Autumn Art Lectures - Along a Spectrum: A Conversation with Veronica Ryan

Turner-Prize winning artist Veronica Ryan is in conversation with Robert Leckie (Director of Spike Island) in the final instalment of this year's Autumn Art Lecture series 'Art and the City: Bristol at 650'.

A conversation between Turner Prize-winning artist Veronica Ryan and Spike Island Director Robert Leckie. They will discuss Ryan’s 2021 solo exhibition at Spike Island, Along a Spectrum, and its wider relevance to the artistic programme of this thriving arts centre.

The Autumn Art Lecture series is hosted by the University of Bristol's Faculty of Arts with support from the Centre for Black Humanities and Bristol Ideas.

About the series

The Autumn Art Lectures are here again and this year we are on the move. To coincide with Bristol 650, the year-long celebration that marks the anniversary of the 1373 royal charter, our new series will focus on some of the historical, cultural and conceptual spaces of Bristol. AAL2023 will be an opportunity not just to talk about Bristol and its (in)visible histories, but also to step into the city itself. Events will be hosted in venues that span Bristol – from the Cathedral at its heart on College Green, to Spike Island in the midst of the river that defines the city’s cosmopolitan past and present. Our speakers include curators, artists, and academics, who together will take us on a journey through both familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the city’s history, including its place in the wider world.  

For the full series listing and more information on each event, please follow this link.

About the speakers

Veronica Ryan OBE RA, awarded the 2022 Turner Prize, is a visual artist working primarily in sculpture and assemblage. Using a highly developed idiosyncratic visual language, Ryan’s work investigates how everyday objects, including detritus, recycled materials, foods such as fruits, herbs, vegetables and seeds, cast and made into modelled components, give rise to questions of interconnections and multiplicities along a spectrum of perceived psychological realities, embodying the extended self. In 2021 Ryan unveiled ‘Custard Apple (Annonaceae)’, ‘Breadfruit (Moraceae)’ and ‘Soursop (Annonaceae)’ in Hackney, London, as the nation’s first permanent monument to honour the Windrush generation. In 2018, Ryan’s solo exhibition at Spike Island, ‘Along a Spectrum’, was exhibited in connection with the Freelands award. This critically acclaimed exhibition at Spike Island together with the first permanent monument to honour the Windrush generation, led to Ryan’s nomination for the 2022 Turner Prize.

Robert Leckie is Director of Spike Island in Bristol. He was previously Curator and Head of Programmes at Gasworks in London from 2011 to 2018. Over the past decade, he has (co)curated major solo exhibitions by artists including Pacita Abad, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Peggy Ahwesh, Monira Al Qadiri, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Candice Lin, Rosemary Mayer, and Tanoa Sasraku. He lectures at the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths, and the University of the Arts in London. 

Robert has contributed to Afterall, Rhizome, Mousse and several artist monographs, and is co-editor of Sidsel Meineche Hansen: SECOND SEX WAR (Paraguay Press, 2019), Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines (Mousse Publishing, 2021), Candice Lin: Pigs and Poison (Mousse Publishing, 2023), and Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching (König, 2023).

Image Caption: Veronica Ryan, Along A Spectrum (2021) Installation View, Spike Island, Bristol. Commissioned By Spike Island, Bristol And Supported By Freelands Foundation. Photograph By Max Mcclure.