Dame Magdalene Odundo

Collection of Mr & Mrs Oscar Winston Abrams (1937–1996)

Thence by descent

We are grateful to the artist for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

"The potency of a clay pot or any pot is just amazing. That notion of emptiness is just that, a notion. Because they are not empty. They contain so much. The healing power of pots is so important. You only have to look at some of the pottery you find in Nigeria for instance, and across Africa. Those pots now in museums and viewed as sculptural pots were made as remembrance pieces, perhaps to embody someone who had died. They are very sculpture and they are very figurative...What is so beautiful about the pot is that it conveys a universal language, that of spiritual utility and aesthetic. It is revered and understood by all and therefore important to all...What else can tell you about human life more than a pot does?"

One of the most important international artists working in ceramics today, Odundo was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950 to a journalist father and mother, and moved to the UK in 1971 to study graphic and commercial arts at Cambridge College of Art. Inspired by the collection of the African Study Centre, Odundo was no doubt also drawn to the interplay of art and craft at Kettle’s Yard during her time there. Here at Jim Ede’s former residence works by Lucie Rie and Bernard Leach sit beside Modern British masters, such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Barbara Hepworth, as well as continental heavyweights including Brancusi, and this dialogue and integration of art, architecture and domesticity was one which was to have a profound impact on Odundo’s later working style.

Continuing her studies at at the West Surrey College of Art & Design in Farnham, Odundo visited both Leach and Michael Cardew at their studios in St Ives. While studying at Farnham, she visited Uganda and Kenya to research their native Ceramic techniques for her graduate dissertation. With Cardew's encouragement, in 1974 she went to Nigeria to study for three months at the Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, Nigeria, that he had established in the 1950s. Spending two months at Abuja, Odundo became exposed to the work of female potters such as Ladi Kwali (lot 26).

“I met Ladi Dosei Kwali in 1974, when I went to work at the Abuja Pottery Training Centre in Abuja (now Suleja, the capital of Nigeria). I had been introduced to Ladi Kwali by Michael Cardew, the Founder of the Training Centre, whom I met as a student in Farnham that same year. That time influenced my trajectory and my choice to become the potter I am today.

"Kwali was able to work between two traditions effortlessly, bridging the gap between her Nigerian Gbari traditions and British Studio Pottery introduced by Cardew. She had an amazing presence and an aptitude to depict illustrative narratives through her unique style and she continues to inspire me."

Soon Odundo began exploring forms that owed much to the traditional water jars that had been produced by women for centuries, coil-built with rounded bellies and small looping lugs. The Gwari method of building a pot involved adding short lengths of coils to the initial base and then working them together until the final shape was made, differing from the more usual English art-school method that she was taught. As a result of this trip, the Gwari method is a process that Odundo has adopted and experimented with in her own work over the years. 

"I have been asked why I hand-build, and the answer is that hand-building is a slower process than throwing on the wheel and I need to work slowly in order to think; and I need the time to find the form I am looking for at the time of making."

The present lot was made soon after her return to London and included in two of her earliest solo exhibitions, at the Africa Centre in 1977 and the Commonwealth Institute (where Odundo taught 1976-1979) in 1979, before Odundo's style developed further with her studies at the Royal College of Art from 1979-82. The present work owes much to these early influences and to Kwali in particular. It captures the artist’s early interest and understanding of form, paving the way for her delicate, organic vessels for which she is today celebrated for across the globe.

Odundo's work is represented in over 40 public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The British Museum, London, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The National Museum of African Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (both at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Guyanese architect and cultural activist Oscar Winston Abrams came to London in 1958. In 1971 Abrams bought a building in Gifford Street, Islington, and set up the Keskidee Theatre Workshop to nurture talent and give Black youth a space of their own. For many years, Keskidee was the only dedicated space in London for Black actors, dramatists and technicians. Keskidee was the first Black arts centre in Britain and had an international impact promoting emerging artists from Africa and the Caribbean.