Veronica Ryan: Along a Spectrum – Alison Jacques

Maria Bartuszová

Tate Modern, London

Veronica Ryan Nominated for Turner Prize

The four shortlisted artists will exhibit their work at Tate Liverpool in October 2022

Nicola L.

in ‘Future Bodies from a Recent Past’, Museum Brandhorst, Munich

Sophie Barber at Independent

Spring Studios, New York

Carol Rhodes

in ‘Radical Landscapes’, Tate Liverpool

Nicola L.

in ‘Shell’, Del Vaz Projects, Santa Monica, Los Angeles

The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers

in ‘Eternally Yours: Repair, Care and Healing’, Somerset House, London

Ana Mendieta & Veronica Ryan

in ‘A Clearing in the Forest’, Tate Modern, London

Sophie Barber

in ‘Chambres d’Amis: IKEA’, Antwerp, Belgium

Carol Rhodes

in ‘Earth: Digging Deep in British Art 1781–2022’, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

Sheila Hicks in Conversation with Katy Hessel

The Great Women Artists Podcast

Veronica Ryan in conversation with David Olusoga

Artist in Conversation, Art Fund

Veronica Ryan in conversation with Clarrie Wallis

‘at home: Artists in Conversation’, Yale Center for British Art

Carol Rhodes

in ‘Scottish Women Artists: Transforming Tradition‘, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich

Veronica Ryan, ‘Along a Spectrum’, 2021, exhibition view, Spike Island, Bristol. Courtesy: Spike Island, Bristol, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Alison Jacques, London © Veronica Ryan; photo: Max McClure

Spike Island presents a major exhibition of new works by British artist Veronica Ryan (b. 1956, Plymouth, Montserrat). Supported by Freelands Foundation through the Freelands Award, this is Ryan’s largest and most ambitious exhibition in the UK to date.

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.

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