“So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.”
Amy Tan , 1952 - Present
The British artist Emma Witter is a prolific found object and material collector. Her studio contains boxes filled with bones, glass, ceramics, feathers, fish skin, and many other novelties. If a discovery catches Witter’s eye and arrests her imagination, it will be carefully packed and neatly organised, awaiting her creative rigor. Through different processes, she transforms her treasures into stunning enchanting pieces, imbued with new connotations and life.
In her latest collection of works, Remnants and Rituals, 2022, she ponders the secrets of her much-cherished findings. The selection of the materials is centred on recollections of her personal life, as well as the beauty of nature.
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The five photographs from this cycle are comprised of different backstories. Woven Sinamay presents an image of an intricate bone pattern. Witter is well-known for her elaborate bone sculptures, which she so meticulously and patiently assembles. The process of cleaning this calcified material involves bleaching, drying, and sorting by shape and size. Recently, Witter was working with woven sinamay, a fabric used for millinery. As luck would have it, Witter learned her Jamaican great-grandmother – a woman she never met, who lived in a different era, far across the ocean - used to make ends meet by weaving grass hats for local fishermen, Witter felt bonded to her through this shared act of making.
One evening, Witter was cooking dinner when the beauty of a sea bass skin and its iridescent sheen took her by surprise, and she thought it was too beautiful to prepare and consume. She removed the skin entirely from the fish, then cleaned and dried it for close-up inspection and photography. Sea Jewel reveals the layers of opal tones of freckled fish scales, glistening like jewels.
Baby Nest is a collection of small soft feathers Witter took carefully home inside her cupped hands. Found in a field, this soft, velvety fluffy down looked innocent at first until she realised the remnants were evidence from a killing ground where a large bird of prey had attacked a minor vulnerable nestling. Witter wove these relics into a tiny nest, paying tribute to a small insignificant life, and perhaps creating a dwelling of care for something even more delicate.
Witter collected and pressed flowers from her grandmother’s funeral. Trapping flowers they’d picked between heavy stacks of books was a tradition she and her had engaged in since she was child. Weeks later, they impatiently opened the books to retrieve the fragile petals. To Witter, Rose to Glory is a metaphor, the floral leaf representing a soft duvet in which her grandmother is wrapped, sleeping peacefully - an attempt to preserve and hold on to what once was.
Stamens, 2021: when Witter was unpacking the delicate dried flowers from her grandmother’s funeral, the stamens of the lilies had become incredibly fragile. The artist gathered these pollen-producing reproductive structures together, hung them upside down, and covered each of them with crystal resin to strengthen and protect their shapes. As the resin seeped like honey down the pollen, it appeared to return to life.
We can observe an obsessiveness towards the care and attention bequeathed to these enriching objects beside a feeling of piety. The collecting and preparation are quiet and ritualistic, demonstrating a hyper-focusing, a phenomenon experienced by individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. With her work Witter, attempts to explain to people how beautiful objects, spaces, and textures are during moments of hyper focusing, when the surrounding world truly dissolves.
Witter’s most recent limited edition brings together a unique selection of photographs presented in small glass boxes, demonstrating Witter's adoration for insignificant and discarded items; thus, she carefully preserves, arranges, and initiates a kind of rebirth or revival with an altered meaning. Her contemporary vanitas mesmerizes our eye and imagination, drawing attention to the fleeting moments of life, and to Witter’s own personal stories, as well as instances we share.
Image: Emma Witter, Rose to Glory, 2022, giclée print on Hahnemühle Pearl paper, inside glass box, H170 mm x W 113 mm.
Newsletter: Courtesy and ©Emma Witter and Renée Pfister (text).
Video: Courtesy and ©Emma Witter and Renée Pfister (text), Benjamin Tissot, (music) https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/piano-moment, with the assistance of Georgia McConnell. All rights reserved.