LR Vandy’s Superhero Cog Woman (2019-2024) is the sculptural embodiment of the industriousness and dynamism of women. A woman-machine, she is made up of the stacked cogs of heavy machinery, forms borrowed from industries associated with muscular male work. Cogs are designed to work together with their teeth fitting into each other to create movement as part of complex systems, often unseen. Drawing parallels with the invisible but essential work of women, Superhero Cog Woman is a celebration of the importance of women to the functioning of the societal and spiritual machine. Set at jaunty angles, the cogs appear to be in constant motion, reflecting the relentless work of women. The sculpture also poses the question as to what is ‘women’s work’, particularly pertinent when viewed from Waterloo Bridge known as the ‘Ladies Bridge’ as it was constructed by 350 women welders due to labour shortages caused by World War II.

This work forms part of a series of seven other (unrealised) Superhero Cog Women, each with interchangeable parts. Originally grey and oil coloured, for this outing, Vandy has bedecked Superhero Cog Woman in celebratory glad rags, the colour of sugared almonds.

Dancing in Time: The Ties that Bind Us (2024) is the maquette for a 5 metre high sculpture commissioned by the National Museums Liverpool International Slavery Museum’s MLK Pop Up series. It is a bound rope tribute to the central role Black women have played in keeping traditions alive and binding communities together. This work celebrates dance as a strategy to break free from oppressive systems, from carnival masquerades to spirit dancers in the African diaspora.

From her studio next to England’s last Ropery, Vandy was drawn to the challenge of making work at scale and the historical importance of the medium. She explored rope weaving methods, many of which evoke ideas of fertility, femininity, and regeneration.  Weaving and dance are common in harvest traditions including the Maypole dances, said to symbolise the fusion of masculine and feminine energy. Banned for being scandalous in England in the 17th century, these dances were reinvented by enslaved people in the Caribbean.

While the skirts of Dancing in Time swing in an unruly manner, its upper part is tightly bound creating ‘movement, and movement often implies tensions’. Tension is inherent in the physical nature of rope, which is stretched, twisted and bound. Tension is also inherent in rope’s crucial historical role in enlarging Empires and extending the often deleterous reach of colonisation. As rope making technology improved, ropes became longer and stronger allowing ever larger ships to moor further offshore, to bear ever larger cargoes of slaves and materials. The work interweaves histories of subjugation and the promise of liberation.

Courtesy of the Artist and October Gallery.

About LR Vandy

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 create 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.

About The Artist’s Garden

theCOLAB is an independent women-led collaborative laboratory working to bring together people, land and art by realising artists’ most far-flung and life-affirming work in response to places beyond the confines of the white cube for the public. The Artist’s Garden transformed the neglected half acre rooftop on Temple tube station into a vast free public sculpture garden to give women artists the opportunity to make their first, early or greatest outdoor sculptural intervention to promote greater appreciation of their work in public. The annual programme comprises major and smaller scale commissions and theCOLAB/Royal College of Art/Yorkshire Sculpture Park Graduate Award residency. theCOLAB is a registered charity. www.thecolab.art / @thecolab.art

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.

For more information, images or to arrange an interview please contact Mary Doherty / mary@sam-talbot.com.