Artist LR Vandy on Sculpting the ‘Knotted Histories’ of Power

Despite using a wide variety of found objects and materials, the oeuvre of London-based artist LR Vandy is uniquely cohesive, speaking to her finely honed creative lexicon. Investigating themes of power, trade, colonialism, and the influence they have exerted both in the past as well as today, Vandy’s sculptures are each nuanced reflections on humanity itself.

At the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), Vandy is now the subject of her first solo museum exhibition, “Rise,” installed both within the institution’s gallery space as well as the grounds with a monumental sculpture. Produced in collaboration with London’s October Gallery, the solo show features an ambitious new body of work that simultaneously exemplifies the artist’s unique approach to medium as well as as well as ongoing explorations of the foundational elements of human civilization.

Installation view of “LR Landy: Rise” in collaboration with October Gallery (2026). Photo: India Hobson. Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

“YSP has provided me with a unique and exciting opportunity to create a site-specific installation—giving me the physical space to expand the scope of recurring themes and ideas within my practice,” said Vandy in a statement. “The amazing support from the curatorial and technical teams makes it possible to mount a complex, immersive exhibition intended as a complete, self-contained sensory experience rooted in materiality.”

LR Vandy, Dancing in Time, The Ties That Bind Us (2023). Photo: India Hobson. Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The works that compose “Rise” together create a type of immersive environment, where the viewer experiences the artist’s creative material world. The most pervasive medium is rope, which metaphorically evokes considerations around the materials history—specifically its role in colonial expansion and histories of slavery, international trade, and commodities.

At the heart of the indoor gallery space is A Call to Dance, which Landy created onsite. The sculpture recalls a maypole, and with its twisting form alludes to seasonal community traditions and rituals, and through its material construction points to ideas of resistance. Other new works include wall-based circular forms made from found objects like weaving loom shuttles and barrel rings, again tapping into the histories of labor and commodity but through their compositional arrangement eliciting comparisons to mandalas, or sites of visual meditation and grounding.

Installed outside is a cornerstone of the show, Dancing in Time, The Ties That Bind (2023), commissioned by National Museums Liverpool for the International Slavery Museum’s Martin Luther King Pop Up series, establishing the show and Vandy’s practice as something that transcends dichotomies of interior and exterior, and constructed landscape and natural.

Installation view of “LR Landy: Rise” in collaboration with October Gallery (2026). Photo: India Hobson. Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

What emerges from this institutional solo is a poetic interrogation of not only the physical material boundaries of contemporary sculpture, but the underpinning themes and issues of contemporary life and civilization, ones that often have roots stretching to the distant past but are often overlooked.

“My practice centers the hidden human costs of colonialism, transportation systems, and commodities, and the knotted histories of trade and power they contain,” Vandy said in a statement to YSP. “The title, ‘Rise,’ references ideas of resilience, protest, liberation and collective joy explored through rituals and dance.”

“LR Vandy: Rise” is on view at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park through September 13, 2026.