Anish Kapoor is back at the Hayward Gallery after 28 years, and the Southbank is already buzzing with anticipation for what promises to be the most immersive sculpture show London has seen in a generation.
Who is Anish Kapoor?
Anish Kapoor is an Indian-born British sculptor known for his use of abstract biomorphic forms and his penchant for rich colours and polished surfaces. Born to parents of Punjabi and Iraqi-Jewish heritage, he moved to London to study at the Hornsey College of Art and the Chelsea School of Art. He has lived and worked in London ever since.
Throughout his career, Kapoor has worked with diverse materials, including mirrors, stone, wax, and PVC, exploring both biomorphic and geometric forms with a particular interest in negative space. He received the Turner Prize in 1991 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2011, and was knighted in 2013 for his services to visual arts. For European visitors who know him through Cloud Gate in Chicago or the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London’s Olympic Park, this exhibition is a rare chance to see his full range of ideas in one place.
Kapoor first came to wider attention in the group exhibition New Sculpture in 1978 at the Hayward Gallery, London. So this return to the same building carries real meaning. It is not simply a homecoming. It is a full circle.
What this exhibition brings to the Hayward
The exhibition marks Kapoor’s first major return to the Hayward since 1998, when the gallery became the first public institution in the UK to stage a large-scale survey of his work. Curated by Ralph Rugoff, the exhibition is a centrepiece of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary programme.
3 monumental works that defy the boundaries of conventional sculpture sit at the heart of the exhibition, each filling an entire section of the gallery. Visitors first explore a gallery completely transformed by an atmospheric new commission: an inflatable installation that fills the 6-metre-high space, challenging the sense of scale and self. In a second new work, a dark mountainous threshold looms amid a sprawling red landscape contained within the upper gallery.
The third work, Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto (2022), descends from the ceiling and hovers inches above the gallery floor. The exhibition path weaves together recent works and iconic early pieces to reveal the continuity of Kapoor’s concerns: exploring voids, mirrors, illusory depth, and the interplay between interior and exterior.
The key works and themes to know before you go
The exhibition highlights 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 3-dimensional forms appear entirely flat when seen head-on. This effect is genuinely startling in person. Knowing about it in advance helps you prepare, but it does not reduce the surprise.
Large-scale mirrored steel sculptures, placed on the Hayward’s outdoor terraces, further engage visitors in a perceptual journey that combines discovery and disorientation. The exhibition also features some of Kapoor’s visceral paintings and sculptures from the past decade, created using silicone, resin, and pigment. These intense works conjure internal organs. The paintings and sculptures challenge psychological responses, asking visitors to reflect on what it means to exist in an age where violent images are pervasive.
Additionally, the exhibition highlights what Kapoor has described as “the space of the object,” with works that shift viewers’ attention from material surfaces to the unseen or imagined beyond. That idea connects deeply to European philosophical traditions around perception and the body, which makes this show especially interesting for visitors arriving from Paris, Berlin, or Milan.
Expert perspective
The Hayward Gallery show gives Anish Kapoor a context that suits his work perfectly: a Brutalist building with raw concrete walls, strong natural light from the skylights, and outdoor terrace space that few London galleries can offer. His void works need silence and volume around them. His mirror sculptures need sky. The Hayward has both. What makes Kapoor distinctive among sculptors of his generation is his refusal to explain. The work does not guide you toward a conclusion. It places you inside an open question. For European visitors in particular, this connects to a long continental tradition of phenomenological art, from Fontana’s slashed canvases to Klein’s blue monochromes. Kapoor belongs to that lineage but extends it into something altogether more physical and architectural. He does not ask you to look at the work. He asks the work to look back at you.
Art and exhibition specialist perspective, contemporary sculpture and London gallery programming
Anish Kapoor’s place in London’s cultural story
Anish Kapoor is not an artist who visits London. He is London, in the sense that the city shaped his practice and still holds many of his most significant works. Across 4 decades, his practice has moved through pigment, stone, steel, wax, silicone, resin, and advanced industrial materials, producing works that appear at once physical and elusive.
Kapoor is the subject of a series of landmark exhibitions in 2026, featuring major solo presentations across the United States, Europe, and the UK. This year-long programme highlights his continued exploration of space, the void, and the transformative power of materiality. London is central to that programme, and the Hayward is the main event.
The exhibition positions Kapoor not simply as a sculptor of spectacle, but as an artist deeply invested in uncertainty: the instability of looking, the tension between matter and illusion, and the fragile boundary between inner and outer worlds. That framing matters. It tells you how to enter the rooms: slowly, and with attention.
How to plan your visit
The exhibition runs from 16 June to 18 October 2026. The Hayward Gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday. Check the Southbank Centre website for specific opening times and any late-night openings during the run.
The nearest tube stations are Waterloo and Embankment. Waterloo is also the nearest train station. More than 20 different London bus routes pass within 500 metres of the venues. For visitors arriving from Paris by Eurostar, Waterloo is a natural starting point: the gallery sits a short walk from the station, directly on the river.
Guided tours of the Hayward Gallery exhibition are available to ticket holders, with dates and times found when you click through to book your exhibition tickets. Most visitors spend between 1.5 and 2.5 hours in the exhibition, depending on how much time they spend with individual works. Note that the venue does not accept cash payments. A fully illustrated catalogue, including commissioned essays, accompanies the exhibition for those who want to read further.
Why Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery deserves your time
Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery is more than a major exhibition. It is a rare encounter with an artist who asks you to question what you see, where your body ends, and what space actually is. Kapoor’s exhibition fills the entire gallery building with a series of immersive works, many of which press against the gallery walls and floors or descend from the ceiling to create an uncanny sensation of awe and wonder. Few shows in London this year will offer anything close to that.
If you are in London this summer, or planning a visit from Europe, this is the exhibition to organise your trip around. Book ahead, arrive without rush, and let Anish Kapoor do what he does best: make the familiar world feel entirely strange.
