EDMUND DE WAAL
b. 1964, United KingdomEdmund de Waal’s art and literature speak to his enduring fascination with the nature of objects and the narratives of their collection and display. A potter since childhood and an acclaimed writer, de Waal has a long-held obsession with porcelain, or ‘white gold.’ This fascination has led to encounters with many people and places that have helped deepen his understanding of the nature of the material. De Waal is best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, which have been exhibited in many museums around the world. Much of his recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections, and how objects are kept together, lost, stolen, and dispersed. His work comes out of a dialogue between Minimalism, architecture, and sound and is informed by his passion for literature.
De Waal was born in 1964 in Nottingham, England. He received a BA Honors in English literature in 1983 from the University of Cambridge, England, and a postgraduate diploma in Japanese language in 1992 from the University of Sheffield, England. De Waal was a senior research fellow in ceramics at the University of Westminster, London, in 2002. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Ceramic Rooms, Geffrye Museum, London (2001); New Art Centre, Roche Court, England (2004); Arcanum, National Museum Cardiff, Wales (2005); Vessel, perhaps, Millgate Museum, Newark, England (2006); Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England (2007); Signs and Wonders, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2009); Night Work, New Art Centre, Roche Court, England (2010); Waddesdon Manor, England (2012); On White: Porcelain Stories from the Fitzwilliam, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England (2013); Another Hour, Southwark Cathedral, London (2014); Atmosphere, Turner Contemporary, Margate, England (2014); Lichtzwang, Theseus Temple, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2014); The lost and the found: work from Orkney, New Art Centre, Roche Court, England (2015); and white: a project by Edmund de Waal, Royal Academy of Arts, London. His work has been shown and collected by museums throughout the world, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2016 de Waal curated During the Night at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
De Waal’s acclaimed memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes was the winner of the Costa Biography Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. In 2015 de Waal was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction by Yale University. His latest book, The White Road: Journey into an Obsession, was published in November 2015.
De Waal lives and works in London.
Courtesy Gagosian
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