Odundo returned to England for more formal training, receiving her bachelor’s degree from West Surrey College of Art & Design in 1976 and then a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art. She has also taught at several institutions, including the Surrey Institute of Art & Design (now, the University for Creative Arts) in 1997 where she was named as Emerita Professor in 2016.
Odundo was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to art in 2008 and then Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2020 services to art and arts education. Odundo lives and works in Surrey.
Odundo’s Method and Approach
Odundo’s pieces are hand-made, using a coil technique.
Odundo often sketches the forms her pieces will take prior to creating them. They are built using the centuries old technique of coiling clay into long tubes which are then stacked one upon the other and blended into the final form, which in Odundo’s case is often reminiscent of the female form. Once created, Odundo burnishes the finished vessel covers it with slip, and then burnishes it again. Utilizing the reduction firing process she learned of from the Pueblo people of San Ildefonso, she first fires a piece in an oxygen rich atmosphere which results in a red/orange color. The vessel is fired again, this time the flames are smothered, resulting in an oxygen poor atmosphere which turns the pottery black.
For the installation at Houghton Hall, Odundo chose to collaborate with the legendary English ceramic manufacturer, Wedgwood. She chose Wedgwood because she had always admired its founder, Josiah, who, though not a potter himself, transformed the industry, and also because, according to Odundo, he ‘look[ed] to historical forms and traditions’ – as does she –for inspiration when creating designs.
The Marble Parlour & the Jasperware Centerpiece
Set in the Marble Parlour, the room that Walpole would have hosted his guests, is Odundo’s signature piece. The massive Jasperware Centerpiece – a style of ceramic created by Wedgwood that features a matte glaze with a contrasting, often white ceramic frieze overlaid – was the highlight of the exhibition. Wedgwood’s Jasperware pieces usually featured a frieze evocative of those found on ancient Greek vessels. In the case of Odundo’s piece, the frieze tackles the legacies of the slave trade.
The Marble Parlour is an opulent room featuring grape motifs on the painted ceiling, cornice, and alcoves – not to mention the fireplace which was designed to “discreetly accommodate servants who would be replenishing food and wine." Above the fireplace, Rysbrack, the parlour’s designer, created a relief, titled 'The Sacrifice to Bacchus,’ inspired by the Greco-Roman god of wine.
Odundo, in creating the massive Jasperware piece, imagined the “conversation in the parlour was always animated, fuelled by his famously ample wine cellar, taking in all the pressing political debates of the day.” For this reason, she felt she needed “to create a work that inserted my own history, if only briefly, into the hall’s family story.” After all, as Dame Odundo noted, “I may have moved to Britain over half a century ago, I may have even been made a dame, but that doesn’t change the fact that in my own homeland, where I was born, I was deemed a second-class citizen by those in power.”
As mentioned earlier, Odundo admired Josiah Wedgwood’s manufacturing innovations, classically rooted designs, and enduring influence of the art of ceramics. However, Odundo also said she “always admired his prominent role in the abolitionist movement, how he used his power to help change history
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