Veronica Ryan in Conversation, April 2026

Why It Matters

Ryan’s revisiting of decades‑old work reveals how material history and curatorial research can reshape an artist’s legacy, offering valuable insights for institutions and collectors navigating provenance and reinterpretation.

Key Takeaways

• Veronica Ryan revisits 40‑year‑old works, re‑creating lost pieces.
• Exhibition “Multiple Conversations” explores vacant spaces and material memory.
• Turner Prize win and Freelands award highlight her evolving practice.
• Rediscovered artworks reveal unexpected histories and provenance challenges.
• Collaboration with curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert bridges past and contemporary dialogue.

Summary

The White Chapel Gallery hosted a conversation with artist Veronica Ryan and curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert to launch Ryan’s solo show “Multiple Conversations,” a retrospective spanning four decades of sculpture, textiles, and works on paper. The event highlighted Ryan’s Turner Prize win, long‑standing ties to the gallery, and the exhibition’s focus on revisiting and re‑imagining earlier pieces.

Ryan explained how she remade the eight‑pod bronze installation, confronting the practical and conceptual challenges of reproducing work created in the 1980s. She described returning to a barn after 25 years, discovering lost pieces behind machinery, and learning that a drawing she gifted in the ’80s was being sold on eBay. These anecdotes illustrate the fragile provenance of her material‑laden objects and the emotional weight of filling “vacant spaces.”

Specific examples included the “Pillar of Dreams” series, the use of avocado trays that patinated over time, and a crumpled brown‑paper sheet cast in bronze that shifted from vibrant blue to green patina. Ryan also recounted the 2004 fire that destroyed works, prompting a 2017 Freelands award project to recreate lost sculptures, albeit with new materials and altered configurations.

The conversation underscores how archival research, material resilience, and adaptive reinterpretation are vital for artists with long‑term practices. For collectors, institutions, and emerging creators, Ryan’s approach demonstrates that revisiting past work can generate fresh dialogues about memory, environment, and the evolving language of contemporary art.

Original Description

Veronica Ryan in conversation with curator and creative director Lewis Dalton Gilbert, to accompany her exhibition ' Multiple Conversation' exhibition .

Encompassing more than 100 works, and spanning four decades, Multiple Conversations 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.

Ryan and Gilbert engage in extended conversations in and around the work in the exhibition and its broader concerns, from language, meaning, and intergenerational knowledge sharing, to geography, the natural world, and memory.