ADELINE DE MONSEIGNAT

Adeline de Monseignat, Up-Up (2025) (detail) first commissioned for Bo Lee Gallery, Bruton for the exhibition Playscape.

theCOLAB is delighted to announce Mexico-City based Adeline de Monseignat’s first exhibition in outdoor public space with her three sculptures Gusano, Croissant, and Up-Up (2025), in a garden of their own within the Artist’s Garden, the world’s first and only sculpture garden dedicated to the pioneering work of women artists.

Situated on the roof terrace above Temple tube station, the project is realised in close collaboration with Westminster City Council, since 2021. The public opening of Monseignat’s sculptures is on Saturday 16 May 2026 and they will be exhibited until mid-May 2027.

Monseignat conveys the meanings and physical qualities of matrescence sculpturally, in stone, theatrically.

Stone is prevalent in Monseignat’s work. Based in Mexico-City, she draws from pre-Hispanic techniques of embedding whole stones into surfaces to create three-dimensional, large scale sculptural and architectural outdoor mosaics. Eschewing the intricacy and two-dimensionality of European wall and floor mosaics, she uses hand-applied, hand sized pebbles, rounded and semi-polished by the flow of England’s rivers.

Gusano, Croissant and Up-Up, address the triumphant acceptance of the separation between mother and young child. The works move beyond the introspective embodied experiences of pregnancy, birth-giving, the first skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding of the artist’s latest publication, Motherhood in Four Acts, 2025. Gusano, Croissant, and Up-Up, mimic the forms of children at play and encapsulate the joy of observing them. The sculptures are enlarged to recall the enormity of objects in a world viewed through a child’s eyes.

Carefully and playfully named, they precociously adopt their roles. ‘Gusano’, or ‘worm’ in Mexican Spanish, is a term of endearment for the squirming child, her curiosity never stilled, triumphant in her escape. ‘Croissant’ which means ‘growing’ in French, alludes to both seesaw and pastry, while ‘up-up’ are the words of a child with arms upheld, imploring nurture and re-connection with the mother.

A flowing and manicured artificial lawn is a stage for these characters and creates a garden within the Artist’s Garden. Visitors are invited to sit, recline and commune with works, reinhabiting the eye and mind of a child and seeing the world from a child’s perspective.

Gusano, Croissant, and Up-Up have audaciously broken free of the sacred white interior of the gallery. The artist believes that, just as “we are the landscape of all we have seen” (Isamu Noguchi, 1968), so these sculptures are becoming and acquiring new meanings in this new garden of their own, free of the gallery’s conditions and time constraints.

Adeline de Monseignat, Croissant (2025) first commissioned for Bo Lee Gallery, Bruton for the exhibition Playscape.

Claire Mander says, “For the first time, Adeline de Monseignat is exhibiting her compelling sculptures outdoors in public space, at the Artist’s Garden in London, where she studied and trained as a sculptor. Now based in Mexico City, she embraces this career-defining opportunity to enter the arena of public sculpture and to bring her extensive and intimate sculptural investigations of motherhood in front of London’s publics, in a large scale celebration of the independence of mother and child.”

Adeline de Monseignat says, “Placed outdoors, these sculptures can move and breathe as intended—reaching, lounging, rocking. Their scale allows everyone to see and feel the world from a child’s perspective, highlighting the vitality of a toddler’s movement.” [or toddlers’ movement]

Monseignat’s sculptures are part of the exhibition Sculpture in Three Acts: Peake, Linder, Monseignat. They join previous commissions at the Artist’s Garden by sculptors Jodie Carey, Candida Powell-Williams, Frances Richardson, Holly Stevenson and Alice Wilson.

Sculpture in Three Acts: Peake, Linder, Monseignat marks the fifth year of the Artist’s Garden, established in 2021. Its ambitious programme of commissioning and exhibiting career-defining and life-affirming works by artists at all stages of their career acts as a beacon of what women can achieve, collectively, when they take centre stage. The Artist’s Garden stands true to the principle of Chekhov’s Gun, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." The Artist’s Garden is a promise to put the work of women centre stage and ensure the narratives of women across place and time are embedded in history as we process towards gender parity.

About Adeline de Monseignat

Adeline de Monseignat (b. Monaco, 1987) is a sculptor based in Mexico City whose work investigates the hidden life within matter, drawing on mythology, symbolism, psychology, and the uncanny. Monseignat’s sculptures are intimate yet relational, and invite reflection on the energies and forces that animate both objects and human communities, past and present. She studied Language and Culture at University College London (BA, 2009), completed a Foundation Diploma at the Slade School of Fine Art (2010), and received an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School (2011). Her work has been shown internationally at Museo Cabañas, Museo MARCO, Saatchi Gallery, Victoria Miro, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, MASA Galeria, Cadogan Gallery, Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer and most recently, ‘Playscape’ at Bo Lee and Workman, Somerset (2025).

About theCOLAB

theCOLAB is an independent, women-led collaborative laboratory and registered charity that unites people, land and art. We commission epic, life-affirming and career-defining sculptural works in undervalued and underused outdoor public spaces across the country from a coastal commissioning programme in Morecambe Bay to our exploratory drawing residency BODY and PLACE in the West of England. theCOLAB’s headline project, The Artist’s Garden, based on the roof terrace above Temple tube station in London is the world’s first and only sculpture garden dedicated to the pioneering work of women artists.

About The Artist’s Garden

The Artist's Garden has transformed a 1,400sqm hidden and neglected roof terrace above Temple tube station into a place for the public to experience an ambitious annual programme of new commissions, exhibitions and residencies of all scales. Situated next to Somerset House and accessible by steps from Temple Place, it is open to the public all day every day, for free, from 8am until dusk. It is the world’s first and only sculpture garden dedicated to the pioneering work of women artists.

theCOLAB’s work is in pursuit of revealing the rarely seen – only 13% of public sculptures in London are by women artists and they have a mere 23% representation in galleries and public collections. It is a beacon for best practice of regenerating public space through culture and a platform for achieving gender parity in outdoor public sculpture and beyond. This bold creative output is underpinned by inspiring and innovative educational outreach programmes including theCOLAB/ Royal College of Art/Yorkshire Sculpture Park Graduate Award residency and workshops for Westminster-based young people and those underrepresented in the arts, to broaden their accessibility to, and representation within, the creative industries, in partnership with Westminster Council’s City Lions.

LONG LIVE THE ARTIST’S GARDEN!

The Artist’s Garden is in partnership with and supported by:

With philanthropic support from Nina and Samuel Wisnia and donors who wish to remain anonymous, with the kind permission of TfL/LUL.

Adeline de Monseignat’s exhibition is supported by Bo Lee Gallery and WSP UP with thanks to EasiGrass.

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