NEWS
IMAGINE A GARDEN, 2026
A collaboration with staff and Year 4 students at Millbank Gardens Primary Academy, commissioned by Tate Schools.
Two workshops developing paintings and collages informed the making of the final artwork for Tate Britain Clore Garden’s hoarding. The workshops explored the plants that are meaningful in the lives, families and cultures of the pupils.
Developed in close dialogue and collaboration with art teacher Katherine Chandler, and Emma McGarry and Sophie Popper from Tate Schools.
Unveiled on 30th April 2026, it marked the beginning of the work for the garden.
Realised in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and made possible by generous funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation with support from The Julia Rausing Trust, the new Clore Garden will open to the public in 2027.
Artwork © Mónica Rivas Vélasquez in collaboration with staff and students at Millbank Gardens Primary Academy
Photography © Tate
Photos by Emma Mcgarry, Sophie Popper, © Tate Photography (Yili Liu) and (Sonal Bakrania)
ART AND HORTICULTURE, practice sharing, Tate Britain, 2026
A performance/workshop with members of Tate Learning and the Royal Horticultural Society in the context the upcoming opening of the Clore Garden.
A session in three acts.
Act one.
What is at stake when representing plants?
What worldview is held, what understanding of nature is implied?
What bond to the natural worls is embodied in the making of the work?
Act two.
Breathing Drawing (2018 - ongoing): Workshop / artwork exploring expanded notions of drawing and collaboration following threads to the work of Brazilian, neo–concrete artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica.
Can collage support decolonial engagment with the artworks in the gallery?
Reading as Material, texts and workshop
Texts as lenses, 2025
Essay for Norwich University of the Arts’ end of year publication.
An invitation from the students after having spent two days working together
in November 2025. A performance followed by a workshop on reading and collage:
Reading as Material.
Reading as Material, workshop constructed around the propositon of collage as a tool for reading, and reading as a material for making. Bringing together texts on post-humanism, decoloniality, ecology and contemporary literature.
University of Bath, 2026
CHORUS,Glasgow
2025
Exhibition documentation
Moss, 2023
Watercolour and acrylic on paper
29 x 20.8 cm
(Frailejones) Visita al herbario, 2023
Watercolour and acrylic on paper
29 x 20.8 cm
Excepts from More Than An Object, Its Shadow (2018 - 2020), a script, collage series and performance work circling the encounter with Colombian páramos and frailejones.
Title borrowed from Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva (1973).
Exhibition’s accompaning publication
Somerset,2025
https://odartsfestival.co.uk/monica-rivas-velasquez/
© 2014 - 2026 Mónica Rivas Velásquez
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