Virginia Leonard

b. 1965 Auckland
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Virginia Leonard’s ceramic works are ornate, visceral wonders. Her large, vessel-like structures bear some resemblance to everyday domestic items, yet the familiar shapes of vases, jugs, and urns are abstracted, morphed into melting masses. Colourful, sharp, seemingly floral and often gilded, the works have a fantastical quality and an aesthetic sensibility that borders on the Baroque. Leonard cites a visit to the Rococo rooms at the Metropolitan Museum in New York as influential, along with the lavish set and costume design of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette. “I just love the indulgence in the ornate. More is more in my world,” she states.

Glazed in vibrant colours and dripping with resin, Leonard’s objects are intentionally fired in a way that sees the objects partially slump and sometimes crack. This cracked, slumped, and visually lavish nature of the artworks is part of their meaning to the artist. Leonard was in a serious car accident when aged 20, and she has had ongoing issues and chronic pain ever since. “Pain is in the work – on some level, it’s always about that. I have a relationship to pain, and it is part of my experience. My artmaking is about turning that into something beautiful. It has to be beautiful. The celebration of ornateness is essential for my survival,” she says.

This autobiographical content has been central to her work in ceramics, with the pummelling and moulding actions of working clay a means to articulate her personal experience with chronic pain. After more than a decade as an abstract painter, Leonard made the shift to working with clay in 2013, driven by the need to give a voice to physical trauma. She states, “chronic pain has no biological value, it lacks both language and voice. The language of my clay making is my attempt to rid my body of trauma and reduce my level of chronic pain.” Her works give voice to this physical and psychological struggle, and transform it into something sparkling and ornate.

Leonard holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, which she completed in 2001. She has won numerous awards and residencies, including a 2019 Artist-in-Residence prize in Finland, the Open to Art Ceramic Award from Officine Saffi, Milan, Italy, and the Glass House/Stone House Residency in Chenaud, France. In 2017 she won the Ceramic residency at Guldagergaard, Denmark. Closer to home, she was awarded the Merit Award in the 2015 Portage Ceramic Awards, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland. Leonard’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout Australasia and internationally, including exhibitions in Switzerland, Italy, USA, and Denmark, and is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and the prestigious Ann G. Tenenbaum Collection, New York. She is profiled in the influential Thames and Hudson book 100 Sculptures of Tomorrow.

Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Virginia Leonard since 2020.