Anna Butler

Bringing literary ideas to life

Anna's work plays with the literary tradition of “ekphrasis”, in which a poet uses words to describe a physical object.

Reversing this idea, Anna creates physical forms inspired by the words of her favourite writers – from philosopher Iris Murdoch to poet Emily Dickinson.

About

Anna Butler is a London-based artist with a background in cinema and literature, and Masters degrees from Cambridge University and the Royal College of Art.

Working primarily in ceramics and glass, Anna adds bronze, textiles and whatever is close at hand.

Reverse Ekphrasis

An intriguing line of poetry, a magical scene from a film, the perplexing words of a philosopher... Anna is drawn to subjects that defy simple explanations.

Weaving together multiple references, Anna's work gives physical form to the ideas – and mysteries – they contain. For each piece, she feels her way across a sliding scale of materials and techniques: from rugged red clay to the purest white porcelain, from the delicacy of paper to the boldness of bronze, and from age-old handmaking to new digital technologies.

In a game of creative pass-it-on, each reference becomes a starting point in an intermedial dialogue. Adding layers of interpretation, and knotting together seemingly-disparate ideas, Anna's work invites a contemplative and emotional response.

“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.”

– Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea