theCOLAB and the Artist’s Garden presents MARY MARY, a major exhibition of public, outdoor sculpture in central London by nine women artists.
The exhibition features commissioned works by Rong Bao, Candida Powell–Williams and Alice Wilson, adapted works by Lucy Gregory and L R Vandy and existing works by Olivia Bax, Frances Richardson, Holly Stevenson and Virginia Overton. It is on view at the Artist’s Garden, a vast and once neglected half-acre roof terrace on top of Temple tube station, which is now the world’s first sculpture garden dedicated to the work of women artists.
MARY MARY positively reframes the characterisation of forceful women as ‘contrary’, as portrayed in the eponymous nursery rhyme; it explores and subverts architectural and historical aspects of the Garden and proposes a new and rich sculptural language for public space. The exhibition enacts a large-scale reclamation of space by women artists: physically, in the fabric of the urban landscape, and conceptually, in the male dominated art historical canon. The diverse group of artists in the exhibition are unified by a desire to be recognised and listened to in response to two elements rooted in British national consciousness: gardens and nursery rhymes.
The roof terrace which the Artist’s Garden occupies is thought to lie partially over the 17th century formal garden of Lord and Lady Arundel, in which England’s first classical sculpture collection was amassed and displayed. The Artist’s Garden is conceived by theCOLAB, the independent collaborative commissioner working beyond the white cube to unite people, land and art and run in close partnership with and supported by Westminster City Council. theCOLAB provides a platform for the appreciation of the work of women artists – whose representation in commercial galleries and public collections remains below 30 per cent.
Claire Mander, Director & Curator, theCOLAB, says:
Since it opened in 2021, The Artist’s Garden has consistently demonstrated the refreshingly non-conformist approaches of women artists, offering new perspectives on the possibilities of sculpture – materially, and as a conduit for revealing untold stories about people and places. theCOLAB and Westminster City Council are working in partnership towards redefining the future of public sculpture.
Rong Bao’s 5m square “infinite pathway” is inspired by the tactile yellow paving slabs used to guide the visually impaired around cities which are, often, blocked by brick walls or dead ends as new developments spring up. Bao’s Yellow Path (2024) critiques the urbanist’s disregard for the visually impaired and is an invitation to experience sculpture through touch and voice. Constructed from yellow brush squares, the work contains a poem-work in braille, a visually impaired poet’s response to the work and the garden. Yellow Path is supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture grant programme.
Cartouche (2023) is Olivia Bax’s humorous way of fulfilling an international commission with an extremely modest budget. She sidestepped shipping expenses by using the crate as both crate and sculpture, fitting all the other elements within it, ready for easy on-site assembly. The work is an amalgamation of parts that funnel and pocket, with materials mixed, painted, welded and bolted.
Lucy Gregory presents It’s All Kicking Off (2024) a newly configured version of indoor work Images Have Legs. It is an invitation to the viewer to become both engine and performer in the surreal mechanisms of her kinetic sculptural collage. Its movement is reminiscent of a perpetual cancan in which, with cartoonish licence and a dose of slapstick humour, Gregory has flattened images of legs to create a work that is simultaneously both two and three dimensional, static and in movement. It kicks high in joyous defiance of artistic categories and conventions, with viewer as accomplice.
Virginia Overton’s Untitled (chime for Caro) (2022) is a large-scale interactive kinetic sculpture, constructed from offcuts of steel belonging to Anthony Caro which he deposited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for use by future generations of sculptors. Overton pairs these steel remnants with new aluminium pipe of equal weight by hanging them across a large A-frame gantry. The resulting artwork highlights the ephemerality of sound by harnessing the heaviness of the steel into a feeling of lightness.
For Candida Powell-Williams, gardens are configured as mythical encounters between object and nature, acting as catalysts for transformation. Auguries through the Mist (2024) is a newly commissioned and fully functioning ‘unruly’ fountain, inspired by classical garden architecture and made from steel, jesmonite, wood and ceramics. Powell-Williams subverts the stability of classical fountain geometry by placing hers on top of a chariot which processes into a realm where esoteric and scientific knowledge-based systems co-exist. The work is a call to unlearn the myth of paradise and to remove the blame from women focusing instead on our Sisyphean endeavours.
