Rise is an ambitious first solo museum exhibition by LR Vandy, created for The Weston Gallery. Vandy’s material-led practice is distinguished by her use of rope and found materials to explore power dynamics, cultural traditions, and histories of international trade. Vandy works with everyday objects that are transformed into reflections on migration, resilience, and interconnectedness, while reimagining the objects’ material and symbolic potential. 

The significant use of rope seen in this exhibition developed when Vandy relocated her studio to the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, which is home to the last working Ropery in the UK where they have been making rope in the same way for over 400 years. 

Vandy will transform The Weston Gallery into an immersive environment dominated by a soaring rope maypole. The twisting and turning structure draws on the iconography of the maypole as a site of communal gathering and ritual, and an enduring emblem of renewal, growth, and collective movement. Surrounding the central motif will be a group of dynamic rope figures, building on a body of work the artist initiated in 2024, and a new series of wall-based mandalas first presented at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in 2025. Referencing the textile industry’s formative role in Britain’s industrial history, they extend her ongoing examination of labour, pattern, and material legacy.

Outside you will see Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us (2023), standing at five metres high this sculpture continues Vandy’s exploration of dance as a form of free expression and resistance. Commissioned by National Museums Liverpool for the International Slavery Museum’s Martin Luther King Pop Up series, the sculpture was first displayed on the Liverpool Waterfront and will now overlook the Park's historic landscape.

LR Vandy: Rise is in collaboration with October Gallery.