Who is popular today?

The Kenyan-born British ceramicist on hand-building pots and whether ‘craft’ is a bad word
From the pinch of a nose to the elongated slant of a neck, Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics are on the verge of coming to life. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art described her objects as seeming “simultaneously familiar and novel”. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950, she trained in Farnham, Surrey (where she now lives), then at the Royal College of Art. Her approach grew from a formative period when she returned to Africa to learn about local ceramic practice. Magdalene Odundo: The Journey of Things, featuring 50 of her works alongside 100 contemporary and historic pieces from all over the world, chosen by the artist, is at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, until 15 December.
Your exhibition brings together works by a number of artists and designers, from Barbara Hepworth to Rodin. How did you choose the objects?They are works I had seen that made me want to find out more about the artist, or coincided with what I was working on. One piece by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska is Bird Swallowing a Fish, a sculpture I first saw at Kettle’s Yard [in Cambridge]. In the very early days, when I arrived in this country, I remember it having such a puzzling interest for me. At the time, African art was very popular, in the sense that western artists had been very much influenced by the abstract aspect of the work. I came out thinking: “this work could be by an African artist, or by somebody who wasn’t western”. Continue reading...