Magdalene Odundo: Glossolalia
In my own work, my vocabulary is deliberately minimal. I do not want my pots to require lengthy explanation. I want them to feel empathetic, I want people to be able to understand them visually. For me, visual literacy, looking and noticing, is the most important thing. Viewers are welcome to imbue the work with whatever they want, but the words come second. The work, the vessel, must come first.46
To mark the end of the twentieth century, Dame Magdalene Odundo OBE produced a series ofMillennium Jugs (as well asMillennium Cups) in white earthenware. Such unassuming domestically scaled pots might appear a curious introduction to the grander terracotta forms for which Odundo is internationally recognised. Yet, I begin with these inventive works because they exemplify key concepts that can be discerned elsewhere. The jug itself is formed with a rounded base and cannot stand by itself. A separate concave foot affords it a supported place to rest. Consequently, the jug can – if desired – be manipulated to stand at obtuse angles from its base, to tilt so that the symmetrical balance of the jug is disrupted. This interplay between symmetry and asymmetry is, as Emmanuel Cooper pointed out in his excellent assessment of Odundo’s oeuvre, a central compositional concern in much of her work.47 More significantly, as a piece made to commemorate the millennium, the jug points in two directions. The extruded handle curves away from the body in an upward direction, whilst the extruded ‘spout’ curves downwards away from the lip. The body of the jug is thus located at the interstice between these directions, redolent of the move between centuries, and symbolic of looking both backwards and forwards. Setting the jug into its base at one angle or another (either towards the handle or, conversely, towards the lip) implies a leaning towards history or the future, whilst the jug positioned upright (as photographed) emblemises attenuation to the present. Thus, the jug is a container of uncertainty and anxiety around moments of passage from one epoch to the next. The inability of the jug to stand without its concave base might even symbolise our need for rituals, and associated objects, to ground us during periods of transition.
Millennium Jug (1999) alludes to the wider liminality of Odundo’s work; how it sits in and out of time. In museums, her pots blend effortlessly with examples of ancient ceramics from Africa or South America. Out of an interminable desire to comprehend the expressive potential of clay, the cultural and religious significance of pottery across thousands of years, pursued through decades of study, exudes from her fingertips. Yet, in the contemporary art gallery, Odundo’s work commands its own presence and her instantly recognisable pots are internationally sought-after. Her forms curve across continents in every sense; she fashions visual patchworks that situate the present within the past and enmesh the present into the future. As with theMillennium Jug, her pots are Janus-faced, looking backwards and forwards from their own temporality.
It is, however, axiomatic that pots transcend linguistic, religious, and cultural specificity. A look around the ceramics collection of any museum confirms this. What risks the prosaic becomes, in Odundo’s hands, perceptive and enriching. Her emphasis on visual literacy implies an understanding of
