Magdalene Odundo at Houghton Hall, opens Sunday 12 May 2024.

Spanning Odundo's 30-year career, the exhibition will include eight new ceramic works and a major new commission made during her residency at Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent. Playfully responding to the traditional functionality of Houghton’s State Rooms, a series of thoughtful interventions will both highlight and disrupt the functional and decorative design schemes of the house’s historic rooms.

Magdalene Odundo is known for her unique sculptural vessels that draw influence from historical and contemporary making practices from different cultures, using traditional techniques to explore diasporic identity and the charged role that objects play in intercultural relationships. Her hand-built sculptures, each made over several months, are often anthropomorphic in their references to the female body, but the artist draws inspiration from both manmade objects and the natural world, synthesised in the forms of her expressive and deeply resonant vessels. The specific placement of the works throughout the rooms of Houghton Hall will shed light on these varied references and sources of inspiration.

Magdalene Odundo

12 May–29 September 2024

Houghton Hall
King’s Lynn
Norfolk
PE31 6UE