Strange Clay: Edmund de Waal on Atmosphere
‘I’m interested in the making, and I’m interested in the placing, and how those two things talk to each other; how that space works’.
The artist and master potter Edmund de Waal introduces us to his installation piece Atmosphere (2014), which features in the Hayward Gallery exhibition, Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art. The work consists of a great number of porcelain objects displayed in suspended vitrines, each of which has a different opacity to its glass, altering our sense and perception of the objects contained within them.
In this video De Waal explains how the inspiration for the work came from clouds – particularly the cloud studies of Constable and Ruskin – and by how we consider the changing nature of our outdoor environment, particularly in the face of the current climate emergency. As well as discussing the way in which the Hayward Gallery’s architecture can impact on how Atmosphere is viewed, the artist also expands on the significance of the vitrines; both within this and his wider work, but also through their personal symbolism to him, as being representative of a safe space in which things can exist, protected from the world around them.
‘For 20 years I’ve been playing with vitrines, and this was the first attempt to try and hold something up in the air, and so you have to talk to engineers, and the great thing about engineers is they are problem solvers. So we had this extraordinary series of conversations which began with ‘no’ and got to ‘yes’ through lots of iterations.’
Enjoyed this video? Watch more artist insights into the works of Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art.
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