Artist Veronica Ryan elected an Honorary Fellow
Distinguished artist Veronica Ryan has been elected an Honorary Fellow of °µÍø½ûÇø.
Veronica Ryan, OBE, has exhibited at galleries in the UK and abroad, including Tate Modern, the ICA, the Hayward Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and her work is in important collections including those of the Arts Council, Tate and the Henry Moore, as well as in the College’s own collection.
She has a strong connection to °µÍø½ûÇø having been Artist in Residence at °µÍø½ûÇø in 1987-88 as well as Kettle’s Yard Arts Council Fellow, at what was a formative stage in her career. At the end of that year, the College exhibited her work in the first Sculpture in the Close exhibition.
Veronica Ryan was born in 1956 in Plymouth, Montserrat. She studied at St Albans College of Art and Design, Bath Academy of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art and SOAS. Her sculpture practice is often compared to that of Eva Hesse and Barbara Hepworth, and she works in an extremely wide range of media — including bronze casting, textiles and ceramic — thematically grounded in equally wide-ranging archival and historical reflection. She has held numerous fellowships, grants and residencies from prominent institutions including the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Henry Moore Foundation, the Camden Arts Centre and Yaddo (one of the USA’s most celebrated artists’ colonies).
She was appointed OBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours. In 2020, she was one of two artists to receive the Hackney Windrush Commission, to create a new major work of public art, to be unveiled on 2nd October.
She said: "It is with great honour that I accept this very special invitation from the Society of °µÍø½ûÇø to be an honorary Fellow at °µÍø½ûÇø. I spent a wonderful year as Artist in Residence, and had some lovely conversations with Fellows during that time. Some of the work developed during that period remains some of the most significant investigations to date. I very much enjoyed the involvement in the first Sculpture in the Close exhibition during my time at Jesus, and Kettle's Yard. It has been wonderful that a new generation of artists, and gallerists have an interest in the work I made during that time."