Frances Richardson has constructed a sculptural pause by transforming one of the terrace’s neglected but elegant early c.20th benches. The artist’s intense and intimate restoration/making process and use of unique materials such as Concrete Canvas coalesce in stillness in ‘Performed object fig. 09130123’, indolentia’ a work performed both in the making and in being wheeled around by the public. It brings together the themes of Milan Kundera’s Slowness, snatches of organ music heard at the nearby c.12th Temple Church of the Knights Templar and the palette of stained-glass windows at the Musée Cluny, Paris.
Holly Stevenson’s Another Mother (2022) replaces a lost baluster and is, simultaneously, a decorative wayside shrine, a guardian of the Artist’s Garden and a tribute to Maria Koch, the wife of the celebrated Victorian engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette who resolved the ‘Great Stink’ by constructing the Embankment, on which the Artist’s Garden stands. As the mother of Bazalgette’s 11 children, each represented by a flower on Stevenson’s sculpture, Koch enabled the conditions in which her husband could thrive. Stevenson’s intervention in the architectural fabric of the perimeter of the Artist’s Garden celebrates the untold, invisible, unpaid but essential support roles of women across the world and throughout history.
L R Vandy’s Superhero Cog-Woman (2019-2024), comprised of the stacked cogs of heavy machinery is repainted in the purples and pinks of sugared almonds for this exhibition, acting as a celebratory tribute to the unseen the industriousness of women. The rope maquette by Vandy, Dancing in Time: The Ties that Bind Us (2023), pays tribute to the central role that Black women have historically played in keeping traditions alive and binding communities together. The work celebrates dance from carnival masquerades to spirit dancers in the African diaspora as a strategy to break free from oppressive systems.
Alice Wilson’s Savoy (2024) is a dense vertical forest of 4m high coloured construction timbers with schematic outlines of dwellings and architectural elements at their tips. The sculpture stands next to the existing Artist’s Hut which Wilson has entirely wrapped in a monochromatic photograph of a sunlit Scottish forest. It is a work which dissolves the hierarchies of wood as material and architectural forms from hut to grand hotel.
Councillor Ryan Jude, Cabinet Member for Climate, Ecology and Culture says:
We are delighted to support the MARY MARY exhibition at the Artist’s Garden through our partnership with theCOLAB. As part of our commitment to delivering a Fairer Westminster, we are dedicated to creating inclusive cultural spaces. By showcasing the work of nine women artists, this exhibition continues to enhance this historic space and champion diversity in the arts.
MARY MARY Artist’s Garden, Temple Place, London WC2R 2PH 3rd October 2024 – September 2025
2nd October 2024 Private view 5– 7pm
MARY MARY and The Artist’s Garden is realised in partnership with and supported by Westminster City Council and private philanthropists with support from the British Council’s Connections Through Culture Grant for Rong Bao’s Yellow Path and with the kind permission of LUL/Transport for London. With thanks to WSP UK, Frieze 91 and Mezcal Reina for their support.
About the Artists
Rong Bao (b. 1997, China) completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2023. She studied Public Sculpture at the China Academy of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving her BFA in 2021. She was in the Top 10 emerging artists selected by China UCCA, shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2022 and received the Royal Society of Sculptors’ Gilbert Bayes Award and the COLAB/Royal College of Art/Yorkshire Sculpture Park Graduate Award, Her first solo exhibition, “Rong Bao is Me,”, Saatchi Gallery (2024), was the first solo exhibition by a female Chinese artist at the gallery. She was commissioned by Tate Collective, and her work is in collections including the Art Algorithm Capital Art Foundation, LAM Museum.
