Jenny Wu: "The 10 Exhibitions to See in August 2025"

In the late 1950s, the Turner Prize-winning artist Veronica Ryan moved with her parents from the Caribbean island of Montserrat to the UK, as part of a wave of migrants known as the Windrush generation. In 2021, Ryan created a monument in Hackney Central, East London, to honour these migrants, who faced not only discrimination upon arrival but also, in many cases, wrongful detainment and deportation decades after. Her monument consists of three large sculptures of fruits associated with the Caribbean – a spiky bronze soursop, a luminously patinated breadfruit and a white marble custard apple – sitting mysteriously on the ground, provoking curiosity and rewarding onlookers with visual plentitude. This type of intrigue and uncanniness is characteristic of Ryan’s recuperation- and craft-centred work, four decades of which have been brought together in Unruly Objects, the artist’s first major survey. Forgoing pedestals, Ryan opts instead for vaguely culinary arrangements. In Infection VII (Punnet 1) (2020) an altar-like tower of mushroom boxes sits on a yellow doily. In Collective Moments V (2022), plastic bags wadded into an onion-shaped ball are bound in a coral-coloured hairnet and placed inside a plaster bowl. In Sweet Dreams are Made of These (2021), glazed ceramic cocoa beans are piled on a round jute mat, like ingredients for a recipe that may be generations old – or that may not yet exist. The show is dedicated to her late mother, who taught her how to sew, knit and make the most of meagre resources.