Veronica Ryan

Veronica Ryan
OBE RA
Born
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan

1956 (age 69–70)
Plymouth, Montserrat
Education
Notable workCustard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae) and Soursop (Annonaceae) (2021)
Awards
ElectedRoyal Academician (2022)

Veronica Maudlyn Ryan OBE RA (born 1956) is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. Her work is associated with the British Black Arts Movement, particularly through her participation in the exhibitions curated by Lubaina Himid: Black Women Time Now (1983), Five Black Women Artists (1983) and The Thin Black Line (1985). In 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize.

Ryan lives and works between New York and Bristol.

Early life and education

Ryan was born in 1956 in Plymouth, Montserrat, the eldest of eight children. Her parents grew up in the Caribbean; her mother in the countryside, her father in the town.

Ryan became interested in art in her school years. In particular, she remembers making a Christmas tree in infant school and being inspired by the creative use of materials in a minimalistic way. Ryan also cites her mother's patchwork as an inspiration for her art, and she learnt to sew and knit from an early age.

Ryan studied at Hertfordshire College of Art and Design (1974–75), then Bath Academy of Art (1975–78) for her undergraduate degree.

From 1978-80, Ryan studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Whilst there, she spent significant time in the nearby British Museum looking in the Egyptology section and looking at African, Asian and other early objects, which informed her work.

In 1980, Ryan was awarded a Boise Travelling Scholarship from the Slade.[citation needed] This allowed her to visit Nigeria.[citation needed] There, she became especially interested in the re-adaptation of everyday consumables, including food and ephemeral waste materials, into fetishes used in spiritual offerings and shrines.[citation needed] The trip inspired her to continue her studies with an MPhil degree in art history at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which she took from 1981-83.

Career

Ryan completed her studies at the beginning of the 1980s, a time marked by the rise of the British Black Arts Movement.[citation needed] In 1983, she took part in the exhibition Black Women Time Now, curated by Lubaina Himid, and later Five Black Women Artists, at the Africa Centre, also curated by Himid. Her participation in The Thin Black Line (ICA, London, 1985, curated by Lubaina Himid) and From Two Worlds (Whitechapel Gallery, London; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1986), meant that she became associated with a broader anti-racist movement.[citation needed] Later, she felt the need to clarify that her work should not be pinned exclusively to race. "All along I have had various people be very critical of me because I did not fit into their politicized agenda," she said.

In 1984, Ryan had her first solo show at the Tom Allen Centre.[citation needed]

Ryan was in residence at Tate St Ives in 1998 and 2000–01, when she worked in the former studio of Barbara Hepworth and used marble gifted by the Hepworth Estate.[citation needed]

In June 2017, Ryan had a residency at The Art House, Wakefield, where she re-examined her connection with Barbara Hepworth in relation to themes of ancestral history, domesticity and memory.

In 2018, Ryan was awarded the Freelands Award by the Freelands Foundation, for the exhibition Along a Spectrum at Spike Island, Bristol in Autumn 2020

Ryan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to art.

In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her "really poetic" work.

Sculpture

Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae) and Soursop (Annonaceae) in Hackney, London

Ryan's preferred materials range from heavy ones like cement, bronze, lead and painted plaster, to lighter and more ephemeral ones like paper, dust, flowers and feathers. Her sculptures are abstract and tend towards the biomorphic, appealing to organic forms like pods, shells, husks and seeds. Relics in the Pillow of Dreams (1985) is exemplary of this aesthetic. The organic nature of Ryan's work is accentuated by its direct placement on the floor, without a plinth.

Key is also the relationship between the container and the content, and therefore between the interior and exterior dimension. In an article published to coincide with her exhibition at Camden Arts Centre and Angel Row Gallery, Ryan explains how her small studio in New York is also a representation of the container, and as such a sculptural environment in which daily accumulations, dust heaps, deposits become the preoccupations in the work. Conceptually, Ryan draws on a combination of personal experience, ancestral history and the natural environment. A product of the British Caribbean diaspora, she is particularly attentive to questions of origins, memory, and belonging in relation to place and landscape. Domesticity, maternity and the role of women in society are also interrogated in her sculptures.

On 1 October 2021, Ryan's three-piece, marble and bronze work Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae) and Soursop (Annonaceae), depicting three Caribbean fruits, was unveiled in the London Borough of Hackney as London's first permanent public monument celebrating the Windrush generation, and the first permanent public sculpture by a black female artist in the UK. The triptych received the 2022 Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture.

