Veronica Ryan, Along a Spectrum

About

Ryan is best known for her sculpture that is evocative of shapes, forms and objects from the natural world. Over the years, she has experimented with scale, material and technique while remaining focused on the interplay between conflicting opposites: revelation and concealment, container and contained, absence and presence. Her work sits at the intersection between materiality and idea, and enquires into the processes by which objects carry and construct meaning.

Made during an extended residency at Spike Island in Bristol, the works in Along a Spectrum examine environmental and socio-political concerns, personal narratives, history and displacement, as well as the wider psychological implications of the current pandemic. New works include cast forms in clay and bronze; sewn and tea-stained fabrics; and bright neon crocheted fishing line pouches filled with a variety of seeds, fruit stones and skins.

Fruits, seeds, plants and vegetables are recurring motifs in Ryan’s sculpture – they function metaphorically for the artist’s own sense of dislocation and, more widely, they allude to a history of trading across the globe. In Ryan’s work, personal experience is often conditioned by a sense of location. An important focus of her research is on the history of Montserrat and trying to identify its early culture prior to the arrival of the Europeans. As such, Along a Spectrum presents large groups of soursop skins and cocoa pods cast in clay and glazed with volcanic ash from Alliouagana, the name by which the native Caribs called the island of Montserrat.

VERONICA RYAN

Veronica Ryan (b. 1956, Plymouth, Montserrat) moved to England as an infant and she currently works between New York and the UK. Ryan studied at St. Albans College of Art and Design; Bath Academy of Art in Corsham Court; The Slade School of Art at University College, London, and The School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. Ryan’s solo exhibitions include The Weather Inside, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2019); Salvage, The Art House, Wakefield (2017); The Weather Inside, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburg (2011); Archaeology of the Black Sun, Salena Gallery, Long Island (2005); Quoit Montserrat, Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2000); Compartments/Apartments, Camden Arts Centre, London and Angel Row, Nottingham (1995), and Arnolfini, Bristol (1987). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (2019); Nottingham Contemporary (2017); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2009); The Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007); Tate Modern, London (2005); Tate St Ives, Cornwall (1998); Bard College, New York (1995); Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (1992); Hayward Gallery, London (1990); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (1988); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1985). Ryan has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including most recently the 2019 Pollock Krasner Grant, the 2018 Freelands Award, and the Hackney Art Windrush Commission (to be unveiled in 2021).