Type: Exhibition

Location: Toronto, Ontario.

Client: Gardiner Museum

Photos: Jack McCombe, Toni Hakenscheid

Status: Complete

SOCA has designed the Gardiner Musuem’s new exhibition Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects which runs October 19, 2023 – April 21, 2024.

This is the largest exhibition of the celebrated Kenyan-British ceramicist in North America. The installation features more than 20 works spanning Dame Magdalene Odundo’s career, displayed alongside objects selected by the artist from the Gardiner Museum’s permanent collection, and works on loan from major Toronto museums and private collections. These objects span geographies, time periods, and media, bringing her work into conversation with objects as diverse as an ancient Cycladic marble figurine, a Ndebele apron from South Africa, and a painting by the late Trinidadian-Canadian artist Denyse Thomasos.

Gardiner Museum Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Dr. Sequoia Miller requested an atmosphere that would dramatically showcase Odundo’s work but not upstage it. SOCA principal Tura Cousins Wilson says, “As a British and Kenyan woman, Odundo has deep roots in both modern and traditional, and European and African ceramic practices. We took her ambiguities as a starting point, transforming the Gardiner’s ‘white cube’ into a ‘clay cube’.

Treating the walls with a textured limewash paint, and creating broken circular plinths from dark plaster, SOCA picked up on the forms, textures, warmth and even the metallic quality of Odundo’s carbonized vessels to establish a rich ambiance. The plinths obscure a chronological trajectory through the space, and the low lighting encourages each visitor to pursue their own quiet journey of close examination and contemplation.