The sculptor born in 1956 goes from shadow to light
The sculptor Veronica Ryan had a hard time getting noticed for most of her career. She told The Guardian last year that she sometimes didn't make enough money to pay the rent and had to use any materials she could find to make new works. Ryan's place in the art world has changed a lot since then. The artist won the Turner Prize, which is the most important award in British art, on Wednesday. His small, mysterious sculptures of seeds and fruit were shown at this year's Whitney Biennial. At a ceremony at St. George's Hall in Liverpool, the news was shared. The works of the four artists who are up for the prize this year are being shown in the city.
In an interview, Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and co-chair of the prize's jury, said that Ryan, who is 66 years old, won because his work "gives new poetry" to things that are "usually ignored and usually thrown away." He said that her work might be the "quietest and slowest burn" of any recent prize winner. "These breakthroughs don't always happen early in an artist's career," he said. "Ryan was finding a new stage in her work in her 60s, with pieces about migration, survival, healing, and motherhood." Ryan, a New York-based artist, won 25,000 British pounds, which is about $30,000, by beating out three other nominees: Ingrid Pollard, a pioneering Black female photographer; Heather Phillipson, an environmentally conscious artist who has made several high-profile public artworks; and Sin Wai Kin, a nonbinary artist who is known for films that sometimes include elements of traditional Chinese opera and drag.
The Turner Prize is one of the most important events in the art world
Since it was first given out in 1984, the Turner Prize has been one of the most important events in the art world. Winners like Anish Kapoor and Steve McQueen have gone on to become well-known artists. But in recent years, it has become better known for causing arguments in Britain's art world, with newspaper critics saying that the nominees were more activists than artists. Last year, the prize went to Array Collective, which is best known for holding funny signs and props at political protests in Northern Ireland. Some of the best critics thought Phillipson would win, but most of them also liked Ryan's work. Waldemar Januszczak, a critic who has often looked down on the prize, wrote in The Sunday Times before the winner was announced that Ryan was "the real deal; a thoughtful, secretive, poetic artist."
Veronica Ryan had some big hits in her early days
Ryan was born on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean in 1956. When she was a child, she moved to Britain with her family. She got some big breaks early on—in 1984, she was the only Black artist in a Tate show of new sculptors—but most people haven't heard of her until the last few years. In addition to the Whitney Biennial, she also showed a large sculpture in London that was made up of a soursop, a breadfruit, and a custard apple. These three fruits were meant to represent the sweets that Caribbean immigrants to Britain ate as children. Farquharson said that Ryan was "very different" from other recent winners, whose work was focused on activism, but that it did not signal a change in Britain's art world. He said that prize juries change every year. "Art doesn't change too much, in my opinion."
Selena Mattei