The UK design collective Random International, which created the hugely popular Rain Room installation, is due to make a major new work for the Nine Elms development in Vauxhall, south London. The London-based studio has been commissioned to create “a large-scale embedded work of art” at the Albert Embankment, opposite Tate Britain on the south bank of the River Thames.
The work, scheduled for completion by 2017, will be funded by the developer St James and overseen by the London-based culture agency Futurecity. “The commission includes three outdoor installations; these will be newly developed works,” says Florian Ortkrass, the director of Random International.
According to its website, Random International “creates works that encourage an active relationship between people and their surrounding environments, making the viewers’ participation fundamental”. The Nine Elms regeneration project, which will include up to 11 hotels and 20,000 new homes, runs from Lambeth Bridge to Battersea Power Station.
Today, 1 September, the latest version of Random International’s Rain Room—an artificial downpour which visitors can walk through without getting wet—is due to open at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai (until 31 December), which was founded last year by the Chinese-Indonesian collector Budi Tek.
The work was first seen at the Barbican Centre in London in 2012 and later at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2013). “In presenting the most ambitious scale of the work to date, the Shanghai exhibition will have over 50% more capacity than the previous exhibitions,” a museum spokesman says. Volkswagen Group China is sponsoring the presentation, the first time the work has been shown in Asia.
Rain Room will tour China, with a stint in Beijing during spring 2016 though the tour venues are yet to be announced. The installation is due to be shown in Tek’s 15-hectare sculpture park currently under construction in Bali.