White. A Project by Edmund de Waal

About

This unique project in the RA Library and Print Room is an exploration of the colour white and the impact that white objects have on their surroundings; an interweaving of words and books with sculpture, paintings and photographs.

Artist Edmund de Waal is the best-selling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and the forthcoming The White Road. He has conceived and curated white, a project which sets objects in dialogue with one another and with the spaces around them.

White is not a neutral colour: it forces other colours to reveal themselves. Its blankness suggests both beginnings and endings, while its purity evokes impossibility and obsession. As a nexus for explorations of abstraction, minimalism and the spiritual, white has had special significance to artists across generations, and has fascinated de Waal himself since he made his first pot as a child.

From classical Greek statuary to a marble lantern by Ai Weiwei, and from Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Teapot to porcelain pots by de Waal, diverse artworks united by the colour white await discovery alongside little known parts of the Academy’s own collections, including J.M.W. Turner’s porcelain palette. Interspersed amongst the library’s shelves and cabinets, these unexpected encounters invite a quiet and serendipitous journey of discovery.