1.Object Attachment

It is true that the overbearing ostentation, with which the banal object seems to arise from the depths of allegory, is soon replaced by its disconsolate everyday countenance. — Walter Benjamin¹ 

It is not easy to make out, with absolute certainty, the title of the only book that offers something akin to a panoramic view of Emily Wardill’s work to date: at first glance, it looks like it is simply titled ‘We are behind’ — at least, that’s what both the cover (a view of four women ascending a staircase, seen from the back, ostensibly echoing Oskar Schlemmer’s famous Bauhaustreppe (Bauhaus Stairway) painting from 1932: we are behind them indeed) and the first page appear to be telling us. On the second page, however, in the same flowing, skewed font known colloquially as a ‘captcha’ — short for a ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’, or the challenge that is given on web pages to weed out spambots — this title continues, announcing: ‘We are behind the object.’ The object, to be sure, is a major issue in Wardill’s art. In a (sort of) introduction to the book, the artist informs us that 

This is a lecture in seven parts. I am going to talk about the object. I am not just going to talk about it, I want to make us feel it, with our flesh. The seven parts are ordered under the following titles: 1 The Object 2 The Rational Mind and The Irrational Mind 3 The Diamond (Descartes Daughter) 4 The Daughter 5 The Irrational 6 The Irrational Daughter: Stay 7 The