Britsh Art Show 10: Chorus of Strangers
2 Oct 202 6 – 18 Jun
A vital overview of the most exciting art produced in the UK during the past five years, curated by Ekow Eshun
Coventry, Swansea, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle Gateshead
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/british-art-show-10-a-chorus-of-strangers/
The UK’s largest recurring contemporary art exhibition, British Art Show 10 is curated by Ekow Eshun and produced by Hayward Gallery Touring. It forms a key part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary national programme.
The landmark 10th edition of the British Art Show explores how art can challenge fears of otherness and difference during periods of uncertainty and change.
Featuring 37 artists, the exhibition invites an expanded conception of the Stranger – a defining motif of our times that reflects our collective unease in an unpredictable world. Moving beyond standard archetypes, it presents the Stranger as a Wanderer: a fluid presence moving between borders to offer new ways of seeing, connecting, and imagining otherwise.
I've made a (non-linear, entangled, indeterminate, non-sequential, recycled) iteration of The Earth is Knot Flat for BAS10. A ‘continuation’ of matter moving from the debris, fragments, stuff installed at Drawing Room (London) in 2024. The 9m drawing ‘The River That Flows Nowhere, Like a Sea’ (made for Afterness ) is enfolded into the installation.
Enzymatic discomposing, mulching, disindividuating stuff. Archive undone.. on the move… . . .. .
Each iteration in the 5 cities will change. Material will be added and subtracted. Stuff reconfigured, recycled, recombined, reassembled. Re/de/composition (materially thinking with Denise Ferreira da Silva.)
I am making ‘Rift Flowers // Clast Blooms’ while the itinerant BAS10 is on the move (which will be added in on its journey.)
The Earth is Knot Flat is an ongoing material attempt to think rhythmically, to think difference without separability (da Silva's formulation) to mess with the source code of the countable One, the Individual, the Subject, the Self, the state, the Unit (which replicates the terms of the dominator, extractive, supremacist logics shoring up binaries and hierarchies: Border logics.)
‘the armed immortal fence along the borders stretch out into all the seas..’
Dionne Brand
Material entanglement.
Discomposing cartographies.
There also will be three of the ongoing Choral Field series (subtitle: ‘Deluge.’)
Here’s a link to Aya Nassar’s essay (written for Etymologies of Foam and Dust which accompanied the Drawing Room installation): Graphite Geography
‘Difference without separability. ‘
Denise Ferreira da Silva
“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”
Judith Butler
‘..she does not want a room of his or her own, she wants to be in the world, in the world with others and making the world anew..’
Fred Moten
‘..suffer a seachange into something rich and strange..’
Shakespeare. The Tempest.
Chorus, not as a collection of individuals, but as a complex field: polyvocal, polyrhythmic, dynamic, musical.
Rich and strange.
‘In Other Words…’
-Fred Moten
babble is brookish,
an open-bookish
kinda thing, some
falling into seeing
the fluidity of the
good black earth
when it feels like
weeping in reed-
song. see, that's
real – a violence
of willow cabin,
a silten throat to
share. reading
is just residual,
rückenfigural
corresponding
back and forth
in waterfalling
so we can feel
how feel sounds,
and know how
good was, and
revel, and rappel
a picture-feeling
in the runaway
bubbling from
before’s old-new
beguining, mid
dle seethe, and
model aftermath.
‘To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair. ‘
Karen River Barad
'‘Blacklight, or ultraviolet radiation, works through that which it makes shine: for example, it has the capacity to transform at the DNA level, that is, it reprograms the code in the living thing exposed to it, and causes mayhem in their self-reproductive capacity at the cellular level. We could think of this process as one of breaking up a modern substance, that is, of separating form (the code, the formula, the algorithm, or the principle) and matter (content, or that of which something is composed). (I use the modifier “modern” because of my interest in dissolving the abstract forms of the understanding. However, there is nothing to prevent us from imaging blacklight breaking through any other abstract or sensible form, even, hopefully, at the atomic level. In any event.)'
