller, more intimate scale, and exploring a range of new mediums, as the present work exemplifies.

The piece was created at Edinburgh Sculpture workshop where the artist secured studio space in January 2024 following her return from Florence.

This work was created in response to visits to the foundling hospital Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. For centuries women deposited tiny objects, or tokens, along with their child to verify a relationship, should they ever be able to return. These could be a half coin, a tiny screw, a bead or even a nut. The institution has 40,000 catalogued in its extensive archive, a sad testament to the the fact that few ever did.

The work reflects on the swaddling containment, and preservation of a fragile, nebulous and inchoate hope. It references the phenomenon of a "lithopedion" where a fetus grows outside the womb, dies and calcifies, sometimes preserved, unwitnessed, within the body for many decades.

© The Artist