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 and OPEN TO ALL. Please note the site is only accessible via steps.
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
EVENTS
RSA x theCOLAB
with Virginia Overton and White Cube
Art in Public Space: The Commissioner, the Artist and the Gallery.
Claire Mander in conversation with Virginia Overton, artist and Hannah Gruy, Director, White Cube. Friday 17th January, 5.30-9.00pm
5.30pm: Meet at The Artist’s Garden to view Untitled (chime for Caro)
6.00pm: Walk together to RSA House
6.30pm: Talk begins in the Great Room at RSA House
7.30pm: Drinks available in the RSA Bar
Join us for a sonorous encounter with Virginia Overton’s sculpture Untitled (chime for Caro), 2022 at The Artist's Garden above Temple Tube Station at 5.30pm and then walk together for 7 minutes to RSA House for an in-conversation with the artist. The talk begins at 6.30pm in the Great Room. Drinks afterwards from 7.30 – 9 pm in the MUSE Bar at RSA House.
What to expect
A triangular discussion between Claire Mander, theCOLAB The Artist's Garden, Virginia Overton, Artist and Hannah Gruy, Director, White Cube on the occasion of the installation of Overton’s work Untitled (chime for Caro), 2022 at The Artist's Garden, Temple and her forthcoming exhibition at White Cube, Mason's Yard.
Bringing together prominent voices from the UK and the US, this collaborative discussion encompasses the perspectives of the artist, the commercial gallery and the commissioner/curator of outdoor public space. Through the artist’s work, they will consider the reclamation of public space by artists, quotidian sculptural materials and the role of the commercial gallery in public space.
Ticket prices
Pay what you can (£5 / £12 / £20)
About the speakers
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.
About Virginia Overton
Virginia Overton’s work, which includes installation, sculpture and photography, is the result of her direct intuitive response to specific spaces and materials. From a process of research and exploration, she creates works that re-activate the viewer’s spatial and sensory experience with an elegant physicality.
Overton was born in Nashville, Tennessee and lives and works in New York.
About Untitled (chime for Caro), 2022
Virginia Overton’s Untitled (chime for Caro), 2022 is a large-scale interactive kinetic sculpture, constructed from offcuts of steel belonging to Anthony Caro that he deposited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for use by future generations of sculptors. Overton spent time at Yorkshire Sculpture Park sorting through Caro’s steel, selecting pieces she could assemble into new compositions or pair with other materials “to make a conversation between the two”.
Here, Overton hangs these heavy steel remnants across a large A-frame gantry, pairing each with a hollow aluminium pipe, which when activated by viewers or the wind dissipates the heaviness of the material into the lightness of sound waves, allowing the work to reach beyond its own physical parameters.
Overton’s work is in dialogue with a long line of sculptors including Caro but is distinguished by her intuitive and experimental approach to making in response to specific places and materials. Growing up on a farm in Lebanon, Tennessee she has a sensitivity to land and the intrinsic energy of materials, which she collects and creates into sculptures and installations, some of which she repurposes for the next work
About White Cube and Virginia Overton's forthcoming exhibition
Opening 17 January 2025, White Cube Mason’s Yard is pleased to present a solo exhibition by American artist Virginia Overton.
In 2024 Overton transformed salvaged materials from the historic decommissioned Domino Sugar Factory site in 2023 into a wall-based public sculpture which now resides inside the building. Enamelled steel, abundant hardware and steel off-cuts from this commission have been repurposed and reassembled into a new series of sculptures. Informed by line, form and colour the new wall reliefs in this exhibition continue Overton’s interest in the poetic tensions in her chosen materials and their otherness.
Overton has said: "Reusing existing materials as a way to extend the life of objects is integral to my practice. It was a privilege to be able to work with a piece of history from America’s industrial heyday and reimagine this historic artefact as a sculpture that honours the sign’s storied past while embracing its possibilities for the future."