‘Cavities’ was made and installed in the lawns at the Fellows Garden, Jesus College in Cambridge University in 1988 as part of Veronica Ryan’s 1987/88 residency at Kettles Yard Gallery. The work exists in two versions, firstly in its form in situ actually in the lawns and its associated documentation and secondly, as it has been shown since, with the vessel like, lead foil objects flattened and box framed for presentation in gallery contexts. Both strategies of presenting work have been present in the artist’s practice. Veronica Ryan has described her work as representations of ‘dislocation/location and disorientation’. Ryan says “The sense of a different place as my home was present in early childhood as a result of stories from my mother”. ‘Cavities’ is typical of her work in that period in the eighties, works which resembled bowls, gourds, organic forms, pods and seeds which have the familiarity of things drawn from a deep well of associations and meanings but are non-specific. In ‘Cavities’ the working processes hinted at with the vessel form are contradicted by the perforations in the lead. No liquid could ever have collected in these objects, for any purpose. Their contradiction of function holds the piece outside considerations of craft or utility despite their hand built nature. Ryan says of her practice “The sense of a different place as my home was present in early childhood as a result of stories from my mother.”, “Boundaries, territories, place, dislocations, memory have been some of the continuing preoccupations in my work. The form and structures often have the sense of alluding to remembered and fleeting memorabilia. These memorable things might have been the result of decayed fruit, and remaining husks and seeds on the ground. The first experience of eating a sugar apple was terrible nausea and sickness from the rich perfumed fruit, It is primarily the experience and not representation which the work is concerned with.’* *Vera Ryan, ‘A New Necessity’, 1990