The Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco is to create a permanent garden at the back of the South London Gallery in Camberwell. True to the gallery’s community approach, the garden, which is due to open in October, will link the gallery with the housing estate behind it. “There will be a gate at the bottom of the garden so residents can come through the back,” says Margot Heller, the director of the gallery, who described the project as a “coup”.
Orozco’s works often relate to—or are situated in—landscapes and outdoor spaces. They have been installed in the garden hall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, among other places.
Details of the London garden are still being finalised, but Orozco is working on the design with 6a Architects, the firm that completed the expansion of the South London Gallery in 2010, as well as with Kew Gardens on the planting.
Meanwhile, Orozco is showing at the gallery in June as part of the touring Guggenheim MAP Initiative show, Under the Same Sun: Art From Latin America Today. The exhibition’s curator, Pablo León de la Barra, will show around 40 Latin American artists predominantly born after 1968, in the current gallery as well as its new space, a former fire station over the road, which is due to open fully in 2018.
