Press release archive: 2024
2024 Press releases
The Southbank Centre is proud to announce its Spring Literature 2025 season from February to June 2025, with programming that spans authors from our home in London to literary talent around the world.
Celebrating new works by internationally-acclaimed names including Nnedi Okorafor (23 Feb), Abdulrazak Gurnah (27 Mar), Amitav Ghosh (10 Apr) and the International Booker Prize shortlisted writers (18 May), this season also celebrates the phenomenal talent of Maggie O’Farrell on the 25th anniversary of the publication of her debut novel After You’d Gone, marking her very first event at the Southbank Centre (30 Mar). Continuing to offer programming that aims to inspire the creators of the future, the National Poetry Library housed in the Royal Festival Hall welcomes back the European Poetry Festival (18 Jun) for the eighth consecutive year. Hosted for the first time at the Southbank Centre, the iconic live story competition, The Moth GrandSlam will decide the London storytelling champion in the Queen Elizabeth Hall (6 Jun).
Running from 18-23 February 2025, Imagine Festival will transform the Southbank Centre into a vibrant cultural playground for the February half term with a fun-filled range of events for children and their grown-ups to enjoy. Now in its 23rd year, and with no intention of growing up any time soon, the festival is renowned for inspiring and allowing children from 0-11 years to express their creativity, explore their artistic potential and to celebrate their unique talents.
The Imagine programme offers unbeatable cultural experiences, from music to storytelling, comedy, poetry, dance, visual arts and a range of free events, bringing families together to spark their imaginations. Running alongside the festival, the immensely popular REPLAY returns to the Southbank Centre’s Spirit Level in the Royal Festival Hall. Part installation, part adventure playground, REPLAY is a space built entirely out of waste materials repurposed for fun.
When the Southbank Centre’s Winter Market arrives, London knows it’s time to get festive. A seasonal favourite with Londoner’s and tourists alike, the Thames-adjacent Queen’s Walk becomes lined with alpine-style chalets, twinkling lights and dotted with pop-ups.
- Celebrating 10 years of the Southbank Centre Winter Market
- From 1 November – 26 December, 20 chalets will line the river Thames, along with 5 pop-ups transforming the Southbank Centre’s riverside frontage into a winter wonderland
- Eat, drink and be merry with indulgent drinks, scrumptious street food, unique gifts and friendly competition at The Curling Club
The Southbank Centre’s Winter Season makes a welcome return with a packed programme for everyone to enjoy. A highlight in the cultural calendar, visitors can step into the glittering world of the Southbank Centre to experience dazzling circus, theatre, music and comedy performances from the likes of Acosta Danza, and Circa, alongside free workshops, glimmering Winter Light art installations and the return of our wondrous Winter Market.
The Southbank Centre and its family of six Resident Orchestras – Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Philharmonia Orchestra – today announce the Classical Music Spring/Summer 2025 programme.
An exhilarating exploration of all facets of classical music, from pioneering premieres by living composers to our continued commitment to large-scale orchestral work performed by the world’s greatest orchestras, the packed programme opens on Saturday 1 February with Mitsuko Uchida play-directing the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for the final concert in an ambitious five-year partnership between the orchestra and the Southbank Centre.
The Southbank Centre today announces its Spring / Summer 2025 Performance and Dance programme, offering audiences the unique opportunity to see brave, ground breaking new work and contemporary collaborations from a multitude of international artists, many presenting work in the UK for the very first time.
The Spring / Summer 2025 international programme highlights include:
- One of the most significant American theatre companies of the past decade, New York based collective Nature Theater of Oklahoma, present their audacious story ballet No President (9 – 11 Jul)
- Hot off the back of its World Premiere in Paris, choreographer Holly Blakey returns to the Southbank Centre to present a double bill of new dance works in the UK Premiere of A Wound with Teeth & Phantom (9 – 11 Apr)
- Southbank Centre and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels present the UK Premiere of South African choreographer Robyn Orlin’s joyous We Wear Our Wheels with Pride performed by Moving Into Dance Mophatong (21 – 22 Mar) as part of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival in London (12 Mar – 8 Apr)
- Palestine’s Khashabi Theatre, present a striking visual masterpiece with the UK premiere MILK مِلْك as part of Shubbak Festival (24 – 25 May)
- Previously announced collaborations include Rambert X (La)Horde: Bring Your Own, and Sasha Waltz & Guests x London Sinfonietta: In C.
The Hayward Gallery presents Haegue Yang: Leap Year (9 October 2024 – 5 January 2025), the first major UK survey of the internationally celebrated artist. Considered to be one of the leading artistic voices of her generation, Yang’s work is both spellbinding and boundary-pushing, probing into contemporary ideas of cross-cultural pollination, modernism and folk traditions, and personal and political histories. Leap Year illuminates Yang’s multifaceted, interdisciplinary and highly inventive practice from 1995 to today, echoing the Hayward Gallery’s mission, as part of the creative engine of the Southbank Centre, to champion artists from across the world whose ideas challenge and spark new ways of thinking.
