THE ARTIST’S GARDEN
The Artist’s Garden transformed a 1400sqm hidden and neglected roof terrace above Temple tube station into a place for the public to experience large-scale life affirming artistic interventions by women artists, since 2021.
MARY MARY, group exhibition featuring nine women artists, 02 October 2024 - 03 September 2025
SLACKWATER, an expansive site specific commission by Holly Hendry, July 2023 - September 2024
Back in the Air: A Meditation on Higher Ground by Lakwena, 2021
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Address: On the roof of Temple tube station, London, WC2R 2PH
Opening Hours: Open daily, 8am - dusk.
FREE, OPEN DAILY and ALL WELCOME. Please note this historic site is currently only accessible via steps from street level.
The roof terrace is part of the Victoria Embankment, a bold reclamation of land beside the Thames conceived and built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette between 1865–1870 to resolve the ‘Great Stink’. This feat of Victorian engineering turned muddy foreshores into public spaces, with roads and walkways overhead, and tunnels for trains, water and waste beneath. Also thought to be on the site of the seventeenth century garden of Lord and Lady Arundel, who together collected England’s first great classical sculpture collection. Visitors would have alighted from the Thames and walked through the garden to Arundel House, situated next to Somerset House and the other great palaces of the Strand.
The Artist's Garden opened in 2021 with Lakwena's technicolour vision of Paradise ‘Back in the Air: A Meditation on Higher Ground’. In 2022, it took visitors ‘Through the Cosmic Allotment’ by Heywood & Condie to celebrate our ability to find spiritual and psychic affinity with the non-human world. In 2023, Holly Hendry’s first public commission in London and her most expansive to date, Slackwater, 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.
Alongside the site-wide commissions, the 'Women's Work’ programme creates opportunities for artists to gain experience of the complex processes of realising outdoor sculpture in public space and to spend time in the Artist's Hut drawing and thinking. Vistors are invited to make and talk with every artist in residence. We invite the winner of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park/ Royal College of Art Graduate Sculpture Award every year to make work for the garden including Abigail Norris and Camilla Bliss. Other invited artists include Holly Stevenson.
On the roof of Temple tube station
The Artist’s Garden is realised in close partnership with and supported by Westminster City Council.
PROGRAMME
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Holly Hendry ‘Slackwater’ 2023, theCOLAB The Artist’s Garden
Photo courtesy Dominic Brummell
theCOLAB x RESONANCE FM x TOTALLY THAMES FESTIVAL 2025
theCOLAB/the Artist’s Garden LIVE BROADCAST Sunday 14 September 2025 11am – 2pm
RESONANCE FM 104.4 FM, DAB & streaming
as part of the 11th Totally Thames Festival RIVER of SOUND.
WOMEN, ART, WATER: sculpturally meandering conversations between Claire Mander, Holly Hendry, Tania Kovats, Candida Powell Williams and Kate McMillan.
'River of Sound’ premieres as a brand new arts partnership between this year's 11th annual Totally Thames Festival & the musically maverick London-based, arts-facing radio station Resonance FM.
A series of 24-hour arts-radio manifestations of riverine avant sound experimentation & Thamesian discussion over each of the four September Sundays, broadcast on Resonance FM + DAB & streaming.
An audio deep dive from the rising of the river to the Estuary mouth.
‘Water remembers. It is humans who forget.’ (Elif Shafak 'There Are Rivers in the Sky’ 2024)
Go with the flow on our radio ebb and tide.
WOMEN, ART & WATER
The second transmission of River Of Sound is hosted by curator Claire Mander, director of theCOLAB/The Artist’s Garden. Situated on the roof terrace above Temple tube station, The Artist’s Garden has 85 metres of river frontage with views over the Thames stretching from the Houses of Parliament to Tate Modern. Unsurprisingly, the River has been the source of inspiration for many of the artists who have made work for at what is the world’s only sculpture garden dedicated to the work of women artists.
Join us for conversations with and between three artists recently commissioned for the Artist’s Garden whose work examines the nature of water and interrogates the narratives of the Thames: Holly Hendry’s ‘Slackwater’ and Candida Powell-Williams’s fountain ‘Auguries Through the Mist’ and Kate McMillan’s ‘The River’s Stomach (Songs of Empire)’ an intervention into the nearby Strand Lane Roman Baths. Joining the discussion from her riverside studio in Devon, Tania Kovats, whose work has long posed the question of ‘what rivers run through you?’.
Hear how water runs through their processes and their thinking and what from what watery musical, literary and artistic sources they derive inspiration.
ABOUT RESONANCE FM
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
Realised by a dedicated community of volunteer engineers and programme-makers, Resonance offers over 105 creative broadcast series every week featuring local and international artists, makers and experts.
Resonance seeks to discover, encourage and support a diverse range of artistic voices through radio - from first-timers to seasoned broadcasters. Our ambition is to provide a broadcast platform through which as many people as possible can exercise “the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts” (Article 27, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
Our role extends to support for the rights of free speech; the rights to freely receive and impart information; and, in these days of algorithms curating and pushing us to mainstream commercial content, we offer protection to freedom of thought by ceding as much editorial control as current broadcast regulations allow to our contributors. Resonance is a project of London Musicians' Collective Limited, registered charity 290236.
https://www.resonancefm.com/about
ABOUT TOTALLY THAMES FESTIVAL
Celebrating the River Thames with arts events, active adventures, environmental initiatives, heritage and education programmes. Totally Thames Festival is an annual season of unique, diverse and accessible arts and culture throughout the month of September with activity taking place on, beneath, and along the River Thames.
The month-long live event programme along a 42-mile stretch of the Thames, working collaboratively with artists, local communities, river interest organisations and businesses.
https://thamesfestivaltrust.org/
ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Mander and theCOLAB
Claire Mander is the Director and Trustee of theCOLAB. Launched in 2011, this registered charity forges opportunities for the commissioning of complex large-scale interventions in unusual sites beyond the white cube and into the landscape. theCOLAB unites people, land and art by commissioning epic, life-affirming and career-defining sculptural works in undervalued and underused outdoor public spaces.
About The Artist's Garden and MARY MARY
The Artist's Garden has transformed a 1,400 sqm hidden and neglected roof terrace above Temple tube station into a place for the public to experience large-scale life-affirming artistic interventions by women artists. Situated next to Somerset House and accessible by steps from Temple Place it is only a seven-minute walk from the RSA.
A popular public open barrier-free destination for the contemplation and appreciation of the power of sculptural interventions by women artists, its 85 metres of river frontage offers extensive views and a vibrant programme of artist commissions, residencies in the Artist's Hut and an education programme for 13-16-year-olds
It is open to the public all day every day for free from 8am until dusk. Its current exhibition, MARY MARY, enacts a large-scale reclamation of public space by a diverse group of nine artists: Rong Bao, Olivia Bax, Lucy Gregory, Virginia Overton, Candida Powell–Williams, Frances Richardson, Holly Stevenson, LR Vandy and Alice Wilson.
Their work challenges and reimagines traditional ideas about gardens reshapes the negative portrayal of strong-willed women as 'contrary', a stereotype deeply rooted in our national consciousness, and highlights the bold, non-conformist approaches of women artists. The works offer new perspectives on the possibilities of sculpture materially and as a conduit for revealing untold stories.