Romancing The Ruin which runs at Kupfer projects until October 27th, started at Stoke-on-Trent. Lucia Farrow, originally from Los Angeles, received the 2024 DYCP grant from The Arts Council to work on an extensive ceramic project in the town’s ceramic factories. Her residency at Kupfer Projects, located in a townhouse in Shoreditch, allowed her the space to develop the idea for a personal archaeology. I visited Lucia's studio, located just above the exhibition, where she talked me through her practice
For Farrow, the kiln’s process is analogous to the body of the girl as she approaches womanhood. A site of cataclysmic change, the kiln conducts a transmogrification from malleable clay to hard ceramic. Intense temperatures speed up the earths processes and a perfect, if fragile, object emerges.
Female adolescence is so closely tied to shame, the fragility of youth associated with the fear of the grotesque. Farrow sees the kiln’s uncontrollable process as a comfort — she rescues from it fragments, ruins, recognising both the romance of the ruin and the bittersweet quality of the broken.
Fired into the surface of her works are images of herself and her friends. They’re snapshots, the quality as good as the camera of a 2016 MacBook. For this reason — and to anyone of a certain age — they’re intensely nostalgic to an era of Tumblr now preserved only through blog-like Instagram pages. Farrow cites eighteenth-century follies as her inspiration, interested in their referentiality and ultimately, their falsifying appearance which imitated genuine ancient Greek and Roman ruins. She mimicks anachronism of the folly, her pieces laser-cut to the outlines of genuine artefacts and wall-mounted in the style of an archaeological museum, their surfaces covered with the ephemera of a girlhood spent online.
You opened this show last week during Frieze, which was stressful, to say the least. How did you manage?
I felt like I had been mentally preparing for months, and then suddenly, everything arrived at once— not like fog rolling in but a big wave. My opening night was amazing. It was a huge relief for everyone to finally see the new work. Thank God for cough drops and my beautiful friends.
Talk to me about making the body of work shown in Romancing The Ruin, starting with your trip to the clay forges in Stoke-on-Trent and continuing until the installation.
The large ceramic tiles were cut and fired by a manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent, which I visited at the beginning of summer to apply the ceramic decals (an image that can be transferred, like semi-permanent tattoos, but fired at a high heat to become immovable), etc. It’s an industrial town entirely centred around ceramics production. Ruins everywhere abound. I then had to bring the ceramics back to London. So much of my practice involves carrying delicate monstrosities around the city.
The past few months have been spent working on them until they feel right. Over the ceramic surface, I’ve layered pastels, spray paint, and coloured pencils. I’ve sanded them down and then added to them. It was beautiful to have them in my space at Kupfer and be forced to look at them every day. They became an extension of me and my life at the time. I worked on them right up until the installation — it’s hard for me to let go.
The past few months have been spent working on them until they feel right. Over the ceramic surface, I’ve layered pastels, spray paint, and coloured pencils. I’ve sanded them down and then added to them. It was beautiful to have them in my space at Kupfer and be forced to look at them every day. They became an extension of me and my life at the time. I worked on them right up until the installation — it’s hard for me to let go.
I saw you wore a jacket with the largest shoulder pads I’ve ever seen at the opening. What was the brand?
Laura Andraschko. She rocks. The bigger the shoulder pad, the smaller the waist.
You’ve talked about displacement and your fractured upbringing influencing your choice of using ceramics; could you discuss this further?
I grew up between countries and homes. My parents and I were first-generation immigrants to the U.S., so I was always confused about my identity. I never felt like there was a me-shaped hole in the world. But now, I’m accepting that I may never fully know.
My life has often felt fragile and unpredictable; the ceramics process mirrors this. I grew up mainly in LA, which has unstable land. I lived in a house that cracked when I was 17 — the walls literally had fissures. Now, a similar thing is happening at my dad's house, which is in a landslide area. I feel at home with ceramics because of their delicacy and penchant for cracking. I often make things that break completely or are fractured. I’m at the mercy of the kiln, but it’s the submission and re-articulation of the controlled chaos that the kiln offers me that brings my work to life. It’s almost as if something has to die and be reborn completely.
My life has often felt fragile and unpredictable; the ceramics process mirrors this. I grew up mainly in LA, which has unstable land. I lived in a house that cracked when I was 17 — the walls literally had fissures. Now, a similar thing is happening at my dad's house, which is in a landslide area. I feel at home with ceramics because of their delicacy and penchant for cracking. I often make things that break completely or are fractured. I’m at the mercy of the kiln, but it’s the submission and re-articulation of the controlled chaos that the kiln offers me that brings my work to life. It’s almost as if something has to die and be reborn completely.
The ruin is something that feels so prescient in our current day. Especially in the arts, where the attraction of AI works against our more traditional methods of craft. Do you feel the notion of craft and the idea of a ruin are linked in your work?
Again, I'm bringing up the kiln, but I’m obsessed with metamorphoses and the shifting between one state and another. It reminds me of girls and women's bodies, the parts that feel in constant flux, and the pressure and fire underneath it all. My work has to start with the idea of materiality and craft because it’s about my body; its physicality is directly implicated in the process. Going from wet mud to vitrified stone covered in glass is the kind of transformation I want for myself every day.