Arranged into five thematic zones, the exhibition includes three major new commissions and several new productions which creates a captivating visual and sensory experience through installation, sculpture, collage, text, video, wallpaper and sound. Yang’s artwork often transforms everyday domestic items and industrial objects, from drying racks and light bulbs to nylon pom-poms and hand-knitted yarn, into distinctive sculptures and multimedia installations that engage the senses. Leap Year features key works from some of her most notable series including Light Sculptures, Sonic Sculptures, The Intermediates, Dress Vehicles, Mesmerizing Mesh and the Venetian blind installations.
The Hayward Gallery, in partnership with the RC Foundation, Taiwan (R.O.C.), presents Huang Po-Chih: Waves (9 Oct 2024 – 5 Jan 2025), a multidisciplinary exhibition from Taiwanese artist Huang Po-Chih imaginatively reflecting on the socio-political impacts of the globalised garment industries in East Asia.
Nominated for the HUGO BOSS Asia Arts Award in 2015, and recipient of the Prudential Eye Awards in 2016, Huang Po-Chih’s work has been widely shown across the globe. Waves is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, and the second exhibition in the RC Foundation Project Space Exhibition Series at the Hayward Gallery, showcasing the next generation of emerging international artists.
Featuring new video and text-based work as part of a presentation of installation, photography and sculpture, the exhibition draws upon the artist’s family heritage – particularly his mother’s experiences as a garment worker in Northern Taiwan. Po-Chih collates the personal narratives of individuals involved in the garment industry across China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan from the 1960’s up to the present day.
Each anecdote takes place against a backdrop of migration and global trade. With circulating themes and narratives across the work, a sense of fluidity serves as a metaphor for the turbulent conditions faced by the generally low-paid workers in the East Asian textile industry.
The Southbank Centre has today announced the first names as part of its bespoke large-scale experimental audio project, Concrete Voids. Concrete Voids will have its public debut with a series of concerts featuring new Southbank Centre commissioned works by rapper and producer Lex Amor, electronic music producer and visual artist Jack Warne – GAUNT, viola da gamba player Liam Byrne and fiddle-player Cleek Schrey, and cellist Peter Gregson.
Conceived and designed by Southbank Centre Sound Technician Tony Birch, Concrete Voids is a totally custom-built system of loudspeakers that turns the auditorium itself into an epic three-dimensional instrument. Made up of over 80 speakers which are concealed within the chambers, tunnels and vents surrounding the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium, Concrete Voids provides artists with enormous creative opportunities to create rich and complex sound-worlds for their performances. Using spatial audio solution TiMax panLab, sound sources can be moved and manipulated within the space, even by the artist as they perform.
The Hayward Gallery has announced a bold new programme of solo exhibitions for 2025 from some of the most exciting, boundary-pushing and dynamic contemporary artists working today.
In February 2025, Linder and Mickalene Thomas, two masters of collage redefining the female image, will take over the Hayward Gallery with two landmark survey shows. These will be followed In June by the first UK exhibition to survey the career of renowned artist Yoshitomo Nara, whose iconic paintings and sculptures of solitary figures conjure deeply felt emotional states, ranging from alienation to transcendence. To conclude the year, legendary artists Gilbert & George will present their biggest show at the Hayward Gallery to date focusing on their monumental pictures from this millennium.
Today the Southbank Centre announces a raft of new programming highlights for the year ahead, reflecting the vision of Artistic Director Mark Ball and the venue’s role as leading creator of culture within the international artistic landscape.
The Southbank Centre today announces its Winter 2024 Literature and Spoken Word Season, taking place from November 2024 to March 2025. From revolutionary philosophy to ground-breaking poetry, the season offers audiences a chance to witness live readings from an unmissable line-up of genre-defying writers and thinkers.
The Hayward Gallery will present Mickalene Thomas: All About Love as the pioneering artist’s first solo presentation in a UK public art gallery from 11 February to 5 May 2025. Thomas is a trailblazer of portraiture and collage, widely renowned for her large-scale paintings of Black women posed against boldly patterned backgrounds embellished with rhinestones. As an artist who fearlessly transcends creative boundaries, her artworks have also adorned album covers (Solange’s EP True, 2013) and emblazoned fashion runways (Dior, 2023).
The Hayward Gallery will present the first London retrospective of acclaimed British artist Linder from 11 February to 5 May 2025. Offering an illuminating overview of this iconic artist’s 50 year-long career, the exhibition will include a selection of Linder’s trailblazing photomontages and explore the full range of her artistic practice, underscoring the experimental and feminist impulses of her thought-provoking work.
Launching in September 2024 in Lakeside Arts’ Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham, Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature will showcase the artist’s remarkable printmaking practice, taking a deep look into the literary influences that have inspired Rego’s works.
