Join us at King's College London on Wednesday 24 June 2025 to collectively and proactively rethink commissioning art in public to embrace the often unconventional ways and public spaces in which women artists work.

The conference is convened by Claire Mander, theCOLAB The Artist's Garden and Dr Kate McMillan, King's College London (artist/academic and author of three Freelands Foundation Reports on the Representation of Women artists in the UK).

It brings together prominent thinkers and doers including art historians (Natalie Rudd), writers (The White Pube), commissioners (Claire Doherty/Situations and Bridget Sawyers/Tideway), local authorities (Westminster City Council), artists (including Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press RA) and institutions (Yorkshire Sculpture Park/National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington DC). They will explore how to put neglected public spaces back into use, adopt new commissioning models, create frameworks for accountability, and measure impact to achieve greater gender parity in the field of art in public.

The conference format will be disrupted by a new series of site-specific commissions. They are ‘The River's Stomach (Songs of Empire)’ an audio-visual intervention by Dr. Kate McMillan into the Strand Lane Roman Baths; ‘Your meaning not your materiality (YMNYM)’, a performance lecture by Florence Peake and a walking performance by Daisy Collingridge that leads us to The Artist’s Garden, the site of the group exhibition: MARY MARY. As the world’s first sculpture garden dedicated to the work of women artists, it is where the idea for the conference began and provides a fitting backdrop to continue discussions.

The conference will take place between the Anatomy Lecture Theatre and the Anatomy Museum, at King's College London. A full conference timetable will be shared in April.

Tickets are offered in return for donations to theCOLAB charity of either £25 (standard) or £12 (student / low income). All tickets include tea, coffee and a vegetarian lunch served on the campus. All proceeds are direct contributions to the administrative costs of the conference incurred by theCOLAB (Reg. Charity No. 1209046) and for no other purpose. Tickets are limited, book early to avoid disappointment! There is an early bird discount of 10% offered on the first 15 tickets booked.

About theCOLAB

theCOLAB is an independent women-led collaborative laboratory which brings 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. theCOLAB is a registered charity no.1209046. www.thecolab.art / @thecolab.art

About the Artist’s Garden

The Artist’s Garden transformed the neglected half acre rooftop on Temple tube station into the world’s first sculpture garden dedicated to the work of women artists, who have created only 13% of public sculptures in London. The Artist’s Garden is a beacon of good practice in putting back into use neglected public space, sustainable commissioning practices and providing concrete opportunities for women to make their first, early or greatest outdoor sculptural intervention. It is a platform for the appreciation of the achievements of women by the public and by our 13 – 16 year old City Lions outreach groups. The current exhibition of nine women artists, MARY MARY, forms the backdrop to the conference and is part of a programme including commissions and theCOLAB/Royal College of Art/Yorkshire Sculpture Park Graduate Award residency. It is realised in close partnership with and supported by Westminster City Council, Nina and Samuel Wisnia, with the kind permission of LUL/Transport for London.

About Dr Kate McMillan, Academic and Artist

Dr Kate McMillan is a Reader in Creative Practice in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Her research engages with histories connected to colonial violence and women’s knowledges, as well as inequalities in the contemporary art world. She is the author of Contemporary Art & Unforgetting in Colonial Landscapes: Islands of Empire (Palgrave McMillan), which investigates female artists in the Global South and the ways their practices defy colonial amnesia. She is also the author of three Freelands Foundation Reports on the Representation of Women artists in the UK, as well as various academic publications on gender inequality in the art world. As an artist, she works across media including film, sound, installation, sculpture, and performance. Her work addresses a number of key ideas including the role of art in attending to impacts of the Anthropocene, lost and systemically forgotten histories of women, and the residue of colonial violence in the present. As well as co-convening the conference, she will be presenting a new site-specific intervention into the Strand Lane ‘Roman Baths’ (free and open from 22 May – 2 July 2025 from 12 pm – 5pm Wednesday to Saturday).

About Daisy Collingridge

At the core of Daisy Collingridge’s practice is an exploration and celebration of the human form, working across sculpture, photography and performance, she delves into its anatomical properties with quilted flesh and limbs, harnessing a tactile and haptic quality of softness and colour. Growing up in a medical family, the body and its workings were considered matter of fact, In the hands of Collingridge, they became matter of fiction and imagination as she became fascinated with giving form to what lies inside. For the first time, the artist is releasing her wearable sculptures from the domestic settings where she creates photographic portraits of them alone or in groups. Empowered by their exaggerated, genderless fleshiness, they will take to the streets of London as part of Taking Place: Women Artists in Public Spaces. Collingdridge took her BA in Fashion Design from Central St Martin’s College of Art in 2014 and was the Sarabande Foundation Artist in Residence from 2020 – 22. She has exhibited widely including at TJ Boulting, British Textile Biennial and internationally at Textiel Museum, Tilberg, Netherlands, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, USA.

About Florence Peake

Florence Peake presents a performance lecture in the historic setting of the King’s College London’s Anatomy Museum where she will dissect and examine concepts underlying her expansive project ‘Your meaning not your materiality (YMNYM)’. Through performance, outdoor sculpture and a solo exhibition, Peake seeks to solidify the invisible space between bodies and to explore the resonance of objects and absence in the aftermath of loss. She will find ways to give form to the starkness and strength of the absence left by what has disappeared. Peake is a London-based artist known for her solo and group performance works and extensive visual art practice, since 1995. Her approach is at once sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous. By encouraging chaotic relationships between the body and material, Peake creates radical and outlandish performances. YMNYM premiered at Leeds Art Gallery 2024 and other exhibitions include Factual Actual Exhibition and Performance from The National Gallery, SPG, Fruitmarket Edinburgh, Towner Gallery EastBourne; Hayward Gallery’s touring British Art Show 9, Venice Biennale 2019; CRAC Occitanie, Sète, France, London Contemporary Music Festival, UK (2018),De La Warr Pavilion, Palais De Tokyo, Paris, Hayward Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge.

Taking place: Women artists in public spaces