Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations

1 Apr-14 Jun 2026

Overview

Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations, is one of the most extensive presentations to date of the acclaimed Freelands Award and Turner Prize winning artist, Veronica Ryan, OBE, RA (b. 1956, Plymouth, Montserrat).

Encompassing more than 100 works, and spanning four decades, the exhibition reflects the full spectrum of Ryan’s practice, showcasing her multifaceted work across sculpture, textiles and works on paper and illuminating a distinctive, highly evocative, visual language. Significantly, the exhibition features recently rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings – which reveal an enduring deep interest in psychology, memory and personal stories, while also connecting to wider themes around the environment, history, trauma and recovery.

Ryan is known for her long-standing interest in the intricate structures and patterns of the natural world. In her work, seeds and pods hold significant but ambiguous meaning as protective vessels for new life, as well as enclosed containers associated with confinement or evolution. Ryan is also interested in exploring the invisible aspects of human experience; the unseen forces that shape the inner workings of the mind. Her work is conceptually and texturally rich as well as culturally and materially diverse. She employs a range of traditional materials such as plaster, bronze and marble in her work – drawing on skills and techniques gleaned in her academic training in the 1970s and ‘80s at London’s Slade School of Fine Art amongst other institutions – alongside crafts such as crochet and quilting – part of an intergenerational artistic legacy handed down from her mother.