Exhibiting artist Veronica Ryan discusses her solo exhibition Along a Spectrum and its wider themes with art historian Darby English.

VERONICA RYAN

Veronica Ryan (b. 1956, Plymouth, Montserrat) moved to England as an infant and she currently works between New York and the UK. Ryan’s solo exhibitions include The Weather Inside, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2019); Salvage, The Art House, Wakefield (2017); The Weather Inside, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2011); Archaeology of the Black Sun, Salena Gallery, Long Island (2005); Quoit Montserrat, Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2000); Compartments/Apartments, Camden Arts Centre, London and Angel Row, Nottingham (1995), and Arnolfini, Bristol (1987). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (2019); Nottingham Contemporary (2017); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2009) and The Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007). Ryan has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including most recently the 2019 Pollock Krasner Grant, the 2018 Freelands Award, and the Hackney Art Windrush Commission (to be unveiled in 2021).

DARBY ENGLISH

Darby English is an art historian whose work unlocks new dimensions of American art through rigorous attention to form. His books include How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007); 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2016); and To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror (2019), which he was awarded the CAA Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism. English also coedited the volumes Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (2002) and Art History and Emergency (2016). He is the Carl Darling Buck Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. From 2014 to 2020, English was Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.