How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.[1]

As the bell tolls, the senses and the spirit are called upon. Bells have been used throughout time by different cultures for many different purposes. In the Middle Ages, priests rang a hand bell to ward off witches from sick people[2]. They can also be used to chase away ghosts and storms, as well as to locate animals. The harmonious ringing connects the earthly world with the spiritual. They are mainly ghost artefacts, often invisible to the eye, but ever-present in our daily lives through their sound. They are part of the soundscape of villages, towns and cities – albeit increasingly less present in the latter – and are regularly rung by churches, marking the passage of time, warning of the commencement of religious ceremonies and even announcing death. Bells are how we listen to time.

This object, usually high up, far from our eyes, comes down to us in the exhibition Rien ne va plus by Jorge Nesbitt and Vasco Futscher. The artists fill the Brotéria venue with a series of four-handed ceramic sculptures inspired by the bell’s shape. Distancing them from their original purpose, they restore the object’s symbolic and spiritual essence. These bells perpetuate silence, they neither signal nor mark time. But their lack of function is where their power as objects lies, inviting us to consider not only their physical form, but the emptiness it fills.

The fifteen bells the artists present are grouped into three sets and supported by a common metal structure, with different height variations, where each sculpture is balanced. The installation is a dynamic composition with bells that are all different, whether in size, colour or texture. Some bells are more geometric, others have more fluid shapes; there are dull and shiny surfaces; natural patterns and abstract brushstrokes; reliefs with tangible figures (a guitar or a pipe) and others reminiscent of the natural.

Rien ne va plus, the exhibition’s title, is a roulette expression to point out that bets are over, and also announces a point of no return or change. The sentence’s wording works in the same way as the sound of the bell: a warning that conveys and notifies of something about to happen. The expression is in tune with the expectant and tense atmosphere in the exhibition area, where the bells’ silent presence hint at an imminent transition.

The Rien ne va plus exhibition runs counter to the frantic and noisy turmoil of the world, inviting us to immerse ourselves in a quiet and contemplative space. Jorge Nesbitt and Vasco Futscher’s bells, while soundless, continue to echo within us, filling the gallery with a metaphysical reverberation. Each sculpture’s materiality emphasises the transcendent in its silence when we look at it. But the Church of São Roque, next to Brotéria, never lets us forget the role of the bell. Even in silence, they ring, if only in another body or inside our own.

The exhibition Rien ne va plus is on show at Brotéria until May 15, 2024.

[1] Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells (1809-1849). Available in: https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/bellsg.htm
[2] R. Murray Schafer. (1994). The soundscape: the tuning of the world. Destiny Books: United States, p. 173.