Have you ever wandered around a London museum or gallery and wondered what it would be like to explore it at night? Well, one esteemed London gallery is offering you the chance to do just that. The Hayward Gallery will open late next month with a special Hayward Gallery Lates event on April 1. As part of the event, you can explore 2 of London’s most popular exhibitions – after hours.
Running from 6-9pm, the Hayward Gallery Lates will treat visitors to a special way of experiencing Chiharu Shiota’s ‘Threads of Life’ and Yin Xiuzhen’s ‘Heart to Heart’. The event will feature activations that draw from the art pieces themselves, as well as live performances, creative exercises, and special tours.
And to ensure you don’t miss ANYTHING on the night, we’ve put together a guide for the night. Whether you want to know more about the artists on show, are curious about the poets performing, or need a schedule to follow, we’ve got you sorted.
Artists at the Hayward Gallery Lates
At the core of the late-night gallery event are two exhibitions, showcasing the works of Chiharu Shiota and Yin Xiuzhen. In both cases, it’s a momentous first. It’s Shiota’s first major solo exhibition in a public London gallery. And it’s the first major UK survey of work from Xiuzhen. Both exhibitions feature new commissions alongside iconic pieces from the artists’ histories – in some cases receiving new interpretations for the show.
‘Threads of Life’, from Shiota, has taken over the Hayward Gallery’s top floor with an intricate woven tangle of threads that stretches from floor to ceiling throughout the space. The weblike threads fill the rooms with an immersive display, surrounding and accompanying sculptures, drawings, videos, and photographs. The exhibition also features new iterations of two of Shiota’s past famed installations. ‘The Locked Room (2016)’ and ’During Sleep (2002)’ are given new life within the Hayward Gallery exhibition. These wool-thread-filled pieces act like three-dimensional paintings that create “a cocoon-like area that encloses visitors as they walk through it”.
The Hayward Gallery Lates event is also a chance to explore Yin Xiuzhen’s ‘Heart to Heart’. The exhibition spans across three decades of Xiuzhen’s artistic projects, which ask the audience to “see the familiar in new ways”. Large-scale installations are spread across the rooms of the exhibition, each made from everyday objects that have been transformed into something else entirely. Drawing from the stories and history held within otherwise unremarkable objects and materials, the new forms take on new meaning entirely.
Poets performing
Throughout the evening, there will be live poetry performances by “alumni from the National Poetry Library-led New Poets Collective.” Poets Suyin Du Bois, Suchandrika Chakrabarti, and Lou Moon will perform pieces that draw from the themes of the exhibitions themselves.
Suyin Du Bois
A poet of mixed Chinese-Malaysian and Belgian heritage, London-based Du Bois has had her poetry published in a variety of publications and anthologies. You’ll soon be able to purchase her debut pamphlet, Eating Air, when it is published in July of this year by The Emma Press.
Suchandrika Chakrabarti
A writer and performer from London, Chakrabarti’s poems have been shortlisted for a number of prizes. She’s currently working on her debut pamphlet, ‘the heartbreak of having it all’.
Lou Moon
A London-based artist who works across ‘sound poems’, recordings, and written pieces, Moon’s work takes ordinary and everyday sounds and settings and infuses them with new meaning. Their work also “explores the intersection of what is visible and depictable, versus what can only be felt and experienced in one’s body.”
Moon’s works play well with the exhibitions, given the impressive emotional responses the works inspire, as well as the focus on seemingly ‘mundane’ objects and materials.
A schedule for the evening
If you don’t want to miss a thing, here’s a step-by-step guide for the evening:
Kick things off by heading over to the Clore Ballroom, on Level 2 of the Royal Festival Hall, when the evening begins at 6pm. Here you can get hands-on at Creative Encounters: A Shrine to the Everyday. This drop-in creative workshop “invites you to explore joy, memory and connection through hands-on making, crafting shrines to the everyday.
You’ll be invited to ask yourself ‘what are your everyday treasures’, inspiring you to make a “portable shrine” of your own to take home. (If you like, you can even bring your own small treasures, such as photos, tickets, and trinkets, to incorporate into your piece.)
We love the idea of going to see art and leaving with your own creation, connecting you to the pieces you’re about to see. Plus, by engaging with some of your own creative energy, you’ll be raring to explore what else the gallery has to offer.
After that, it’s time to explore the exhibitions themselves – at around 7:30pm. But don’t go wandering off randomly, there are specific happenings you won’t want to miss!
Regularly throughout the exhibition views, poets Suyin Du Bois, Suchandrika Chakrabarti, and Lou Moon will perform poetry alongside the exhibition artwork.
Visitors should also keep an eye out for Curatorial Assistants Felix Choong and Ananya Jain, who will be giving spotlight talks and tours of the Yin Xiuzhen and Chiharu Shiota exhibitions, respectively.
Exploring the exhibitions
In and around the activations, you can explore the 2 exhibitions.
Upstairs, you’ll find Chiharu Shiota’s works. As you explore these pieces, you can:
- Wind your way through a room where woven threads seem to grow from, towards, and around beds
- Read 1000s of letters of gratitude, suspended in a spider-web-like room full of red threads, sourced from the public
- Find the lovely letter that our own video editor wrote to his girlfriend
- Peer up at hundreds of keys suspended in the air from a maze of threads
Downstairs in the Lower Galleries, you’ll find Yin Xiuzhen’s pieces. Here you can:
- Step inside an enormous heart constructed out of clothing
- Wander around an airport room, with luggage, planes, and miniature city-scapes made from reclaimed fabrics and clothing
- Browse a library of ‘second-hand’ books, also made from second-hand clothes
- Marvel at sculptures that transform ordinary objects – concrete, food and household ephemera – into stunning artwork
Along the way, be sure to check out the poetry reading room as well as the self-led creative station in the Hayward Gallery Cafe. Here you can read selected poems, play poetry games, or find inspiration to write your own lines of poetry.
And when you’ve explored everything on offer, be sure not to miss the Hayward Café and Shop. They’re staying open late for the event, so guests can purchase exhibition merchandise, drinks, and more.
🎟️ Tickets cost £7. Find out more and grab yours here.
📍 Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. The nearest station is Waterloo.