Edmund de Waal: Spirit and Substance

Edmund de Waal is an artist and writer whose work treats themes of memory, transience, contingency, and exile. He is known for creating groups of ceramics that invite meditation, and that breathe new life into narratives and places marked by loss.

He has exhibited in some of the world’s most famous art museums, including in London, Amsterdam, Venice, and Vienna. His 2019 Venetian installation, psalm, responded to the psalms as songs and poems of exile. An element from this exhibition, sukkah, later displayed in Canterbury Cathedral, evoked the Israelites’ forty years of desert wandering.

Edmund de Waal will be speaking to Professor Ben Quash about the role of religious traditions and texts in his work, and the ways in which he uses clay to investigate themes of diaspora, memory, materiality, and the sacred.

Followed by a drinks and canapés reception, 19:30-20:30