Veronica Ryan – Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Michelle Grabner, Artforum
June 2025
There is little that is unruly in Veronica Ryan’s sculptural forms and arrangements. But the methods the Montserrat-born British artist uses to execute them, from hand-sewing to bronze casting, are endlessly surprising. Her materials, such as mango seeds, vintage 35-mm slides, tea bags, straight pins, and broad beans, speak to the autobiographical, and are prodded into unexpected abstract configurations examining adornment, containment, and wholeness. Within this raw concrete space—Tadao Ando’s monument to Minimalist aesthetics—Ryan’s decades-long impulse toward diachronic unity is on full view. Her plangent survey at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, “Unruly Objects,” features 124 drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations—made between 1983 and 2024—organized around seven distinct themes. […]