Nottingham-born acclaimed writer and contemporary artist Edmund de Waal creates porcelain-based installations and works that explore the narratives of objects and the act of their collection and display.
Read MoreEdmund de Waal developed an early interest in pottery. From 1981 to 1983 he was apprenticed to prominent British Potter Geoffrey Whiting. The artist/writer's 'White Gold' obsession—Porcelain—has spanned most of his career, throughout which he has expanded his understanding of the material through various travels and encounters with fellow practitioners. In 2002 he was a senior research fellow in ceramics at London's University of Westminster.
Edmund de Waal's pottery-based practice combines Eastern and Western traditions with a Minimalist aesthetic. This approach is infused with invocations of de Waal's other passion: language and the written word. In pursuit of this passion he attained a BA in English literature from the University of Cambridge in 1983, and a postgraduate diploma in Japanese language from the University of Sheffield in 1992.
Edmund de Waal's Library of Exile (2019) installation highlights his many interests. Originally shown at the 2019 Venice Biennale, the work presents 2,000 books by exiled authors from many eras and countries for visitors to read. They are housed in a pavilion with walls covered in white porcelain and bearing the names of the great lost libraries of the world, and shelves housing Minimalist porcelain sculptures that are typical of de Waal's installations.
Inspired by the looting of his family library in Vienna in 1938, de Waal wrote of the work 'With the catastrophe of the refugee crisis, the hardening of rhetoric, I wanted to make a work where the energy of exile, its polyphonic, plural nature could be celebrated.' The work reflects Edmund de Waal's interest, also, in the stories of objects, texts, and ideas, and how those stories are collected.
Edmund de Waal's interest in collecting stories is similarly reflected in his writing. Following the netsuke collection he inherited from his family across its 150-year history, de Waal's award-winning book The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) highlights how objects become repositories for memory, history, and experience.
Edmund de Waal's large-scale porcelain-based installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. His work can be found in major public collections including Oxford's Ashmolean Museum; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
cold mountain clay, Gagosian, Hong Kong (2020); library of exile, Japanisches Palais, Dresden (2019); During the Night, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (2016); Atmosphere, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2014); Signs & Wonders, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2009); Arcanum: mapping 18th-Century European porcelain, National Museum Wales, Cardiff (2005).
Duino Elegies, Gagosian, Madison Avenue, New York (2020); Seeing Round Corners, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016); Kneaded Knowledge: The Language of Ceramics, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2016); CERAMIX, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2015); A Secret History of Clay, Tate Liverpool (2004); World Ceramic Exposition, Incheon, Korea (2003); Color and Fire, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2000); The New White, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1999).
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2020
