Emma Witter: Remember You Must Die

WHO KNEW BONES WERE SO BEAUTIFUL? 
BY SARA DARLING

Sarabande Foundation was founded in 2007 by fashion designer Lee Alexander 
With an eagerly anticipated solo show coming to the Sarabande Foundation from Wednesday 18th September to Sunday 22nd September, 2019, artist Emma Witter will showcase creatively crafted bones. 

Featuring sculptures alongside photographic prints and a site-specific installation, the works will pay gentle tribute to the symbolic and emotionally loaded material in the McQueen artist residence, which is named after his 2007 Spring/Summer collection, Sarabande. 

Celebrating diversity, and hope for the future, Witter's show will focus on the 
flower motif, which is symbolically resurrected every year as it comes into bloom, and Witter forms from tiny chicken feet bones. 

Having explored the use of bone in varying forms, Witters has developed a fascination for the stark bleached whiteness, which are both delicate and strong.  The artist began recycling bones from her own consumption and that of friends, going on to source from chefs, butchers and by combing the shores of the River Thames. Her process is labor intensive as she then boils, cleans, bleaches, dries, and then categorises the bones forming a lengthy and ritualistic part of her practice.

Rather than using a skull, Witter plays with the idea of her bones as vases, and everyday objects, which will hopefully widen people's perceptions of death.
 
See the show at Sarabande Foundation, 22 Hertford Road, London, N1 5SH from 18-22 September. 
https://www.sarabandefoundation.org/