Rebecca Moccia, 'Nostalgism,' Exhibition Film

Rebecca Moccia’s exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios was a material, filmic and spatial representation of her research on the subject of nostalgia. A new multi-channel video work was integrated within fragmented parts of a monumental sculpture, creating a sprawling, unwieldy form that materialises the sensorial experience of nostalgia. While Moccia focuses on nostalgia as a characteristic of contemporary anxiety shaped by neoliberal socio-economic systems, Nostalgism was grounded in the artist’s personal and familial experiences, and the twentieth-century history of her home city of Naples, Southern Italy.

The film was displayed across eight analogue and digital screens varying in scale and format, all appropriated from the storage of the Gallery where they otherwise lie dormant between exhibitions. Moccia’s footage also intentionally mismatched video formats, resolution and eras of technology as she films using a range of devices that emphasise lens and image distortion. These formats include digitised footage from a 1990s Video8 camera shot this spring, interspersed with 1980s documentaries on the growth of industrial activities in Naples from the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico ETS (Audiovisual Archive of the Workers and Democratic Movement) and BBC news reports from the 1944 eruption of Vesuvius. Much of the contemporary content filmed by Moccia during the preceding months used an anamorphic lens that focuses the central subject of the shot while distorting the peripheral edges.

The sculpture, Ancestors Syndrome, comprised several parts of cast aluminium integrated with the Gallery’s architecture replicating shapes and colours derived from a geological map of the 1944 Vesuvius crater and lava flow. Its fluid forms are resolved in a hauntological state between collapse and reconstruction, reflecting the reality of the undetermined and involuntary emotional, social and cultural upheaval. The process of casting aluminium echoes the inherent destruction of the eruption, as molten aluminium is poured into sand-filled moulds.

The installation’s soundtrack, composed by Renato Grieco, takes an approach to formality and intuition that similarly portrays an unfixed moment in time between the past and present. It is primarily played with a chitarra battente (“strumming guitar”), a traditional rhythmic instrument from Southern Italy that has survived virtually unchanged since the early Baroque period. Grieco’s studio recordings were transduced and transposed through a range of contemporary and obsolete audio formats and systems, to provide a range of sounds that echo processes and technologies across eras.

Rebecca Moccia’s recent exhibitions include Panorama, Pozzuoli (2025); Italian Pavilion, 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024); Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon (2024); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2023); Mazzoleni, Turin (2023); ICA Milano (2023); Jupiter Woods, London (2022). Rebecca Moccia is a PhD Researcher in Visual Arts and Creative Practices at Naples Academy of Fine Arts, and Co-founder of Art Workers Italia.

This exhibition is in partnership with Careof, Milan. Moccia’s new moving image work is produced by Careof, in collaboration with Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Collezione Agovino, WHITESPACE Projects Napoli, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Dublin. With thanks to Mazzoleni for their support. The exhibition film was shot by Jenny Brady.