Thou­sands of cal­ci­fied tears stored in a met­al cab­i­net. Frag­ile, stag­nant, dead. 

I imag­ine the moment that they became sep­a­rat­ed from the earth. Cleaved from the dark­ness and the cer­tain­ty of their growth in one vio­lent act. 

There is a cav­i­ty con­nect­ed to the eye that col­lects unshed tears. Blink­ing back the tears cre­ates inter­nal out­pour­ings. Salty tears are caught and held in the wake of the darkness.

We hold caves in our faces, where the sta­lag­mites of grief grow. 

These small glass lachry­mose ves­sels, often found in Roman tombs, are said to have con­tained the tears of mourn­ers. Emo­tion becomes a sub­stance to be cap­tured and col­lect­ed, to be held and interred. Exter­nal and inter­nal lachry­ma­to­ries for­mu­late a dynam­ic that shifts between sto­icism and despair. Tears roll down cheeks and fill sacs before the salt crys­tallis­es. Sta­lag­mites and sta­lac­tites grow until they are thick with meaning. 

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Land­scapes and bod­ies are ves­sels of grief. 

Draperies (encased), 2025

Vic­to­ria Lucas (b.1982)

Jes­monite, pig­ment, mesh, cal­ci­um car­bon­ate, wax, varnish

Cav­ern floor with Cave Pearls

Ecton Mine, Staffordshire

Arag­o­nite, Flos-fer­ri

Eisen­erz, Austria

Sta­lac­tites and Stalagmites

Der­byshire

Exca­va­tion (blink­ing back), 2025

Vic­to­ria Lucas (b.1982)

Jes­monite, salt, pearles­cent ink, graphite, recon­sti­tut­ed foam, wire armatures

Lachry­mose ves­sels are ancient Roman and Greek glass bot­tles, also called lacrimaria or tear catch­ers, that were once believed to have been used by mourn­ers to col­lect tears. Exca­va­tion (Blink­ing Back) responds to these arte­facts while also refer­ring to bio­log­i­cal lacrimal sacs, part of the tear drainage sys­tem that col­lects tears before they trav­el down into the nasal cav­i­ty. This work explores resilience and sto­icism in times of cri­sis, includ­ing the require­ment to inter­nalise earth­ly suf­fer­ings and what this inter­nal­i­sa­tion of suf­fer­ing might mean for future generations. 

In Decem­ber 2024, Sheffield Muse­ums invit­ed the Heavy Water Col­lec­tive to curate the 150^th-anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion at West­on Park Muse­um and to pro­duce a new art­work in response to the city’s archives. Over the fol­low­ing six months, the col­lec­tive under­took exten­sive archival research, engag­ing with arte­facts and mate­ri­als span­ning from 500 mil­lion years ago to the present day. From an ini­tial longlist of objects, they began to trace their indi­vid­ual his­to­ries and uncov­er con­nec­tions between them, rela­tion­ships that are now artic­u­lat­ed with­in the exhi­bi­tion. The Tears of Artemis emerged direct­ly from this cura­to­r­i­al process. This art­work was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the exhi­bi­tion Gath­er­ing Land­scapes, incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments from each of its cura­to­r­i­al sec­tion. The work alludes to rit­u­al and belief, serv­ing as a small mon­u­ment to the god­dess Artemis and her imag­ined tears.

Thou tellest my wan­der­ings: put thou my tears into thy bot­tle: are they not in thy book? Psalm 56:8 King James Version

Writ­ten by King David when he fled to the cave of Adul­lam, iso­lat­ed and alone and regroup­ing. This idea of the wan­der­ing of peo­ples asso­ci­at­ed with the col­lect­ing their tears. Where tears become a metaphor for the tran­sience of flee­ing; offered from both the bereft (dis­placed) and the bereaved. Which in the New Liv­ing Ver­sion (1996) soft­ened and blankly elu­ci­dat­ed, it becomes: 

You keep track of all my sorrows

You have col­lect­ed all my tears in your bottle.

You have record­ed each one in your book.

All this idea of wan­der­ing has van­ished in this mod­ern ver­sion, the con­ceal­ment of tran­sience seen over and again. In sim­pli­fy­ing these words, these bib­li­cal schol­ars, appeal to a con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, which puts stone upon stone upon brick. We have bricked our­selves in; built a wall against nature (and the wan­der­ers) so tears become aca­d­e­m­ic, sor­rows not­ed and bal­anced. Yet in the orig­i­nal trans­la­tion, David’s cry becomes a ques­tion, a plea to be remem­bered, one which recog­nis­es absence. And thus have we changed, with all of our wall build­ing, and perimeters. 

And what of the bot­tles, these ​‘tear catch­ers’ which are both a the­o­log­i­cal con­ceit and a his­tor­i­cal con­ceit. For indeed it wasn’t until the 19^th cen­tu­ry that the Vic­to­ri­ans, of course, pulled these words into anoth­er deceit in their cult of mourn­ing. Pour­ing David’s tears, the wanderer’s tears, into these grave bound bot­tles, to lay stilled beneath the earth. Archae­ol­o­gists how­ev­er, are more or less agreed, that these bot­tles con­tained only unguents and balms, asso­ci­at­ed with bur­ial rituals. 

The Vic­to­ri­ans, who first com­mod­i­fied mourn­ing though its fetishi­sa­tion, who gath­ered jet (formed over mil­lions of years from the drift­wood of the Arau­caria tree) on the Whit­by shores, and wove hair into bracelets and lock­ets. These pio­neers of vis­i­ble, com­mer­cial grief, who plun­dered the nat­ur­al world in its pur­suit, push­ing bird species to near extinc­tion, with­in this seemed to lay down the mech­a­nism for sur­re­al­ism, for the post­mod­ern, where each thing has many parts and many lies and many truths hid with­in it.