Influences

From the outset, Ryan was keen to break out of the mould of British modernism as it was then taught by drawing on a wider range of female sculptors and artists of colour for inspiration.[citation needed] New Beacon Books was where Ryan went to find information about non-Western artists and artists of colour. Among her earliest influences was the German-born American sculptor Eva Hesse, whose work she saw first-hand in 1979, when the exhibition Eva Hesse: Sculpture was on at the Whitechapel Gallery.[citation needed] Around the same time, Ryan discovered the work of Louise Bourgeois and Alice Aycock at the Hayward Gallery.[citation needed] Another formative influence was Barbara Hepworth.[citation needed]

Exhibitions

Solo

Year Title Institution Location Ref
1984 Tom Allen Centre
1987 ICA London
Arnolfini Gallery Bristol
1988 Kettle's Yard Cambridge
Riverside Studios London
1995 Camden Arts Centre London
Angel Row Nottingham
2005 Archaeology of the Black Sun. Musings After Kristeva Salena Gallery, Long Island University New York
2011 - 2012 The Weather Inside The Mattress Factory Pittsburgh
2017 - 2018 The Art House Wakefield
2018 Virginia Woolf: Exhibition Inspired By Her Writings Tate St Ives Cornwall
Tour
The Sculpture Collections Exhibition Leeds Gallery Henry Moore Institute Leeds
2025 Unruly Objects Pulitzer Arts Foundation St Louis
2026 Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations Whitechapel Gallery London
2026 Mount Stuart Isle of Bute

Group

Year Title Institution Location Notes Ref
1983 Five Black Women Artists Africa Centre London Curated by Lubaina Himid
1984 Sculptors and Modellers Tate
1985 The Thin Black Line ICA Curated by Lubaina Himid
1986 Stoke City Garden Festival Stoke-on-Trent
From Two Worlds Whitechapel Gallery London
Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh
1990 British Art Show Hayward Gallery London
1993 - 1994 Recent British Sculpture Touring Organised by the Arts Council
2015 Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977–1986
2017 The Place Is Here Nottingham Contemporary Nottingham

Collections

Ryan's work is in several public collections including:

Honours and recognition

Ryan has been awarded several prizes and honours, including:

A portrait of Ryan by photographer Andy Feldman is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Youngs, Ian (7 December 2022). "Turner Prize: Windrush memorial artist Veronica Ryan wins for 'poetic' sculptures". BBC News. Retrieved 4 March 2023.
  2. ↑ "Veronica Ryan". Diaspora Artists. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Veronica Ryan (1956–), Artist". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  4. 1 2 The Art House UK, "Veronica Ryan | Change Makers Artist in Residence, 2017", video recording, YouTube, 10 January 2018. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  5. ↑ Fullerton, Elizabeth (Spring 2026). "Veronica Ryan". Art Quarterly: 43–47.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Kerman, Monique (2017). Contemporary British Artists of African Descent and the Unburdening of a Generation. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-65199-6.
  7. ↑ Ratnam, Niru (2002). "Black Women Time Now". In Alison Donnell (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-134-70024-0.
  8. ↑ "Veronica Ryan". The Hepworth Wakefield. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  9. 1 2 "Freelands Award 2018". Freelands Foundation. Archived from the original on 28 February 2024. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Fullerton, Elizabeth (Spring 2026). "Veronica Ryan". Art Quarterly: 43–47.
  11. 1 2 "No. 63377". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 2021. p. B14.
  12. 1 2 "Turner Prize 2022: Trafalgar Square whipped cream artist among nominees". BBC News. 12 April 2022. Retrieved 12 April 2022.
  13. ↑ Santacatterina, Stella (1995). Veronica Ryan. Camden Arts Centre.
  14. 1 2 "From Two Worlds". Diaspora Artists. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  15. ↑ Rea, Naomi (1 October 2021). "London Unveils Its First Public Monument Celebrating the Windrush Generation of Caribbean Migrants to the U.K." Artnet. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  16. ↑ "Hackney Windrush commission by VERONICA RYAN". Create London. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023.
  17. ↑ "Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture". Marsh Charitable Trust. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  18. ↑ Buckman, David (2006). Artists in Britain Since 1945. Art Dictionaries. p. 1393. ISBN 095326095X.
  19. ↑ Cascone, Sarah (17 August 2021). "See Major Works by Karon Davis, Hélio Oiticica, and Others That the Pérez Art Museum Miami Has Added to Its Collection". Artnet News. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
  20. ↑ "Pérez Art Museum Miami Announces New Acquisitions by Thirteen Artists for Permanent Collection • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
  21. 1 2 3 "Salvage: Veronica Ryan Residency Exhibition". The Art House. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Veronica Ryan CV 2018". Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  23. ↑ "NPG x125026; Veronica Ryan – Portrait – National Portrait Gallery". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 15 March 2021.

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