{"id":513534,"date":"2026-04-05T02:32:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T02:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/513534\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T02:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T02:32:26","slug":"veronica-ryan-review-is-it-art-or-rubbish-i-know-which-way-im-leaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/513534\/","title":{"rendered":"Veronica Ryan review \u2014 is it art or rubbish? I know which way I\u2019m leaning\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve heard of Pseuds Corner? Veronica Ryan\u2019s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is a trip to Pseuds Cornershop. Here are yoghurt pots and teabags, avocado trays and fruit nets, all displayed and captioned with whispering reverence. The Doily: A Dissertation. It\u2019s a frustrating show. I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing \u2014 recycling, make-do-and-mend, the whole stitching, patching scrap-bag of domestic virtues \u2014 and I still found it muted and mimsy.<\/p>\n

Ryan, who won the Turner prize in 2022, has said: \u201cI\u2019m often interested in things that are supposed to be rubbish.\u201d Her materials are a mix of scavenging and salvation. Nothing wasted, no cotton bud left behind. Paper hospital cups are squashed and arranged into a collage that is almost a sculpture in shallow relief. Worthless objects are wrapped in string bags and latticed fruit foam as if they were bodies in swaddling clothes or shrouds. Faced with a wall of these votive turtle-chokers, I had the sacrilegious thought: bung \u2019em in the bin. Not worth the shelf space.<\/p>\n

\"InstallationUntitled (Magnolia Pod), 2024 Matt Greenwood\/Above Ground Studio<\/p>\n

Chuck out the clutter and there is beauty here too. A still life assembled from stoneware recreations of plastic drink bottles and laundry detergents is like a Morandi for the slurp-and-chuck age. A ceramic tower of imitation water-cooler bottles is a very modern, very corporate sort of totem pole. She has fun with the porcupine contrasts of pincushions: the squish of the pillows and the spike of the pins.<\/p>\n

Ryan was born in Plymouth, Montserrat, in the Caribbean and came to England as a young child. Her work often takes as its starting point a seed, a kernel, a whole fruit or bean pod. She casts magnolia seeds in bronze and ties them into a blackened bouquet. One magnolia seed is blown up a hundred times and cast in bronze. Fallen on the gallery floor, you start to imagine its parent tree, tall as the neighbouring office blocks.<\/p>\n

Ryan rarely goes in for plinths \u2014 though the odd sculpture sits on a pouffe \u2014 preferring to lay her sculptures on the floor. She was struck on a visit to Nigeria by the way street-sellers would set out loofahs and other natural wares on the ground.<\/p>\n

\"VeronicaVeronica Ryan in Along a Spectrum, 2021Courtesy Alison Jacques and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photo Lisa Whiting<\/p>\n

At Hackney Central a trio of Ryan sculptures paying tribute to the Windrush generation \u2014 a giant custard apple, a breadfruit and a soursop in marble and bronze \u2014 sit directly on the paving slabs. In botany, flying seeds that are dispersed by air are known as \u201cdiaspores\u201d. Ryan\u2019s cocoa pods and mango seeds, carried in boats or boat-like trays, ask you to think about diasporas of all sorts.<\/p>\n

She isn\u2019t heavy-handed. The problem is more being so light touch as to make almost no impression at all. Strain as I might, I can\u2019t see the message \u2014 or the merit \u2014 in her hanging tea-strainers, graters and sieves. At the back of the main gallery, hangs a display of crocheted sculptures like long, stretched stockings drying on a line. It\u2019s a useful, if inadvertent, image for an exhibition that takes good ideas and stretches them thin.
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Whitechapel Gallery, London, Apr 1 to Jun 14,\u00a0whitechapelgallery.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve heard of Pseuds Corner? Veronica Ryan\u2019s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is a trip to Pseuds Cornershop.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-513534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}