Olivia Bax (b. 1988, Singapore) graduated from the Byam Shaw School of Art in 2010 and with an MFA Sculpture from Slade School of Fine Art in 2016. She spent her twenties working as a studio assistant to Anthony Caro. She was Artist Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute in 2023, was awarded the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award in 2019 and the Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize in 2016. Exhibitions include: Handrailing, The New Arts Centre in collaboration with Sid Motion Gallery, Roche Court, 2024; Floss, Holtermann Fine Art, London; These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture, Royal West of England Academy, 2024 and Eartheaters, Lustwarande, Tilburg, 2023. Her work is held in the Arts Council Collection, The Ingram Collection, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens and private collections.
Lucy Gregory (b. 1994) graduated from The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2016
and The Royal College of Art with an MFA in Sculpture in 2018. She won the Ingram Prize in 2019 and her work is now part of the Ingram Collection. She received the Gilbert Bayes Trust Studio Grant and the RCA Arts & Humanities Art Criticism Prize in 2018. She won the People’s Choice Award for the National Sculpture Prize at Broomhill in 2021 and was selected for theCOLAB Body and Place Residency in 2023. She has exhibited at Bold Tendencies in 2020, MK Gallery in 2020 and 2024, Christie’s Auction House, as well as being included as a finalist in the 2021 Robert Walters UK New Artist of the Year Award at the Saatchi Gallery. In 2024, she will exhibit at Orleans House Gallery. She lives and works in London and Buckinghamshire.
Virginia Overton (b.1971, Nashville, US) holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Memphis, Tennessee. Recent solo exhibitions include Landcraft Garden Foundation, Mattituck, New York (2023); Hypermaremma, Orbetello, Italy (2023); Frist Art Museum, Nashville (2022); Goldsmiths CCA, London, The Mill, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine (2022); White Cube Hong Kong (2020); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art, Memphis, Tennessee (2018), Westfälischer Kunstverein Jahresgaben, Munster, Germany, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2016) and Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2013). Group exhibitions include The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2022); The Ranch, Montauk, New York (2021); Among the Trees, Hayward Gallery, London (2020); FRONT Triennial, Cleveland, (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2016); High Line, New York in 2012 and 2014, Storm King Art Center, New York 2014. Her work is held in numerous collections internationally including Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, Tennessee Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona The Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, Stiftung Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland Stiftung GegenwART, Bern, Switzerland Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Zabludowicz Collection, London. Addditional commissions and public works include those at LaGuardia Airport, New York; Celine, Paris, Untitled (cascade), Goldsmiths CCA, London; Untitled (HILUX), Art Basel (Parcours), Storm King Art Center, ALL RISE, Seattle, Washington; Pier 54, High Line Art, New York; Change of State, Projection on the Façade of the New Museum, New York Memphis, TN Social, billboard at Monroe and Marshall, Memphis, Tennessee; R4, in association with FIAC, Ile Seguin, Paris, Frieze Projects, Randall’s Island, New York; Off the Grid, Brooks Museum, Memphis, Tennessee. She is represented by White Cube and she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Candida Powell-Williams (b. 1984, London) graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in
2011 and the Slade School of Fine Art London in 2009. She was awarded the Mother Art Prize, 2018 and the Eric and Jean Cass Sculpture Award in 2011. She was Artist in Residence at the Warburg Institute [DATE] and undertook the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome in 2012-3. Selected exhibitions: The Goddess, The Diety and the Cyborg at The Women’s Art Collection Murray Edwards College Cambridge, 2024; Crystalis Zabludowicz Collection Finland, 2023; Tilt Shift: Shadows of the Seasoned Sun, Southwark Park Galleries, 2022;The Gates of Apophenia, Bosse & Baum London, 2019); Command Lines, Void Gallery Northern Ireland, 2019; Lessness, still quorum, performance, Serpentine Galleries, London, 2018, Tongue Town, Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, 2017; Cache, Art Night Associate Programme, London, 2017.
