FLORA DULEY
theCOLAB / Royal College of Art / Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2024 Graduate Award Winner
In residence in the Artist’s Hut
Tuesday - Wednesday, 11.30 - 4pm from December 10th until March 2025
at The Artist’s Garden, on the roof of
Temple tube station, London, WC2R 2PH
What 3 Words: almost.engine.probe
Flora Duley’s work activates the social context of sculpture by setting up absurd situations which question hierarchies and conformity. Her sculptural space is communal, playful and experimental, using games and play as a critique of institutional public engagement and art education. Her work interrogates the rules of games and how they reflect the structures and norms that define and often confine societies. From table tennis matches in lifts to an opera set made of yoga bricks, the theatricality of the work is reflected in the tactile, textured and colourful neon balls, stretch bands, mats, bats and equipment that are the remnants of consumerist games.
Duley holds a BA Hons in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, 2016 and MA Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, 2024. She was selected from the RCA Show in 2024 as theCOLAB/RCA/YSP Graduate Award winner.
Selected exhibitions and commissions include: ‘The Bat is simply an advanced Pear’, ACE Invited Artist, SPUDworks, 2024; "Is there something I should know that I don't know already?", Standpoint Gallery, 2024; 6th Sense Collective Residency, 2024; 'Urban Garden Project', Natural History Museum/ACAVA Communities, North Kensington, 2023; Young People Project 2023, John Hansard Gallery; ‘Playful', Co-Created Exhibition where?when?: 'Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project’, ASPEX and PCOS, 2022. Duley lives and works in London and Hayling Island, UK.
Residency
Residency | Tuesday - Wednesday, 11.30 - 4pm until March 2024
Open daily from 8am with seasonal closing times at dusk, free and open to all
The Artist’s Garden, Temple Station Roof Terrace, Temple Place, London WC2R 2PH
Temple or Embankment Underground Station
Entry via stairs on Temple Place, a few minutes’ walk from the Strand, next to Somerset House.
Notes for Editors
About theCOLAB / RCA / YSP Graduate Award
Originally established in 2015, the Award took on a new dimension when theCOLAB was invited to select the winner(s) following the pandemic in 2021. theCOLAB offers a residency and the opportunity for an artist graduating from Royal College of Art’s MA Sculpture programme the opportunity to undertake a residency in the Artist’s Hut and to be taken through the complex process of creating outdoor public sculpture and vital support at the critical transition stage from being a student to independent artist. This builds on YSP’s long-standing commitment to supporting artists at every stage of their career. The award is bespoke to each recipient and establishes long-term relationships and opportunities. Helen Pheby (YSP) and Claire Mander (theCoLAB) selected Rong Bao and Annabel Tennyson-Davies as recipients of the award in 2023 to accommodate the new one year RCA MA Sculpture programme.
About the Artist’s Garden
The Artist’s Garden was a neglected public space, reclaimed as a platform for women artists and launched in 2021. Built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in 1870 as part of Victoria Embankment to resolve the ‘Great Stink’, it is thought to be on the site of Lord and Lady Arundel’s seventeenth century garden where they displayed England’s first classical sculpture collection. The 1,400 sqm space is invisible from street level and reached by well-worn steps at the top of which a massive space opens up, offering spectacular views from the Houses of Parliament to Tate Modern. The Artist’s Garden opened in October 2021 with Lakwena’s ‘Back in the Air: a Meditation on Higher Ground’. Growing organically and overlaying the first, the second major commission by Heywood & Condie, ‘Through the Cosmic Allotment’ explores plant human communication through landscapes installed in four greenhouses exploring aspects of our cosmic understanding of landscape. Currently Holly Hendry’s first London commission ‘Slackwater’ weaves its way across the space with Frances’s Richardson’s transformation of one of the site’s existing early c..20th benches into her ‘Performed object: fig.09130123, indolentia’ as the current Women’s Work Comission.
‘The Artist’s Garden’ is realised in close partnership with and supported by Westminster City Council. With thanks to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Royal College of Art, WSP UK, and with kind permission of LUL/Transport for London. The Artist’s Garden and its collaboration with RCA/YSP will continue until the end of 2025.
For more information, images or to arrange an interview please contact info@thecolab.art and visit www.thecolab.art