Rong Bao: The Enigma Garden
theCOLAB / Royal College of Art / Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2023 Award Winner
10 - 15 October 2023 | The ARTIST’S GARDEN
at The Artist’s Garden, on the roof of
Temple tube station, London, WC2R 2PH
What 3 Words: almost.engine.probe
Rong Bao, 'Enigma', 2023.
Rong Bao, 'Alien Babes No. 1, 2 & 3', 2023. Photo by Hells Gibson
theCoLAB presents the vivacious inflatable works of Rong Bao, the recipient of theCOLAB/Royal College of Art/Yorkshire Sculpture Park Graduate Award 2023 at the Artist’s Garden, a vast open-air public space for contemporary art by women artists on the roof of Temple tube station, in partnership with Westminster City Council. Bao’s work boldly brings life and movement to sculpture. She deftly embraces the anti-gravitational, shifting forms of the inflatable; she subverts the purpose of the machine and the gravitas of sculpture itself to create an intensely vivid and original sculptural experience. Her first foray into outdoor public sculpture, ‘The Enigma’ will rise and fall each day with the backdrop of the Houses of Parliament and the Thames, while her ‘Alien Rhapsody’ works vibrate and invigorate the Artist’s Hut.
Bao’s use of the inflatable is purposeful, practical and meaningful. With lung-like reliance on inhalation and exhalation, the inflatable was brought to life by Leonardo da Vinci breathing into wax figures and has been a potent symbol of freedom ever since Montgolfier’s hot air balloon took to the skies in the eighteenth century. Claimed by the military for use as Zeppelin, decoy and space suit, pnuematic structures were embraced by the architects of the 1960s to forge utopian, light, portable worlds. Like architects Archigram, the Utopie group or Ant Farm, Bao is drawn to the inflatable as a way to achieve vast scale with minimum weight – an ingenious way to transport and store large scale sculpture.
‘The Enigma’ is a vast pink floating sculpture which mimics the ‘ballonet model’ of making inner and outer bags filled with air (and in the case of airships with gas which can be inflated and deflated to control the lift). Through the semi-transparent outer layer, we are drawn around the flow of the complex intertwined pink inner tubes, reminscent of vessels, strange organs, a comforting womb. Pink is prevalent in Bao’s works for their associations with the feminine and the bodily. Starting the day as a collapsed fleshy mass, it rises into fullness as it fills with air and in doing so gives form to this invisible material. Rising to over four metres tall, it invites us to dream of lightness and floating, as its yellow tentactles dance lightly with the breeze. Bao brings together organic form and artificial material to encapsulate a compelling sense of uncertainty. We question the relationship between body and air, lightness and weight and enjoy the state of questioning.
Inside the Artist’s Hut are works from Bao’s ‘Alien Rhapsody’ series, the ‘Alien Babes 1&2&3’. They are precise accumulations of everyday inflatable toys and items, their neat appendages fluffy, floral or sprung, jiggle hilariously to their vibrating core. They resemble amalgamations of deep sea creatures and the far-fetched structures of attention seeking desert flowers their bright reproductive organs luring the insects in. The ‘Alien Babes’ are at once childish in stature and colour and highly sexualised with their stamens at the ready. By using lurid plastic, ubiquitous and toxic as it is, Bao envisages a vibrating new ecosystem which questions conventions in a disarming way.
Exhibition
Public Opening | 10 October – 4-6pm | All Welcome
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 Rong Bao
Rong Bao (b.1997, China) completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2023 and previously studied Public Sculpture at the China Academy of Art and School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BFA in 2021 with Distinguished Scholarship. She was one of the Top 10 China UCCA Lab x Perrier New Emerging Artists and was shortlisted for UK New Contemporaries in 2022. Her 2023 exhibitons include Middlesbrough Art Week, at Bomb Factory, Guts Gallery and as part of Hung, Drawn & Quartered, Standpoint Gallery London. Past exhibitions include: Beijing (Pinggu) Land Art Festival, Beijing Spurs Gallery, and Beijing Gallery weekend, EXPO CHICAGO 2022. She is co-president for ‘Walkative Society’ in 2022-2023.
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. It is currently hosting Holly Hendry’s first public sculpture in London ‘Slackwater’ until September 2024.
‘The Artist’s Garden’ is supported by and realised in partnership with 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