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Saturday, November 23, 2024 |
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Serpentine to unveil large-scale public sculpture by Yayoi Kusama |
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Digital rendering of Pumpkin, 2024, © YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.
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LONDON.- Serpentine and The Royal Parks announced the unveiling of a new large-scale sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan). Located by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, Pumpkin (2024) will be staged from 9 July to 3 November 2024 with an unveiling on Tuesday 9 July from 9am to 11am.
Pumpkin (2024) marks a return to Serpentine for Kusama which was the location of her first retrospective exhibition in Britain in 2000. This major survey included paintings, collages, watercolours, sculptures, documentation of performances and films, all of which explored Kusamas obsessions with dots, nets, food and sex.
The work on view in Kensington Gardens is Kusamas tallest bronze pumpkin sculpture to date, standing at 6 metres tall and 5.5 metres in diameter. Installed prominently by the Round Pond, Pumpkin (2024) can be seen from a wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives creating an intriguing dialogue with the surrounding environment of the Park.
Known for her immersive installations, large-scale sculptures and intricate paintings, Yayoi Kusama often features kabocha, or pumpkin, in her work. Since 1946 Kusamas pumpkins have taken many forms, colours and shapes, but their surfaces are consistently covered in the artists signature repeating polka dot pattern.
Kusamas relationship to the kabocha is rooted in her childhood: the artists family cultivated the plants seeds, and their home was surrounded by fields of this squash. Pumpkins frequently appear as stand-ins for self-portraits. Kusama admires them for their everyday quality, hardiness, and unique, frequently humorous forms.
Yayoi Kusama said: I am sending to London with love my giant pumpkin. Since my childhood pumpkins have been a great comfort to me, they are such tender things to touch, so appealing in colour and form. They are humble and amusing at the same time and speak to me of the joy of living.
Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, said: It is an honour to present this work by Yayoi Kusama in Kensington Gardens. Her signature pumpkins have become a landmark motif for the artist, and this project is a reunion for Kusama and Serpentine: her first major survey exhibition in Britain was staged in our galleries in 2000. As always, we are deeply grateful to The Royal Parks for their collaboration, and to all our supporters whose generosity enables Serpentines public art programme to connect artists and audiences beyond gallery walls.
The artists sculptures have been installed in museums and galleries around the world, and various outdoor spaces, including parks, gardens and at the seaside. Since 1994, a yellow and black pumpkin is permanently on display at the Benesse Art Site Naoshima an island in Japans inland sea dedicated to displaying art within nature.
Since it launched in 1970, Serpentine has had a long-standing commitment to bringing art out of the traditional gallery context and into the surrounding landscape, offering an opportunity for artists to engage with the immediate environment of Kensington Gardens.
Blow Up 71, the first summer show of 1971 featured a week-long outdoor exhibition of inflatables, flying sculpture, and art sports in the Royal Parks.
Further exhibitions presented both in the park and at Serpentine include Henry Moore (1978) and Anthony Caro (1984). Sculptures exclusively featured in the Park included Denys Short (1973), John Hoskin (1975), Alfred Dunn (1976), Eduardo Paolozzi (1987), Ron Haselden (1990) and Tony Smith (1996).
Serpentine commissions of public artworks have ranged from a permanent installation of a stone circle and benches by Ian Hamilton Finley for the 1996 exhibition Inside Out.
In recent years, public art has emerged as a central strand of Serpentines programme. Major presentations include Anish Kapoors Turning the World Upside Down (2010), featuring four works, including his iconic Sky Mirrors, placed in locations across the park, Fischli/Weisss sculpture Rock on Top of Another Rock (2013), Betrand Laviers Fountain (2014): and Lee Ufans Relatum Stage (2018-19). In 2018, Christo and Jeanne-Claudes monumental London Mastaba was installed in the Serpentine Lake and marked their first major public artwork in the UK and the final outdoor artwork completed in Christos lifetime. Jakob Kudsk Steensens augmented reality project The Deep Listener (2019), Sofia Al Marias commission Taraxos (2021) and Alexandra Daisy Ginsbergs Pollinator Pathmaker (2022 2023) have brought a younger generation of artists commissions to the park.
Kusamas Pumpkin is the latest in a long-standing series of remarkable public presentations in The Royal Parks since Serpentines foundation in 1970 which includes the recently inaugurated STRIP-TOWER (2023) by German luminary Gerhard Richter currently situated on the outdoor plinth at Serpentine South.
As part of the public art programme, Atta Kwamis mural DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace) (2021-22) has been extended to 30 September 2024, and remains on display at Serpentine North.
The Serpentine Pavilion is a yearly pioneering commission, which began in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid. It features the first UK structures by some of the biggest names in international architecture. This year, Seoul-based Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies have been selected to design the 23rd Pavilion. The Archipelagic Void will be on view and activated from 7 June 27 October 2024 at Serpentine South. The Pavilion has evolved over the years as a participatory public and artistic platform for the Serpentines pioneering, interdisciplinary, community and education programmes.
Yayoi Kusama is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Over the course of her eight-decade career, she has developed a unique and diverse body of work that, highly personal in nature, connects profoundly with global audiences. Known for her signature motifs including the polka-dot and pumpkin, Kusamas extraordinary artistic endeavours have spanned painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, performance, film, printmaking, installation and environmental art as well as literature, fashion (most notably in her 2012 and 2023 collaboration with Louis Vuitton) and product design.
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