This retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery covers five decades of Veronica Ryan‘s career, from the 1980s to 2026 including new works specially commissioned for the show.
I’ve focussed here on her use of seed pods and fruit as the theme runs throughout her career (see the drawing above from 1983). They represent growth and possibility, decay and death as well as movement through trade and migration. Multiple conversations indeed.
You may remember a blog post from several years ago where I featured her installation commemorating the Windrush generation. The sculptures are of fruit familiar to those who travelled across the ocean from the Caribbean to the UK.
Ceramic cocoa pods, coloured like sweets, laid on a jute mat with one escaping or adrift.
In this piece below, soursop fruit pods made of silicone, sink into a marble slab laid on a lead mat. I found it very moving, as if these were offerings on a tomb.
I read the text (I look first then read) that a quoit is a Welsh funerary stone structure. The sculpture was made soon after the devastating volcanic eruption on Monserrat which destroyed much of the island, including Ryan’s birthplace Plymouth.
In “Inside Out, Outside In”, lead-wrapped seed shapes lay on a lead pod with upturned edges, three spaces empty…
The wrapped shapes also reminded me of crushed and discarded ballet shoes. Preservation, commemoration, grief, loss with hope and the potential of coming life.
The exhibition is on until 14th June.