My ceramic sculptures are casts of cardboard boxes. They reference in-between spaces, the things that fall through the cracks and the things we choose to keep in our bedrooms, the bottom of a dirty handbag — ruins, grottos. The things we choose to keep around us define us. I often create little stagings or alters in my bedrooms or other places I inhabit.
My ceramic sculptures are casts of cardboard boxes. They reference in-between spaces, the things that fall through the cracks and the things we choose to keep in our bedrooms, the bottom of a dirty handbag — ruins, grottos. The things we choose to keep around us define us. I often create little stagings or alters in my bedrooms or other places I inhabit.
Tell me about the name Romancing The Ruin, where did this come from?
It’s actually a reference to one of my favourite movies, Romancing the Stone (1984). It’s an 80s romcom about a romance novelist in Cartagena who Michael Douglas rescues and they try to find the biggest emerald I’ve ever seen. It’s corny but perfect.
The title means more to me, though. I’m in love with the idea of ruination being romantic. The beauty and love we feel when we encounter a fragment. The idea of never knowing, the piece never being rounded off. It used to devastate me that I felt incomplete. Now, I welcome and love the idea that a full thing doesn’t exist. In Ruins: Reflections about Violence, Chaos, and Transience (2011) by Hans Schael it talks about “beautiful scenes of devastation”. To me, this is what being a girl feels like.
The title means more to me, though. I’m in love with the idea of ruination being romantic. The beauty and love we feel when we encounter a fragment. The idea of never knowing, the piece never being rounded off. It used to devastate me that I felt incomplete. Now, I welcome and love the idea that a full thing doesn’t exist. In Ruins: Reflections about Violence, Chaos, and Transience (2011) by Hans Schael it talks about “beautiful scenes of devastation”. To me, this is what being a girl feels like.
When I visited your studio, you showed me a pair of neon pink Bottega shoes — a colour I see in your ceramic works. What about the colour, its hue, and its connotations with girlhood that attract you?
I love pink, but I love it in a way that implies masculinity. In my work, I like to pair it with grey, black, blue, and dirt. It’s the contrast or the performance of the colour that interests me. Nothing can be girly, beautiful, and soft without simultaneously being the opposite of all those things.
You mention that these fragments are part of your “personal archaeology.” Do you intend to add to this archaeology in future projects?
The “personal archaeology” I refer to is basically my iPhone camera roll. The photos I take, those I choose to send to certain people. It’s a catalogue or form of documentation of my life. The images I use in my ceramic photo decals are re-appropriated and rearticulated. They are uncovered and then recovered through concealment, layering, etc. This archaeology is ongoing; it will never end. I don’t think the urge to preserve myself will cease — it just might take on a different mode or role.
If you could personify your work as a traditional storyline: hero journey, fairytale kingdom, tragedy, etc, what would you choose? Who would be your protagonist?
Tragedy, always. I love any visual imagery depicting women’s eternal suffering, longing, virtue, beauty and heartbreak. Longing is my preferred state of perpetuity. Most of the time, it feels like I’m longing for something that doesn’t exist, but sometimes, I find something that comes close to completing me. I try to live inside that thing for as long as possible.
I am particularly obsessed with this anonymous artist who called themselves Master of the Chronique Scandeleuse, whose work was produced from 1493-1510. In her manuscripts, women are depicted falling on the swords of their lovers scorned, rating other women based on their ideals of female perfection, and marrying men they don’t want to be with. See, The Peerless Lady is Proclaimed the Most Beautiful Woman.
The illuminations are preoccupied with religious subject matter but also, crucially, matters of the heart. Their content reminds me of my friends and me and the content girls share online and in correspondence with one another. In Romancing The Ruin, I act as the tragic figure alongside The Master of the Chronique Scandeleuse.
I am particularly obsessed with this anonymous artist who called themselves Master of the Chronique Scandeleuse, whose work was produced from 1493-1510. In her manuscripts, women are depicted falling on the swords of their lovers scorned, rating other women based on their ideals of female perfection, and marrying men they don’t want to be with. See, The Peerless Lady is Proclaimed the Most Beautiful Woman.
The illuminations are preoccupied with religious subject matter but also, crucially, matters of the heart. Their content reminds me of my friends and me and the content girls share online and in correspondence with one another. In Romancing The Ruin, I act as the tragic figure alongside The Master of the Chronique Scandeleuse.
In your works, you’ve used images of your own body alongside those of your friends. It’s Tumblr-esque referential imagery. How does this relate to notions of objectification?
The images on my ceramic tablets could be related to “personal archaeology”, as I’ve mentioned in the press release. The pictures I take with my best friends are important to me; they have a sense of intimacy that I want to convey in my work. I think there are notions of wanting to preserve myself and my friends, the moments we share and the beauty and disgust that come with our shared experience of femininity. The ceramic images fired onto the works will never degrade; they could technically exist static for thousands of years (if the works aren’t physically destroyed). I am taking the idea of online imagery and the archives we construct by using personal photos to create contemporary artefacts which resemble a digital blog or physical diary entry.
You’re returning to LA this Sunday; what’s the first thing you’ll do when you get home?
Oh, baby, what won’t I do? Kiss the wet, wet sand and eat an In-n-out burger. Drive alone.
