A group of year 8 students as part of their Behind the Brand programme visited The Artist Garden at Temple in London. It was an opportunity to meet with Rong Bao (2023 winner of the COLAB / Yorkshire Sculpture Park / RCA graduate award).
Rong was in residence at the Artist’s Garden for an interactive presentation. Rong talked about and demonstrated how she made her inflatable vibrating sculptures and the materials and processes she used. Rong also talked about her career journey to where she now is.
There was an opportunity for the students to create their own inflatable work.
‘Going to the Artists Garden was an amazing experience! The garden was made one year ago and was created to promote artists who were woman. It certainly did!
On our trip we went to see Rong Bao, an artist particularly interested in inflatable art. She told us the reason for this was because Rong found men often used hard pieces of material such as marble and used darker colours, so she went against this by using pink, a colour often associated with girls, and softer materials. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see her main piece, The Enigma, since it had been raining, but we were able to see her ‘Alien Babes’ and then had a go at making a version of them ourselves!
We used small cleaning robots and in groups covered them in materials like felt and card, but mostly balloons, following Rong’s main material. At the end we were able to turn them on and watch them travel across the roof of the Temple Station, where the Artist’s Garden is based! I really recommend going, and if you would like to see some other pieces of art featured there, scroll to the bottom of this page: https://www.thecolab.art/temple.
Thank you so much for taking us!’
– Asha B 8A
