Modundo@ucreative.ac.uk

Professor Odundo’s elegant ceramic vessels are characterized by human-like forms, attributes and graceful silhouettes. The smooth, finished surfaces belie the hand-built coiled techniques she uses to patiently mould her thin-walled vases and pots. Through her keen eye and hand, she synthesizes designs from these ancient cultural traditions to produce contemporary forms all her own.

Through an exacting schedule of disciplined work practice that has seen her work continue to be exhibited nationally and internationally, Odundo has astonishingly continued to lead a cohort of successful students year after year by example. Recent ceramic exhibitions include solo shows in 2009 at Bluecoat Display centre, Liverpool, and in September 2010, at the famous Longhouse Reserve Gallery and Gardens in

Professor Odundo’s elegant ceramic vessels are characterized by human-like forms, attributes and graceful silhouettes. The smooth, finished surfaces belie the hand-built coiled techniques she uses to patiently mould her thin-walled vases and pots. Through her keen eye and hand, she synthesizes designs from these ancient cultural traditions to produce contemporary forms all her own.

Through an exacting schedule of disciplined work practice that has seen her work continue to be exhibited nationally and internationally, Odundo has astonishingly continued to lead a cohort of successful students year after year by example. Recent ceramic exhibitions include solo shows in 2009 at Bluecoat Display centre, Liverpool, and in September 2010, at the famous Longhouse Reserve Gallery and Gardens in East Hampton, New York USA, founded by Jack Lenor Larson. She has been included in several thematic exhibitions internationally including the Global Africa Project, an exhibition that surveys art and design by artists from Africa which will tour to Baltimore, Seattle and Atlanta and also Black Womanhood, curated by Barbara Thompson, which had its first showing at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, New England accompanied by a major catalogue.

Odundo grew up in Kenya, lived briefly as a child in India where her father worked as a journalist before continuing her early education in Kenya. She began her artistic career as a studio apprentice with advertising agency H S Bensons later bought by Ogilvy and Mather International. Odundo then worked for a Neon Designs and Signs company as an assistant sign designer in Nairobi before going to art school in England in 1972, first in Cambridge, then Farnham and finally at the Royal College of Art, London. In between her studies she travelled to Abuja Pottery, Nigeria after Michael Cardew recommendation, then back to Kenya and to the West Coast of USA to research material for her essays on antiquity, historical, traditional and non-industrial ceramics.

Odundo received an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2008 and was also the 2008 recipient of the Detroit Institute of Art Friends of African and African American Art’s Association (FAAAA) African Art Recognition Award.

2011 - MOG Artist in Residence in Hot Glass Art, Tacoma Museum of Glass, Washington, USA.
2011 - Artist in Residence in Hot Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, Washington, USA.
2011 - Artist in Residence, Print Workshop, University of Ulster, UK.
2009 - Artist in Residence, Huara Huara, Santiago, Chile
2008 - Artist in Residence, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.

2011-14 REF Panel Member (Unit 34: Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory)
2011 Patron & Trustee of The National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD)
2008 Appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Honour’s List for services to the Arts
2008 Awarded the African Art Recognition Award by Detroit Art Institute’s Friends of African and African-American Art 2007 Trustee and Boardmember of The Lightbox Gallery & Museum, Woking
Member of The Artworkers Guild, London

Magdalene is currently on the supervisory team for two UCA research student and is an advisor for an external student.