Name/TitleCocoa Passion
About this objectOne of twenty cast porcelain cocoa pods produced on the occasion of Ryan’s major exhibition Along a Spectrum at Spike Island (20 May - 5 Sept 2021). This piece was exhibited in Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism at GWL (14 Aug – 16 Oct 2021).
https://www.spikeisland.org.uk/programme/exhibitions/veronica-ryan:
Fruits, seeds, plants and vegetables are recurring motifs in Ryan’s sculpture – they function metaphorically for the artist’s own sense of dislocation and, more widely, they allude to a history of trading across the globe. In Ryan’s work, personal experience is often conditioned by a sense of location. An important focus of her research is on the history of Montserrat and trying to identify its early culture prior to the arrival of the Europeans. As such, Along a Spectrum presents large groups of soursop skins and cocoa pods cast in clay and glazed with volcanic ash from Alliouagana, the name by which the native Caribs called the island of Montserrat.
Image credit: Spike Island, Max McClure Photography
MakerRyan, Veronica
Maker RoleSculptor
EditionEdition of 20
Date Made2021
Period2020s
Medium and MaterialsInorganic, porcelain
Place MadeEngland, Bristol
TechniqueCeramic
MeasurementsL: 140 x W: 60 x D: 60 mm
Subject and Association KeywordsContemporary art
Subject and Association Keywordsenvironment - landscapes
Subject and Association KeywordsEnvironment, ecology
Subject and Association KeywordsTrade, globalism, colonialism
Subject and Association KeywordsBlack women artists
Subject and Association Keywordscolonisation, colonialism, colonial legacy
Subject and Association Descriptionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Ryan:
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan (born 1956 in Plymouth, Montserrat, West Indies) is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol.
https://www.spikeisland.org.uk/programme/exhibitions/veronica-ryan:
Ryan is best known for her sculpture that is evocative of shapes, forms and objects from the natural world. Over the years, she has experimented with scale, material and technique while remaining focused on the interplay between conflicting opposites: revelation and concealment, container and contained, absence and presence. Her work sits at the intersection between materiality and idea, and enquires into the processes by which objects carry and construct meaning.
Made during an extended residency at Spike Island in Bristol, the works in Along a Spectrum examine environmental and socio-political concerns, personal narratives, history and displacement, as well as the wider psychological implications of the current pandemic. New works include cast forms in clay and bronze; sewn and tea-stained fabrics; and bright neon crocheted fishing line pouches filled with a variety of seeds, fruit stones and skins.
Named CollectionGlasgow Women's Library
Object TypeSculpture
Object numberGWL-2022-49-1
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved