Along a Spectrum, which ran from 19 May to Sunday 5 September 2021 at Spike Island, was Veronica Ryan's largest and most ambitious solo exhibition to date. The central proposition of the exhibition is to commission significant new works and situate them in dialogue with re-made early works that were destroyed in the 2004 Momart fire. In doing so, thematic and material connections will link earlier works to her current practice, as well as highlighting complexities around reconstruction and reinterpretation. Alongside the exhibition, Spike Island will become a vibrant hub for the production and debate of Ryan’s work. A three-month artist residency and symposium will offer opportunities for new audiences to engage directly with Ryan’s process through participation and discussion.
The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive monograph. Surveying the breadth and richness of her career to date, the book contains essays by scholars and curators including Vanessa Boni, Dorothy Price and Natalie Rudd, as well as a conversation between Ryan and art historian Courtney J. Martin.
Veronica Ryan, Infection, detail, 2020-21. Commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol and supported by Freelands Foundation. Photo: Max McClure. Copyright Veronica Ryan. Courtesy Spike Island, Bristol, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Alison Jacques, London
Elisabeth Murdoch, Founder and Chair of Freelands Foundation:
“The Foundation and I are thrilled to be working with Spike Island on such an important exhibition of Veronica Ryan’s multidisciplinary work. The judging panel were in strong agreement that the organisation and artist were an excellent match. The upcoming exhibition opens Ryan’s work up to new narratives, new voices and new writing by utilising the gallery’s outstanding facilities and team resources. The project will encompass not just the exhibition but a comprehensive monograph and artist residency at Spike Island studios, allowing a wide audience to better understand the way in which Ryan’s historical works relate and connect to new commissions almost three decades later.”
Robert Leckie, Director, Spike Island:
“My colleagues and I are thrilled that Freelands Foundation have selected Spike Island and Veronica Ryan to work in partnership on this important project. This award presents a career-defining opportunity for Ryan; historically an important artist whose work opened up new frontiers in sculpture, and who, once again, is on an upward trajectory.
As an organisation dedicated to supporting artists’ development and the production and presentation of ambitious new work, welcoming Ryan into our dynamic community of artists at this point in her career is an outstanding opportunity for Spike Island. We are keen to share her work with new UK audiences through an ambitious exhibition in Spike Island’s galleries and accompanying public programme and monographic publication. The award also provides crucial funding for a programme of learning and engagement activities, presenting a fantastic opportunity for Spike Island to grow as an organisation.”
Selected Artist, Veronica Ryan:
Veronica Ryan is a British artist who currently splits her time between New York and the UK. Born in 1956 in Montserrat, West Indies, she emigrated to England when she was two years old. She studied at Bath Academy of Art, the Slade School of Art and the School for Oriental and African Studies.
Ryan’s first solo exhibition was at Arnolfini, Bristol in 1987. With a prolific career spanning decades, Ryan’s work draws on her enquiries into ancestral history as well as collective human experiences of place, home, memory and loss. While primarily working in sculpture, she integrates a range of different media and components such as cast forms in plaster, clay, bronze and aluminium, to more ephemeral found materials such as dried flowers, fruit, feathers and dust. These material combinations create fragile propositions, unpicking tensions between container/contained, comfort/protection, absence/presence and other implicit contradictions which defy easy readings. Often exploring themes such as containment, psychology and perception, her sculptures and installations use the language of mapping, stacking, stitching and tipping to invite us to engage with the deepest levels of our psyches, our bodily relationships with the material world and the intersection of these.
Veronica Ryan at Spike Island. Image: Courtesy of Jeff Moore
Selection Panel
Elisabeth Murdoch, Chair, Founder of Freelands Foundation
Martin Clark, Director of Camden Art Centre
Susan Hiller, Artist
Jenni Lomax, Curator and former Director of Camden Art Centre
Beatrix Ruf, Curator and former Director of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Shortlist
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
The MAC, Belfast
Spike Island, Bristol
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
Read an interview with Freelands Award 2018 artist Veronica Ryan in our third issue of FOCUS
The Freelands Award was won in 2017 by Nottingham Contemporary. They will present a major exhibition with artist Lis Rhodes, open from 25 May – 25 August 2019.
The inaugural Freelands Award was won by The Fruitmarket Gallery in 2016 with Glasgow-based artist Jaqueline Donachie. The culminating solo exhibition was open from 11 November 2017 to 11 February 2018. A monograph publication of Donachie’s work and practice accompanied the exhibition.
