These artefacts, you know, they're not beautifully decorated.
They're not like the kind of thing you would have out on your
dining room table to impress people, they are very basic slipware.
A lot of them have faults even in manufacture because they
were just made very quickly. They're like the Ikea 365 range
for the Roman empire.
[Georgia Mallin] So this at its core is a simple spotlight loan
we've sent a small number of Roman samian pottery
pieces down to Margate and the thing that makes this project
special is the addition of an artist commission alongside
those works.
Engaging an artist in close partnership with another gallery
was really exciting. It brought another voice into the mix and
literally another person into the room and it provides another
way for us to communicate with audiences.
The National programme is all about reaching people across the
UK who might not necessarily come to London and
highlighting the immense strengths of the other collections
and museums and galleries that are out there.
So this particular project allowed us to send something quite special
from our collection to Margate and to show how important
those objects are for the local history
[Richard Hobbs] The pans themselves come from the coast of
Whitstable from what was a Roman shipwreck.
What's really nice about this is that the vessels themselves
are going to be located so near to where the ship went down.
[Sam Moorhead] It's opening up Roman East Kent in a way
that hasn't been done in the past. As a local artist Hannah is
locking herself right into the local environment and she is
bringing East Kent of today to the Roman Kent of yesterday.
[Hannah Lees] It was an interesting project because I didn't
really feel like my job was to just explain exactly what the
pudding pans were and what the point of them was, I felt that
that was the British Museum's role I sort of felt like my role
was more about trying to unpick aspects of having an
artefact or recognising something as being quite basic, I
guess, and part of everyday life they were still just these
basic plates that you just eat from, they are not to be revered
in that way, I think sometimes we attach these kind of feelings
to artefacts that we put them on this pedestal and put them
behind glass cases and then just forget that actually these
were to be used they were just plates. They just had this basic function
They are not artworks, they're craft. They have this
specific use.
[Georgia Mallin] So she has created a mural on the wall of the
exhibition space made out of wine lees. She also recreated a table
set up with the remnants cast in bronze of types of food that
were used and consumed at Roman feasts. So you have
different types of pips and seeds that she has been to a
foundry and cast and also has plaster tablets which are
mounted on the wall of the exhibition space too.
[Hannah Lees] I met with one of the British Museum curators,
Sam Moorhead, and he sort of took me on a whistle stop tour
of Roman Kent. He had a really interesting way of grounding
things for you, so he referred to these sites and the painted
house at Dover as being Roman Travelodge.
Also this kind of idea that you know the Romans kind of
invented cement and the building is littered with stuff that
they just chucked into the walls just to build it.
[Sam Moorhead] Hannah was intrigued by many of the
material remains of the buildings and the items still scattered
on the ground and her artwork itself consists of items that
she has picked up off beaches. So there is this resonance
between the artefacts on the sites and the artefacts she has
picked up on beaches so it has inspired her to understand the
past in a fragmentary way.
[Hannah Lees] I got into this quite odd conversation with Sam
and Richard about the role of wine on board the ship.
Richard was like: 'they just drank it.' Sam was quite open
to entertaining my theories about it being for libations or
about it being similar to how rap stars will spill some drink for
their dead homies, like he was quite open to that like 'oh yeah
I'm sure they would have been praying to Fortuna, the Roman
goddess'.
[Georgia Mallin] We really loved working with Turner Contemporary
who have very different exhibitions than we normally do.
So it's allowed us to branch out a bit with Turner
Contemporary holding our hand throughout the whole
process.
[Richard Hobbs] Turner Contemporary is this wonderful
location and right on the coast looking out to sea and so it's a
really nice idea that we could see that kind of juxtaposition
between the vessels themselves and where they were lost,
where the ship went down.