TRANSFORMING PUBLIC SPACE, SCULPTURALLY, celebrates the once in a lifetime achievement of sculptor Holly Hendry having two major commissions in London, each visible from the other across the Thames, at the Artist’s Garden on the roof of Temple tube station and the Hayward Gallery.  theCOLAB in collaboration with the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce presents a visit, a talk and an in conversation between Claire Mander, Director, theCOLAB and Holly Hendry, artist at RSA on 24 April 2024 from 5pm.

The Artist’s Garden, established in 2021, is taking bold steps to tackle the under-representation of women artists in the field of public outdoor, site-specific scuptural interventions.  Given that the doors of the galleries, both commercial and public are under 30% ajar for women artists, theCOLAB is demonstrating just how outmoded the ‘brilliance bias’, which ascribes genius as a male trait, really is, by reclaiming public space for artist-women.

Hendry’s ‘Slackwater’, made for the Artist’s Garden, is her first London commission and her most expansive to date.  At a monumental 35m x 15m it is an immense sculptural entanglement that weaves together the watery history of its riverside location, with references to the abstract rhythms of the Thames and liquid movements within the human body. Drawn to changes in the pattern of the river's surface, she constructed the work with industrial-scale ducting, curled around electricity spools and over casts of inflated boat fenders to create a work that ebbs and flows across the site's architecture. The artist's visual language is drawn from ancient depictions of floods and rivers, and 19th century microscopic images of Thames water, described as 'monster soup', a bacterial slurry teeming with surreal, animated forms.

Maintaining full curatorial independence, theCOLAB has built confidence in both the appetite and capabilities of women artists working in public space.  Forging strong collaborations with Westminster City Council and other cultural organisations in the burgeoning cultural hub of the Northbank, have allowed it to reclaim neglected public space – imagined as the landing spot for Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge – and put it back into use for the public.  It has ‘planted a flag for women artists and now it must defend it’ in the words of Advisory Board member Richard Wentworth.  The Artist’s Garden is a place of artistic growth, and gives career-defining oppportunities for artists at every stage of their career to break through the glass ceilling of public commissions.  From established, to mid-career to next generation sculptors through the annual theCOLAB/Yorkshire Sculpture Park/Royal College of Art Graduate Sculpture Award, theCOLAB arms women artists with the practical experience and knowledge of both process and public interaction, to work in full view in our public spaces.

The increase in interest in women and under-represented artists, according to the Burns Halpern Report 2022 is a veneer:  the art world’s perception of progress far outpaces reality in collecting, sales and commissioning strategies, which in the US remain unchanged since 2018.  The Freelands Reports on the Representation of Women Artists in the UK reflect similar trends.  To dispel the bleakness, theCOLAB’s Artist’s Garden is an agent of constructive and positive change, a demonstration of a bright new future for neglected public spaces and for women artists.