Edmund de Waal: if we attend

‘if we attend’ (2015), a white, wall-mounted vitrine with translucent glazing and 16 porcelain vessels, is a new piece produced especially for the David Jones exhibition. It references the calming slowing down effect of these words in the second line of Jones’s poem The Anathemata: ‘We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His groping syntax, if we attend, already shapes…’. The work, displayed alongside two other porcelain works – ‘in the north north east’ (2014) and ‘thirteen circles’ (2014) – will be accompanied by a series of poems by David Jones, creating a contemplative space reflecting the nature of the work. De Waal’s new book The White Road, published by Chatto & Windus, launches this autumn.

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