Tate Modern Turbine Hall to showcase David Hockney opera sets | Tate Modern
Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall will be transformed into an immersive opera house, hosting an exhibition featuring sets designed by David Hockney for productions of works by Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky from the 1970s.
The art form may be considered outdated by Timothée Chalamet, but the Tate will use the sets as the centerpiece of Hockney’s 90th birthday celebrations in 2027.
Known for his landscapes and portraits, Hockney worked on many opera sets dating back to his time in London before moving to Los Angeles.
After trialling set design at the Royal Palace for a production of Alfred Jarry Ubu ROIHockney would go on to design others, including Richard Strauss’ fantasy opera. Die Frau ohne Schatten – Shadowless Woman – adopting a pop art aesthetic.
He produced a total of 11 opera sets in 17 years, starting in 1975.
When asked why he decided to start working on set designs, his answer was characteristically matter-of-fact. “I wanted to design an opera because I want to have something to look at.” he said.
The remainder of the Tate’s 2027 program includes a retrospective by Sonia Boyce, who won the Golden Lion for Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and an Edvard Munch show. Tate Liverpool will reopen with a show covering the career of Boyce’s contemporary Chila Kumari Singh Burman. hanging neons Outside Tate Britain in 2020.
There is also the first Monet exhibition at Tate Modern, called Painting Time, which focuses on the artist’s “obsession with capturing the moment”, according to its curator Catherine Wood.
The exhibition marks the beginning of the artist’s famous Water Lilies cycle, which spans 30 years from the 1890s, when he continued to paint in his Normandy garden despite suffering from cataracts, until his death in 1926, aged 86.
“What’s visible is how embodied he is and how engrossed he is in cultivating the garden and then capturing it,” he said. “Even though he is blind, he still tries to paint.”
Created in collaboration with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and using loans from individual and corporate collections, Wood said the exhibition would be a fitting way to revisit Monet, whose painting at Tate Modern is paired with a work by Richard Long. opened in 2000.
Other highlights of the season at Tate Britain include the 120-work Gainsborough exhibition to mark the 300th anniversary of the artist’s birth and the first major presentation of Tudor art in 30 years.
Tate Modern has landmark exhibitions for Algerian female artist Baya, who influenced Picasso, Indian Nalini Malani, and US sculptor Lynda Benglis, who embraced latex and Day-Glo pigment in her work.
The announcement for next season comes in the same month that Maria Balshaw left the Tate after nine years at an institution in transition.
Karin Hindsbo will be on board when the next director is hired. Balshaw’s permanent successor is expected to be announced this summer and must be signed by the prime minister.
Hindsbo said: “This is a program of exhibitions that only the Tate can offer. It spans the centuries from the 1500s to the present and spans the globe, from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Americas.”
“More importantly, the program reflects a deep appreciation for the artists themselves. All of these exhibitions showcase the many different ways artists think and work, and their unique ability to inspire and move us.”
