Image: Magdalene Odundo, Installation view, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 2024 © Magdalene A.N. Odundo. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Ben Westoby / Fine Art Documentation
The Barbican Centre in London will present an exhibition of work by Magdalene Odundo from Thursday, September 2, 2027, to Sunday, January 9, 2028. According to the Barbican, it will be her first solo exhibition at a London institution in more than 30 years. The show will be installed in the Lakeside Gallery on Level 2 of the arts centre.
Odundo makes vessels from coils of clay, building each one up by hand before sculpting and burnishing it. The Barbican places the vessel among the earliest tools made by humans and describes it as a form that carries meaning across eras, places and cultures.
Her points of reference range widely. The Barbican lists ancient Egyptian and Aztec sculpture, Kenyan and Nigerian burial rites, Greek and Japanese pottery, Elizabethan fashion and European modernism among them. Movement and dance have also long fed her work.
Many of her pieces recall the human body, with profiles that can suggest a rounded belly, a torso in motion or an open mouth. The Barbican presents the works, shaped from a material drawn from the earth, as reminders of the humanity and vitality that people share.
The exhibition was announced as part of the Barbican's programme for the coming year and falls in its autumn/winter 2027–28 season. Two other exhibitions run in the same period: a new site-specific installation by Rosa Barba that brings together sculpture and film in the Level G foyer, from September 23, 2027, to January 30, 2028, and a retrospective of Alice Adams spanning seven decades of tapestries, sculptures, photographs, prints and drawings, in the Art Gallery from October 7, 2027, to February 6, 2028.
Earlier in 2027, the programme includes Dayanita Singh in The Curve from March 10 to May 23, and an installation by the Peruvian artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca in the Sculpture Court from May 6 to August 1.
