Gow Langsford
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Art Fairs
  • Events
  • News
  • Shop
  • Video
  • Viewing Rooms
  • About
  • Contact
Cart
0 items NZD$
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

The Wedding Breakfast An Ode to Olly: Virginia Leonard

Past exhibition
26 March - 19 April 2025 Auckland City
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Installation Views
  • Events
  • Press release
  • Enquire
Overview
Virginia Leonard Gangrene With Breakfast, 2025 clay, resin and lustre 560 x 550mm
Virginia Leonard
Gangrene With Breakfast, 2025
clay, resin and lustre
560 x 550mm
... a playful confluence of elements is core to Leonard’s practice. Vessels formed from clay have a history almost as long as human existence and are a deeply familiar concept. Yet Leonard’s vessels are anything but conventional. They startle and delight the viewer in their unexpectedness. We are lured into wanting to touch their dripping surfaces to see if they are wet, or if the bulbous rounds are soft (they are in fact the opposite).

Virginia Leonards’ practice is intrinsically linked to the state of her body. It hasn’t always been an easy one to live in—injuries from a serious accident in her youth have meant a lifetime of chronic pain, operations and bodily scarring, with the latest procedure being a knee replacement. It was the incredible support from her long-term partner, Olly, during this recent recovery that has led her to dedicating this exhibition to him, The Wedding Breakfast An Ode to Olly.

Works
  • Virginia Leonard, Gangrene With Breakfast, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Gangrene With Breakfast, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Under My Skirt, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Under My Skirt, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, The Secret History Of A Drop Foot, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, The Secret History Of A Drop Foot, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Feather is Easier On The Legs Than Foam, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Feather is Easier On The Legs Than Foam, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Heavily Stacked, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Heavily Stacked, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Dented Knees, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Dented Knees, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Dissolvable Stitches Make for a Lovely Scar, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Dissolvable Stitches Make for a Lovely Scar, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Eating With Blue Blood And Village Knickers, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Eating With Blue Blood And Village Knickers, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, An Ode to Olly, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, An Ode to Olly, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Osteopaths and Negronis, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Osteopaths and Negronis, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Fake Food, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Fake Food, 2025
  • Virginia Leonard, Boring Pain, 2025
    Virginia Leonard, Boring Pain, 2025
Installation Views
  • Leonard 2025 Boring Pain 510X540Mm Aleo109 25 Sam Hartnett Med 5
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 32
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 8
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 12
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 10
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 3
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 7
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 18
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 21
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 29
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 16
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 27
  • Leonard 2025 Dissolvable Stitches Make For A Lovely Scar 610X570Mm Aleo105 25 Sam Hartnett Med 2
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 5
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 30
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 23
  • Leonard 2025 Installation View Sam Hartnett Med 9
Events
  • Exhibition Opening

    Exhibition Opening

    Virginia Leonard | The Wedding Breakfast An Ode to Olly 25 Mar 2025
  • Virginia Leonard

    Virginia Leonard

    In Conversation with Prof. Heather Galbraith 9 Apr 2025
Press release

Virginia Leonards’ practice is intrinsically linked to the state of her body. It hasn’t always been an easy one to live in—injuries from a serious accident in her youth have meant a lifetime of chronic pain, operations and bodily scarring, with the latest procedure being a knee replacement. It was the incredible support from her long-term partner, Olly, during this recent recovery that has led her to dedicating this exhibition to him, The Wedding Breakfast An Ode to Olly.

The idea of the wedding breakfast has stuck with Leonard since she and Olly visited the opulent Blenheim Palace in the United Kingdom in 2023. Her experience of the excessive and disparate wealth of a home like this was distinctly countered by a bizarre element within the formal dining room. The long table was set for a lavish and traditional wedding breakfast. Among the fine silver and furnishings an incredibly incongruent, tacky display of brightly coloured, shiny resin food was laid upon the table. Leonard was so taken with the ludicrous visuals of the scene—the historic highbrow opulence of the Palace, versus the absurd display of fake food, that this visual has stuck in her memory since. One of the works shown is aptly titled Fake Food, immortalising this.

Indeed, a playful confluence of elements is core to Leonard’s practice. Vessels formed from clay have a history almost as long as human existence and are a deeply familiar concept. Yet Leonard’s vessels are anything but conventional. They startle and delight the viewer in their unexpectedness. We are lured into wanting to touch their dripping surfaces to see if they are wet, or if the bulbous rounds are soft (they are in fact the opposite). The works undergo a layering of processes to create this impact. Formed in clay, fired, glazed, fired again, glazed in precious gold lustre, fired again before being layered in resins…exploration of materiality is central to her practice. This new body of work furthers her experimentation with the unexpected, through the new inclusion of polystyrene, expanding foams and custom-blended automotive paints she has created. Both The Secret History Of A Drop Foot and Dented Knees show this play—the ceramic vessels are heavy and hard, although appearing viscous and dripping; they sit upon their sturdy monolithic plinths, which in being polystyrene are in fact lightweight and porous.

Leonard’s practice is an experimentation of what her materials are capable of, just as what her body is capable of.  She had considered creating smaller works for this show, in anticipation of a need to recover from the surgery. However, as often happens through the deeply innate process of her work, her body felt strong and wanted to create on a larger scale. The five largest works are all a testament to having resilience and trust within a creative practice.

Leonard has learnt to accept ideas of imperfection due to her own physical limitations, and this filters through into embracing them in her works. An Ode to Olly, one of the largest works, poignantly carries an open crack in the side of the vessel from when it was fired in the kiln. Spontaneity and instinct are central to these creations; Leonard has spoken that even if she spends weeks thinking about and planning a specific work, this can all change on the day of making, and the piece may only hold a tiny element of what she had planned. This is through her own decision making, as well as the materials and their transmutations through touch and extreme heat. One can’t help but reflect on how this mirrors the human experience of existing in a body—each day we feel different, whether tired and sore, or capable and strong, and this impacts the proceedings of our day. Perhaps this is why I experience such a sense of peace when presented with Leonard’s works, despite their bold presence and elements of visual chaos. They make me feel more able to accept the transient, imperfect, or unconventional.

Text by Imogen Cahill

Enquire

Send me more information on The Wedding Breakfast An Ode to Olly

Please fill in the fields marked with an asterisk
Receive newsletters *
Send enquiry

* denotes required fields

In order to respond to your enquiry, we will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.

Related artist

  • Virginia Leonard

    Virginia Leonard

Back to exhibitions

Sign up to our mailing list

Submit

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.

About

News

Contact

Send an email
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Privacy Policy
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Gow Langsford
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Find out more about cookies.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences