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Veronica Ryan
Retrospective
Unruly Objects
Art Forum Review

March 7, 2025 - July 27, 2025

Portrait of Veronica Ryan, Photograph by Lisa Whiting Photography.
© Veronica Ryan, Courtesy Alison Jacques, London

March 7 – July 27, 2025
Pulitzer Arts Foundation
St Louis, MO

REVIEW OF VERONICA RYAN’S WORK IN ART FORUM  “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. ….Growth, death, rescue, rebirth—Ryan’s art is imbued with a palpable affective power. Like a poet, she uses deceptively simple materials, deftly and economically assembled, to tell complicated stories about her own life and the diasporic experience through a fine-tuned abstract language that’s been honed over decades. Akin to artists such as Noah Purifoy, B. Wurtz, Otis Houston Jr., and Candy Jernigan, Ryan uses the castoff to remind us of how much of this world is sorely neglected, and how desperately it requires our attention. ”

– Michelle Grabner Art Forum Summer 2025 Issue
Click here for complete review</strong>

Pulitzer Arts Foundation surveys four decades of artmaking by Montserrat-born, British artist Veronica Ryan, known for her singular ability to convert the most common of materials and objects into revelatory works of art.
As Ryan’s first comprehensive solo exhibition in the U.S., Veronica Ryan: Unruly Objects is co-organized by the Pulitzer and the Wexner Center for the Arts. The exhibition is curated by Tamara H. Schenkenberg, Curator, with Molly Moog, Curatorial Assistant, Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Among more than a hundred sculptures, textiles, and works on paper will be objects made of traditional art materials—i.e., bronze, marble, and plaster—as well as others sourced from such unexpected everyday items as seeds, pods, mango stones, orange peels, bandages, and plastic bottles. Ryan’s thoughtful reuse of organic materials in combination with mass-produced items suggests concerns around excess and consumption while also recognizing the unrealized potential of discarded objects.

For further information: Pulitzer Arts Foundation

Featured image on Home Page
Veronica Ryan
Infection VII (Punnet I)2020
Photo Stephen Robert
Copyright Veronica Ryan OBE RA
Courtesy of Paul Cooper Gallery

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