As a centrepiece of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary programme, the Hayward Gallery announces further details of its landmark exhibition from Anish Kapoor, marking his highly-anticipated return to the space after it was the first public gallery in the UK to host a major survey of his work in 1998. Curated by Ralph Rugoff, the showwill span new and seminal works, offering a series of spectacular encounters with Kapoor’s sculptures and paintings across the entire gallery and its terraces.
“I am thrilled to be making an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery with Ralph Rugoff and to be returning to the Hayward after 28 years. The Southbank Centre has over the last 75 Years been central to London’s cultural life and I am honoured to make an exhibition to celebrate this anniversary.”
Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor is internationally renowned for making art that provokes the senses and the mind. Over the last four decades, he has relentlessly experimented with a wide range of materials to create evocative sculptures and paintings that spark a deep sense of mystery. From black holes to boundless mirrors, Kapoor’s work interrogates what he calls ‘the space of the object’, inviting us to look twice and question how we experience our environment.
Three monumental works that defy the boundaries of conventional sculpture will be at the heart of the exhibition, each filling an entire section of the Hayward. Visitors will first explore a gallery completely transformed by a colossal and imposing new work: an inflated PVC membrane that fills the six-metre-high space, challenging our sense of scale and self. In a second new work, a dark mountainous threshold looms down amid a sprawling red landscape contained within the upper gallery. In a third section, Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto (2022) will defy gravity as it descends from the ceiling, hovering inches above the gallery’s floor tiles. Overwhelming in size and emotional intensity, these monumental works elaborate on Kapoor’s fascination with the sublime.
The exhibition will also highlight the artist’s ongoing exploration of perceptual illusions, including seemingly depthless ‘void’ works and sculptures coated with Vantablack: a light-absorbing nanotechnology so black it makes three-dimensional forms appear entirely flat when seen head-on. Large-scale mirrored steel sculptures, placed on the Hayward’s outdoor terraces, will further immerse visitors in a perceptual journey that combines discovery and disorientation.
Lastly, the exhibition will feature some of Kapoor’s strikingly visceral paintings and sculptures from the past decade. Created using silicone, resin, and pigment, these intense works conjure splayed-open bodies and internal organs. The paintings and sculptures challenge our psychological responses, asking us to reflect on what it means to exist in an age where violent images are pervasive.
Taken altogether, the artworks in the exhibition will ask audiences to shift their attention away from the surface, inviting them to imagine what lies beyond.
“Anish Kapoor has been globally celebrated for making art that is both sensorially engaging and deeply thought-provoking, and we’re delighted to welcome him back to the Hayward 28 years after his first UK retrospective here. Utilising a wide range of scales and adventurously experimenting with different materials, Kapoor takes us on an exhilarating perceptual journey that plumbs existential questions, illuminating surprising links between our experiences of the sublime and extreme abjection, the spiritual and the physical.”
Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery,
Mark Ball, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, says:
“We are thrilled to welcome Anish Kapoor back to the Hayward Gallery for what promises to be a truly unforgettable experience at the heart of Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary year. The exhibition also provides a moment to celebrate the inspirational curatorial leadership and legacy of the Hayward’s departing Director, Ralph Rugoff. His vision has shaped the Gallery into the iconic space that it is today, with two decades of innovation and the introduction of countless boundary-pushing artists. I want to thank Ralph for his tenure and am sure this exhibition will be a fitting finale for his time at the Hayward Gallery.”
Tickets will go on sale to Southbank Centre Members on Wednesday 12th November 2025 and to the general public on Monday 5th January 2026.
Coinciding with the public on-sale date, young audiences will be able to benefit from the newly-launched Southbank Centre Under-30s scheme, which invites subscribers to enjoy world class art for half the price by offering discounted tickets to Anish Kapoor and all other Hayward Gallery exhibitions. More information on how to register and the variety of discounts and special events on offer can be found here.
A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany this exhibition, featuring newly commissioned essays and an in-depth interview with the artist by Ralph Rugoff.
About the artist
Since winning the Turner prize in 1991, Anish Kapoor (b.Mumbai, 1954) has become recognised as one of today’s leading contemporary artists, with his work permanently exhibited in some of the most important international collections and museums. Kapoor maneuvers between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work and is renowned for his sculptures that are both adventures in form and engage public space. Whilst Kapoor’s works have always blurred the boundary between architecture and sculpture, his painting practice remains an intense focus, and central to an artist whose work evades categorisation and continues to be rigorously explorative.
Recent works and solo shows include; Monte Sant’Angelometro station in Naples, (opened in October 2025); BUTCHERED, a collaboration with Greenpeace (August 13th 2025); Liverpool Cathedral, U.K (2024); ARKEN, Ishøj, Denmark (2024); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2023); Gallerie dell’Accademia & Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022), Modern Art Oxford, U.K (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, U.K (2020); CAFA Art Museum / Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019); Descension, Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, U.S.A (2017); MUAC, Mexico City (2016)
