How far is Roman wall painting still relevant today? Pompeii and Herculaneum offer an exceptional and unique source of information on roman visual arts as many frescoes and mosaics that originally decorated the houses of the inhabitants of the cities were marvellously preserved by the tragic eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The walls of houses are still covered by colourful images of gods and goddesses, heroes, men and women but also by images of objects and scenes derived by the daily life of a Roman city that allow us to get a better understanding of the moral values, the religious beliefs and the notions about status and identity that underpinned the making of these amazing images.

Beyond the understanding of the past, after almost 2000 years Roman wall paintings can still inspire us with the freshness of their design, the strength of their colours and the quality of their craftmanship. This EPQ project stems from Expanded Interiors, an interdisciplinary Fine Art project developed by visual artists Catrin Huber at Newcastle University and offers you two possible EPQ research questions: one is to look at the past use of Roman wall painting to get a better understanding of Roman culture and society, the other is to look at them in their original context and then to get inspired to create something new and relevant to contemporary life.

• Look at examples of wall and floor decoration from Roman houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum. How far do they reflect notions about status and identity? And what can they tell us about the way privacy was negotiated in a Roman house?
• How far is Roman wall painting still relevant to contemporary art practice? Get inspired by roman wall paintings in Pompeii and Herculaneum, looking at their role and their relevance in roman domestic space and at their reciprocal visual relationships, to produce your own piece of artwork.

Expanded Interiors at Pompeii and Herculaneum

Check the Expanded Interiors project website (click here) for further information on the relevance of Roman wall painting in contemporary art practice and to know more on the wall paintings in two distinctive houses: the House of the Cryptoporticus in Pompeii and the House of the Beautiful Courtyard in Herculaneum.

• Watch Professor Catrin Huber talk about a contemporary artist impressions on Roman wall painting (click here) 
• Watch Professor Ian Haynes talk about an archaeologist’s work in a fine art project in Pompeii and Herculaneum (click here) 
• Watch Alex Turner discuss scanning Roman objects to help Catrin Huber produce her installations (click here)

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• Expanded Interiors: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/expandedinteriors/
• Perseus digital library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
• The Grove Art Online: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/