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Tour dates
2 October 2026 – 10 January 2027 Coventry
25 October 2025 – 8 February 2026 Swansea
19 June – 19 September 2027 Bristol
23 October 2027 – 20 February 2028 Sheffield
24 March – 18 June 2026 Newcastle Gateshead
Themes
British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers is organised around three overlapping curatorial themes that span the psychological, sociological and ecological. Each theme is inspired by the work of an influential British writer or theorist who has grappled with the tensions between the Individual and the Other.
Moments of Being
Moments of Being takes its title from Virginia Woolf’s description of the fleeting instances when the surface of ordinary life seems to lift, offering a brief glimpse into the interconnectedness of existence. The artists featured here similarly turn inward as they observe the world around them. Drawing on dreams, memory, and the subconscious, they explore the blurred boundaries between mind and body, reality and imagination. Their works suggest a way of understanding ourselves and the conditions that shape our shared experience.
Ways of Living
Ways of Living is inspired by cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s idea that culture and identity are always changing and being reshaped by the shifting interplay of politics, power and history. Working with personal or collective memories, the artists featured here illuminate how fragments of the past continue to shape contemporary life, and how individual stories intersect with larger historical currents. Collectively, these works explore how a common ground might be built by actively reimagining life with one another.
States of Nature
States of Nature is inspired by ecological philosopher Timothy Morton’s call for a greater awareness of our relationship with the environment: an understanding that all life forms are fundamentally interconnected within a vast, complex network of being. This theme brings together artists whose work embraces the natural world in its abundance, beauty, and complexity. Animals, plants, air and water are highlighted as part of our shared living history, foregrounding ways of coexisting that challenge the human-centric and invite us to imagine a new relationship with the planet.
Featured artists
Among the artists featured in this exhibition are Okiki Akinfe, Alex Margo Arden, Liz Johnson Artur, Alvaro Barrington, Shiraz Bayjoo, Lubna Chowdhary, Shawanda Corbett, Jesse Darling, Ufoma Essi, Joy Gerrard, Louise Giovanelli, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Nnena Kalu, Jasleen Kaur, Christina Kimeze, Julian knxx, Matthew Krishanu, Alastair Mackinven, Melanie Manchot, Lindsey Mendick, Emma McNally, Dala Nasser, Jack O’Brien, Nengi Omuku, Precious Okoyomon, Hannah Perry, Mohammed Sami, Rae-Yen Song, Emma Talbot, Nicole Wermers and Osman Yousefzada.
Partners
British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers is curated by Ekow Eshun with Hayward Gallery Touring, in partnership with The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, the University of Warwick, Warwick Arts Centre and the Mead Gallery, Coventry University Group, Elysium Gallery, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, GS Artists, Mission Gallery, Volcano Theatre, Arnolfini, the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Spike Island, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Museums, Site Gallery, Yorkshire Artspace, Arts Catalyst, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle Contemporary Art, Laing Art Gallery and Shipley Art Gallery,
Quotes
‘Across centuries, artists have used their ability to work with uncertainty, contradiction and possibility to create works that privilege affinity over isolation. British Art Show 10 celebrates their unique position while looking ahead to the future.’
– Ekow Eshun, Curator of British Art Show 10
‘The 10th edition of Hayward Gallery Touring’s British Art Show is an invitation to shift perspective and see the world from multiple positions at once… As it travels to five great UK cities, A Chorus of Strangers will illuminate the power of art to transform uncertainty into a shared journey of kinship and possibility.’
– Brian Cass, Head of Hayward Gallery Touring
‘The landmark tenth British Art Show, travelling to more cities than ever before, invites the nation to reconsider today’s major issues through the eyes of the most interesting artists working in Britain.’
– Mark Ball, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre
‘The Earth is Knot Flat’ Drawing Room 2024
photo: Eva Herzog