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Magdalene Odundo at Houghton Hall
12 May–29 September 2024 This summer Houghton Hall presents an exhibition by Dame Magdalene Odundo, one of the world’s most revered ceramic artists.The exhibition showcases existing and new works spanning Odundo’s 30-year career, including a major new commission made while on residency at Wedgwood, Stoke-on-Trent. Playfully responding to the traditional functionality of Houghton’s State Rooms, the exhibition inhabits the interiors through a series of thoughtful interventions that both highlight and disrupt the functional and decorative design schemes of Houghton’s historic rooms. Known for her unique sculptural vessels that draw influence from historical and contemporary making practices from different cultures, Odundo uses traditional techniques to explore diasporic identity and the charged role that objects play in intercultural relationships. Odundo has created eight new ceramic works especially for the exhibition. Her hand-built sculptures, each made over several months, are often anthropomorphic in their references to the female body. However,Odundo finds equal inspiration in manmade objects and the natural world which she synthesises in the forms of her expressive and deeply resonant vessels.The specific placement of her works in each of the rooms shed light on these varied references and sources of inspiration. A highlight of the exhibition is a large-scale ceramic sculpture produced by Odundo at the Wedgwood factory in Stoke-on-Trent. During her residency Odundo researched the company’s archive of historic forms as well as looking deeper at Josiah Wedgwood himself and particularly his social and political beliefs. One of Britain’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs, Wedgwood was also one of the most prominent voices in the abolitionist movement in the late 18th century. Odundo’s new work is a towering centrepiece created using historic moulds from the Wedgwood archive; it is made in Jasperware, which was first developed by Wedgwood in the1770s. Its surfaces are adorned with a decorative scheme that explores thelegacies of slavery while demonstrating the urgency of contemporary political advocacy and protest. Illustrations of the horrors of the slave trade are shown alongside images of contemporary protest, including the recent riots in Kenya, Odundo’s place of birth. Odundo has created an object that speaks to both the past and the present, utilising clay’s universal capacity for material storytelling.On display in Houghton Hall’s contemporary gallery space is Odundo’s spectacular glass work Metamorphosis and Transformation (2011), a 28-part installation made up of a series of blown-glass vessels based on the form of 3500-year-old ear studs from ancient Egypt. The installation’s fluid composition, which flows across the ground and rises up into space, draws on Odundo’s interest in geological formations and narratives of migration. Lord Cholmondeley, owner of Houghton Hall, said: “We are honoured to be showing Dame Magdalene Odundo's ceramic and glass work at Houghton. Some of the pieces have been especially created for the exhibition and it will be fascinating to see how Dame Magdalene's installations and interventions in the State Rooms will interact with William Kent's exuberant 18th century decorative scheme.” About Magdalene Odundo
Born in 1950, Odundo received her initial training as a graphic artist in her native Kenya before moving to the UK in 1971. She studied at the Cambridge School of Art (now Anglia Ruskin University), the University for the Creative Arts the Royal College of Art. In 2018 Odundo was appointed Chancellor of the University for Creative Arts (UCA) and was made a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2020. She has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, and Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany (1992); Stedelijk Museum Voor Hedendaagse Kunst, s’Hertogenbosch, Holland (1994); The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian, Washington (1995); Blackwell – the Arts & Crafts house (2001); British Council, Nairobi, Kenya (2005); The High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2017); The Hepworth Wakefield and Sainsbury Centre, Norwich (2019); and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2023-24). Odundo's work is in the collections of many national and international museums including The British Museum, London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; The Hepworth Wakefield; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Gardiner Museum, Toronto; Stedelijk Museum Voor Hedendaagst Kunst, Hertogenbosh, Netherlands the Frankfurt Museum for Applied Arts, Frankfurt; Die Neue Sammlung (The Design Museum), Munich; and the National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi |
Exhibition Information
Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE31 6UE Please see website for opening time and days. www.houghtonhall.com.www.houghtonhall.com Tickets: £22 when booked online; £24 at the gate 18's and under go free. Students £10. Houghton Hall welcomes pre-booked groups, schools and colleges and runs an education programme. About Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall was built by Sir Robert Walpole, Great Britain’s first Prime Minister, in around1722. Designed by prominent Georgian architects Colen Campbell and James Gibbs, it is one of the country’s finest examples of Palladian architecture. Houghton and its estate passed to the Cholmondeley family at the end of the 18th century and remains a family home. The house and award-winning gardens have been open to the public since 1976.The Houghton Arts Foundation continues to build a collection of contemporary art at Houghton including a number of site-specific commissions. With links to colleges and public institutions across the region, the Foundation’s aim is for Houghton to become a focus for those who wish to see great art of our time in a historic setting. The 2024 exhibitions by Magdalene Odundo and Antony Gormley follow those by James Turrell (2015), Richard Long (2017), Damien Hirst(2018), Henry Moore (2019),Anish Kapoor (2020), Tony Cragg (2021), Chris Levine (2021) andSean Scully (2023). The exhibition is supported by Loewe Foundation About the LOEWE FOUNDATION The LOEWE FOUNDATION was established as a private cultural foundation in 1988 by Enrique Loewe, a fourth-generation member of LOEWE’s founding family. Today, the Foundation continues to promote creativity, organise educational programs and protect cultural heritage in the fields of craft, art, design, photography, poetry and dance. The Foundation was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts by the Spanish government in 2002. More information: web | www.loewe.com blog | www.blogfundacionloewe.es Instagram | @loewefoundation 
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