Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; MIMA, Middlesborough 2007

Edmund de Waal came to know Kettle’s Yard while studying English at Trinity Hall in the mid ’80s.

As a potter and a writer about ceramics, de Waal has long reflected on how pots have been presented and perceived. Using the variety of spaces in the gallery and extending into the house with its permanent collection, de Waal installed a series of installations, many of them made specially for the exhibition. The first, ‘A Change in the Weather’, offered the visitor a pot for each day of the year. Further on, there were pots in a skylight, on shelves and in boxes, and running along the street-front window sill. In the last space, we were enticed to glimpse into a room – a Wunderkammer – lined and stacked with 342 plates. In the house, smaller installations, such as ‘Ghost’ replaced the normal pots and found their way into bookshelves and cupboards.

The exhibition was organised with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where it later travelled to. It was grant-aided through the Arts Council England Lottery Fund and by the University of Westminster.

- Text & images courtesy of Kettles Yard

De Waal collaborated with architectural photographer Helene Binet, on a series of large plates documenting these installations. Flow is very pleased to present the edition of 'A Change in the Weather,' Digital C type print, from this exhibition. The first edition has its home above the desk at Flow, and at this time of year it just catches the afternoon sunlight. 

Helene Binet is a Swiss and French internationally acclaimed photographer based in London, who has captured de Waal's installations and the spaces in which his work is shown, including his studio and exhibition venues.