Opening on 1 November, No Comment is the 17th edition of Koestler Arts’ annual UK exhibition at the Southbank Centre. The show will feature a selection of works by prisoners, secure mental health patients, immigration detainees, and other individuals in secure settings, from the UK and abroad, all submitted to the annual Koestler Awards.
From Thursday 12 September 2024, the Hayward Gallery will present Target Queen, a mesmerising and colourful large-scale new commission by British-Indian artist Bharti Kher. Marking the first time that Kher’s ambitious outdoor work has been presented by a London institution, Target Queen will be positioned across the Hayward Gallery’s eastern and southern facades, celebrating and playfully interacting with the iconic architecture and cultural playground of the Southbank Centre.
Hayward Gallery Touring will present Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles, an ambitious group exhibition exploring how contemporary artists are using textiles in surprising and radical ways. Illuminating the diverse roles textiles play in artistic practice, the exhibition brings together artists who take the intimate and domestic quality of textiles and transform them into theatrical, bold, unsettling and humorous artworks that inspire, challenge and offer new ways of thinking.
The Southbank Centre is proud to present the London Literature Festival 2024, a celebration of the power of spoken and written word to bring audiences together and illuminate the issues of the present.
The Hayward Gallery presents Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere (18 June – 1 September 2024), the first mid-career survey of the New York-based, Bahamian artist. A
recipient of the MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’, Strachan has created a range of boldly inventive and ambitious exhibitions over the past two decades.
The Southbank Centre today announces the first names of its biennial Unlimited festival, the largest UK festival celebrating the work of disabled artists, working in partnership with the Unlimited arts commissioning body that supports, funds and promotes new work by disabled artists for UK and international audiences.
The Hayward Gallery, in partnership with the RC Foundation, Taiwan (R.O.C.), will present a series of three captivating exhibitions in its HENI Project Space, spotlighting work by some of the most exciting emerging international artists working today. The partnership aligns with the Southbank Centre’s key strategic aims to platform emerging artists and bring new cultural experiences to new audiences.
From Saturday 29 June to Sunday 8 September, the Southbank Centre proudly presents You Belong Here, an extensive multi-artform summer programme with a message of welcome at its core. Taking its name from the nine-metre-high neon artwork illuminating the Hayward Gallery exterior as part of Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere exhibition, You Belong Here features a wealth of world-class events for families, adults and diverse communities which explore notions of belonging and encourages a sense of togetherness and community.
The Southbank Centre and its family of six Resident Orchestras – Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Philharmonia Orchestra – today announce the Classical Music Autumn/Winter 2024/25 programme.
Chaka Khan’s Meltdown continues to grow in style and spectacle with new names and two weekends of free events, taking place at the Southbank Centre from Friday 14 June until Sunday 23 June.
The Southbank Centre announces an unmissable Summer 2024 season of Literature and Spoken Word. The programme brings a diverse array of UK-exclusive launches, non-fiction talks and poetry readings to the stages of the UK’s largest multi-arts centre, promising something for everyone.
Launched at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, Hayward Gallery Touring presents After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024. The group exhibition brings together working class artists who use photography to explore the nuances of life in all its diversity today, turning their gaze towards both their communities and out to the wider world.
The Hayward Gallery will present the first London retrospective of acclaimed British artist Linder (b. 1954, Liverpool, UK) from 11 February to 5 May 2025.
The Southbank Centre is proud to announce the launch of its Technical Academy, a pilot training programme which aims to create new pathways into careers in Technical Production, attract new talent and improve the diversity of the workforce.
The Southbank Centre today announces the first names for Chaka Khan’s Meltdown, taking place this summer Friday 14 June until Sunday 23 June. A rich selection of artists spanning jazz, R&B, soul and more, the line-up reflects the iconic influence of Chaka Khan and the global impact of her 50-year career.
Launching in March 2024 at Arnolfini, Bristol, Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood will plunge into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the feminist avant-garde to the present day.
The Hayward Gallery will present When Forms Come Alive, a playful and lively exhibition highlighting the ways in which artists have been inspired by movement, flux and organic growth, from a dancer’s gesture to the breaking of a wave, or from a flow of molten metal to the interlacing of a spider’s web.
The Southbank Centre today announces its 2024-2025 Performance and Dance programme, featuring an array of international work, contemporary collaborations and brand-new work from award-winning companies and artists from the UK, Ireland, Nigeria, Poland, Australia, Canada and beyond.
The Southbank Centre today announces that iconic singer and musician Chaka Khan will be the 29th curator of its annual contemporary music festival, Meltdown.
The Southbank Centre today announces a wide-ranging Spring 2024 Season of Literature and Spoken Word, from March to June 2024. As a major multi-artform centre in the heart of the UK’s cultural scene, the Southbank Centre offers visitors eclectic events.
The Southbank Centre today reveals the rising stars performing as part of futuretense, its free gig series providing a platform for emerging artists. In 2024, BBC Music Introducing joins as a partner to deliver this innovative new music programme, showcasing the next generation of talent.