LONDON.- Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations is a major exhibition dedicated to the award-winning British artist Veronica Ryan (b.1956, Plymouth, Montserrat). Encompassing more than 100 works, the exhibition draws on every aspect of her practice, revealing her multifaceted work across sculpture, textiles and works on paper. Significantly, it includes recently rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings – which reveal enduring artistic interests across her career.

The exhibition begins in Whitechapel Gallery’s largest exhibition space (Gallery 1) with Ryan’s most recent works, including several newly conceived for this presentation. These include Totem (2025–26), a striking ceramic sculpture derived from casts of stacked plastic bottles. This tower-like work echoes the gallery’s architectural columns, punctuating an otherwise open space. Ryan also intervenes with a series of crocheted works that hang from a tall structure. She first developed these during a residency at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall, in 2018. While there, she noticed traditional fishing nets stored in the workshops below and was struck by how their construction echoed the knitting and crochet techniques taught to her by her mother. She responded by making extruded and bulbous stocking-like structures, concealing inside clusters of crystal rocks, drift seeds, shrivelled mango stones, crushed plastic bottles or yoghurt pots. Her reuse and recombination of these materials connects with timely concerns for the environment and ecology but also derives from personal narratives. She explains, “my mother was always recycling things, not that she called it that… I’ve grown up repurposing things when I didn’t have any resources.”

Running the entire length of the gallery is a shelf featuring a selection of works including Multiple Conversations (2019–present), the series from which the exhibition takes its title. The pieces vary significantly in material approach: tightly wound spindles of upholstery tape pierced by coloured clay pods; clusters of teabags carefully threaded together; stacks of plaster cast leaves bound with vibrant green thread, each small enough to hold in the palm of a hand. Some works incorporate commodities such as tea, oranges, or vanilla pods that connect to hidden legacies of colonial trade. Others incorporate ‘drift seeds’ or ‘sea beans’ – the distinctive seeds of tropical trees that have evolved to disperse via ocean currents, often travelling for thousands of miles before germinating on far-flung islands. While they allude to experiences of diaspora and migration, seeds also hold significance in Ryan’s work as containers associated with confinement, or as latent vessels for new life. Ryan brings her materials together using embroidery, winding, or stitching that evoke domestic crafts, or makeshift repairs. By using such nuanced and layered visual strategies, Ryan opens up space for multiple readings.

Contrasting in size is the 1.5-metre bronze sculpture Untitled (Magnolia Pod) (2024), a giant cast of a magnolia bulb. The work reflects the possibilities of scale and material offered by her recent public commissions. Ryan received the Turner Prize in 2022, in recognition of her permanent public artwork Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae), and Soursop (Annonaceae) unveiled in Hackney the previous year. The sculpture was commissioned by Create London and honours the postwar Windrush generation who migrated from the Caribbean to the UK.

Elsewhere are a series of works incorporating warehouse racking. Among them is Particles (2017), which features plaster casts and cushions that Ryan has arranged on each shelf. Instead of using conventional plinths, Ryan often situates her sculptures within broader architectural frameworks. This approach dates to her earliest works, when she constructed shelves and structures that explored the relationship between inside and outside, the container and what it holds. In recent years, these architectural components have become increasingly prominent in her practice, serving both protective and organisational functions.

On view upstairs, in Gallery 2, are a selection of the many drawings, photo-collages and other works on paper that Ryan has developed alongside her sculptural practice, and which reveal recurring preoccupations. A large patchwork quilt titled Safe Spaces (1988–2019) is shown near a series of small gouache paintings on paper depicting cushions and pillows. Also on view are rarely displayed collages incorporating family photographs overpainted with dense black clouds that obscure personal features. The works have a psychological intensity, alluding to repressed desires and traumas that shape personal realities as well as dynamics hidden within wider society.

Opening Gallery 3 are works which exemplify Ryan’s ongoing engagement with her birthplace of Montserrat, including a series of gouache and pastel drawings which depict the aftermath of the devastating Soufrière Hills volcanic eruption on the island in the 1990s. Quoit Montserrat (1998) is made from a Carrara marble slab with casts of soursop fruit which grow on the Island but which, like many tropical fruits, are also indigenous to other regions. Ryan created this work during her first residency in St Ives, Cornwall, between 1998 and 2000, where she worked with materials used by modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

The final two sections of the exhibition bring together Ryan’s earliest works, which reflect her broader engagement with histories of sculpture. Ryan studied extensively at a range of arts institutions including the Slade School of Fine Art (1978–80), and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, 1981–83). While at the Slade, she visited the 1979 Eva Hesse exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, which she cites as a significant influence on her approach to materials and organic forms. At SOAS, she became interested in artistic traditions in West Africa, particularly the Bangwa culture of Western Cameroon. She also came across the work of artists such as Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui.

The exhibition features some of Ryan’s most significant sculptures from the 1980s. The floor-based work Relics in the Pillow of Dreams (1985) comprises a plaster ‘pillow’ onto which a series of bronze pod-like forms are carefully placed like ‘relics’, demonstrating her tactile material sensibility. Attempts to Fill Vacant Spaces (1986) is a series of plaster bean-shaped pods, which each support a small bronze object. Until recently, the work was thought to be lost; it has not been displayed since the year that it was created.

Visitors can also see a selection of works that Ryan completed for a residency and exhibitions at Kettles Yard and Jesus College in Cambridge in 1987–88. These include a series of works that Ryan made from lead foil. She explained ‘lead foil is like a fabric; when it’s first rolled out, it’s like a satin and when it is exposed to heat, some of the colours become blue or purple’. Material Seduction (mid-1980s) comprises a lead pouch covered in kiss prints, alluding to the luscious but toxic properties of the material. Alongside is the work Residue (1988), a crumpled and undulating bronze form with a vivid blue patina. Ryan presents this with one of her most recent hanging works titled The End of All Things (2025), a deep Indigo-dyed duvet cover that she has shaped and gathered with elastic hairbands. The juxtaposition reveals Ryan’s exploration of nurturing and protective forms, as well as the processes of wrinkling, folding and creasing that recur in her work.

This special presentation at Whitechapel Gallery surveys four decades of the artist’s groundbreaking creative output, bringing together work that defies any singular or linear narrative, while weaving together environmental concerns, personal narratives, as well as the psychological implications of history, trauma and recovery.