The summer of 1968 had a very distinctive flavour. The Beatles had just submerged the nation in their seminal animation Yellow Submarine, Pink Floyd’s ethereal riffs intoxicated a thousand-strong Hyde Park crowd and the Hayward Gallery had just hit London’s Southbank, conceived from a crumbling shell between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridge, and transformed into a hub of ambitious cultural finesse.
During its lifespan, The Hayward has played host to some of the most thrilling, provocative and star-studded displays of the previous half-century. A major Matisse retrospective christened the gallery with an ambush of primitive forms on a base of rigorous discipline. Francis Bacon’s body and soul were laid bare in a 1998 retrospective, revealing the artist’s trials, torment and turbulent struggle for identity through his series of dismantled and dissected bodily forms. More recently, Martin Creed asked ‘What’s the Point of It?’ in his 2014 solo show, which dominated the Hayward’s spaces with a seminal spread of installation work teetering on the rickety boundary between provocation and profundity.
normally, proceeding and unrestricted with without title, 2008, installation view at ‘Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture
To kick off the semicentennial celebrations, the Thameside brutalist Kunsthalle underwent a major facelift in January, involving a deep external clean and the installation of 66 new skylights; the original vision of the architects and their creative righthand, Henri Matisse. And now, with the aid of Google Arts and Culture’s project, Hayward Gallery at 50, users will be able to dive into a virtual archive of 1,000 artifacts, architectural plans, films, installations, sketches, and photographs – plus snoop behind the curtain at previously uncharted exhibition material harvested over the last half century.
To toast the occasion, entry tickets for the current exhibition, ‘Lee Bul: Crashing’ – the eerily dystopian display of critically acclaimed work spanning 30 years – will be available for 50p per person on Wednesday 11 July (the Hayward’s official birthday) with extended opening hours.
The installation of Tatlin’s Tower for ‘Art in Revolution: Soviet Art and Design after 1917’.
Installation view of ‘Kinetics: An International Survey of Kinetic Art’, 1970.
Event Horizon, 2007, by Antony Gormley.
Valerie’s Snack Bar, 2009, by Jeremy Deller, installation view at ‘Joy in People’ in 2012.
Love is What You Want, 2011, by Tracey Emin.
MONUMENT, 2008, installation view at ‘Light Show’, 2013.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Hayward Gallery website and the Google Arts and Culture website
ADDRESS
Southbank Centre
337-338 Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX
-
Bali welcomes Tri Hita Karana Tower, a hybrid sound and vision centrepieceTri Hita Karana Tower is launching at Bali's Nuanu City; designed by Arthur Mamou-Mani, it’s a new hybrid art-AI architectural landmark for the island
-
Lego opens its first Superpower Studios at Paris’ La Gaîté LyriqueIn collaboration with Lego’s new Global Play Ambassadors, artists Aurélia Durand, Chen Fenwan and Ekow Nimako, and overseen by Colette co-founder Sarah Andelman, Paris is the site of the first Lego Superpower Studios
-
‘If kids grew up going to London Design Festival they would learn so much’: architect Shawn AdamsIn the first of our interviews with key figures lighting up the London Design Festival 2024, Shawn Adams, founder of POoR Collective, discusses the power of such events to encourage social change
-
Artist Jonathan Baldock plays hide and seek with the windows of Hermès' London flagshipA series of fantastical, brightly coloured hedges, dotted with peepholes, transform Hermès' New Bond Street store, offering an interactive experience for the passerby
-
Penny Slinger’s 1970s erotic Photo Romance asks: ‘Is this where my story begins?’Artist Penny Slinger’s seminal ‘An Exorcism’, gets an immersive outing
-
Please do touch the art: enter R.I.P. Germain’s underground world in LiverpoolR.I.P. Germain’s ‘After GOD, Dudus Comes Next!’ is an immersive installation at FACT Liverpool
-
‘Happy birthday Louise Parker II’: enter the world of Roe EthridgeRoe Ethridge speaks of his concurrent Gagosian exhibitions, in Gstaad and London, touching on his fugue approach to photography, fridge doors, and his longstanding collaborator Louise Parker
-
‘A gentleness in the hard truths’: behind the scenes at Slave PlaySlave Play, London is on at the Noël Coward theatre – Amah-Rose Abrams reports on a ‘hilarious, tender, confronting’ performance and its masterful mirrored set
-
‘Regeneration and repair is a really important part of how I work’: Bharti Kher at Yorkshire Sculpture ParkBharti Kher unveils the largest UK museum exhibition of her career at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
-
‘Mental health, motherhood and class’: Hannah Perry’s dynamic installation at BalticHannah Perry's exhibition ’Manual Labour’ is on show at Baltic in Gateshead, UK, a five-part installation drawing parallels between motherhood and factory work
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the BarbicanIn Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