Frances Richardson (b.1965, Leeds, UK) studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design, Norwich. She received a Commonwealth Foundation Fellowship and trained as a Yoruba carver under Master Carver Segun Faleye in Nigeria. On her return to London, she met Robert Loder the collector, philanthropist and co-founder of the Triangle Network, and in 1994, Richardson instigated his involvement in an artist-led project for the provision of studios and for hosting international artists in residency at Gasworks in Vauxhall in London. In 2006, Richardson received her MA in Fine Art Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. In 2021, she received the prestigious Bryan Robertson Trust Award. She was nominated for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2015-17 in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery and won the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and Chiara Williams Contemporary Art SOLO AWARD in 2017. In 2022, she gave the Courtauld Institute of Art Sculptural Processes Group’s Annual Artist’s Talk. Richardson exhibits nationally and internationally. Key solo exhibitions/commissions include theCOLAB Women’s Work Commission 2023, Performed Object: Fig. 09130123, indolentia’, The Artist’s Garden, London, 2023; Still attached at all four corners, Bobinska Brownlee New River, London, 2022; If I measure it must exist, Karsten Schubert, London 2021, Not even nothing can be free from ghosts, Standpoint Gallery, London, 2018; In times of brutal instability, Chiara Williams Contemporary Art, London Art Fair, 2018; Performed object: Fig. 090616, Concrete Canvas Treforest Industrial Estate, Cardiff, 2016; Loss of object and bondage to it, Lubomirov-Easton, London 2015; Fig 2, Bermondsey Square Sculpture Commission, Vitrine Gallery, London 2015; and Ideas in the Making: drawing structure, Trinity Contemporary, London 2011. She lives and works in London, is Carving/Fine Art Tutor at City & Guilds of London Art School and is represented by Tom Rowland.
Holly Stevenson (b. 1975) holds an MA in Art History from the University of Glasgow and an MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 2012 she was awarded the MFI Flat Time House Graduate Award supported by the John Latham Archive and Foundation, held a guest fellowship at UAL and became a Mother Art Prize Finalist in 2020. She was commissioned by Procreate Project in 2020, theCOLAB the Artist’ Garden Women’s Work Commission in 2022 and was selected for their Body and Place residency in 2024. Her work is held in collections including Leeds College of Art Special Collection, Marcelle Joseph Collection, Ömer Koç Collection, University of the Arts, London, Permanent Collection. She has exhibited at Richard Saltoun Gallery, Rome and London, Frieze Sculpture 2023, Marcelle Joseph Projects and Sid Motion Gallery. Forthcoming residencies/exhibitions include at Jane McAdam Freud Museum and Gallery in the Czech Republic and the Freud Museum, London in 2024/5.
L R Vandy (b. 1958, Coventry) graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a BA Graphic Design and an MA Royal College of Art in Furniture Design. Most recently, she was commissioned by National Museums Liverpool to created Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us, for the Canning Dock in Liverpool for the third iteration of the International Slavery Museum’s MLK Pop Up series. She exhibited at Frieze Sculpture, Regents Park, 2023, Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House, 2019. Since 2018, she has exhibited at October Gallery and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London and New York. including Her work is in the collection of the British Museum, National Museums Liverpool and private collections. She was selected for theCOLAB Body and Place Residency in 2022. She is represented by October Gallery, lives in London and works in Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Alice Wilson (b.1982) graduated from her BA at Loughborough University in 2005 and her MA Fine Art from Wimbledon School of Art in 2011. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds an MA Academic Practice from UAL, 2023. Recent solo exhibitions include The Matter Facts at Coleman Projects, 2023, A Mild Epiphany on My Bike at domobaal Gallery, 2021, one hundred and eighty nine at 303 Projects, Lowestoft, 2022 and ISLAND at JGM Gallery, 2019. Other recent exhibitions include KK Trove with SqWLAB, Mumbai, 2023 and New Forms at Saatchi Gallery, 2022. She received international development funding from the British Council in 2017 to install work in a Danish forest. She was selected for theCOLAB Body and Place Residency in 2022 and has work in the collection of the National Maritime Museum.
