Embodying the Archive: hands in touch with her life’s work

Celebrating 125 years of the BSR, this performance uncovers the lives of two pioneering women who challenged gender and class barriers This promenade performance invites the audience to follow artists Holly Davey and Eloise Fornieles into the depths of the Fine Art Archive at the British School at Rome. Using the administrative files to unlock the words, gestures and movements of artists Marjorie Meggitt and Frances Bruce—the first women to be awarded the Sculpture Prize, in consecutive years in 1932 and 1933, their time in Rome briefly overlapping —Davey & Fornieles retrace two lives shaped by the institutional advocates and adversaries they encountered. Their stories reveal how gender, class and privilege determined who could enter, belong to and succeed within the institution, and how Meggitt and Bruce worked both within and against these structures, changing what was possible for generations of artists who followed.