Edmund De Waal

I have made two new works for the New Art Centre which are currently on view at the Artists' House. They are named Objects and Apparitions I and II after the poem by Octavio Paz, which was beautifully translated by Elizabeth Bishop in 1974. The poem was written as a tribute to the American artist Joseph Cornell, who made collages of found objects and placed them in glass fronted boxes. I love the fragmentary feel to the poem: how some objects are clearly described and others 'weigh less than light, lasting as long as this phrase lasts'.

When thinking about my own work, I was particularly inspired by the line, 'Memory weaves, unweaves the echoes: in the four corners of the box'. This is my tribute to the memory of reading Bishop's translation and giving it a life within a vitrine. 

For more images of the Objects and Apparitions series, please see Responses in the Making section of the website.