Refreshments available from 6 pm and after the performance.

*Please note there is no disabled access to the Theatre.

View photographs and watch the Cocktail Preview Opening Speeches, whilst immersed in a explorable, high resolution recording of the exhibition
El Anatsui: 'Go Back and Pick'

Tate Modern presents Nigerian Modernism, a landmark exhibition celebrating the artists who transformed modern art in Nigeria during the mid-20th century. The exhibition will include some of El Anatsui’s early wooden wall-hanging sculptures, such as Leopard's Paw Prints and Other Stories.

Created throughout the 1980s and 90s, these remarkable relief works reveal the beginnings of Anatsui’s signature style. Using richly hued tropical hardwoods—variously charred, carved and painted—the artist forged wall-hangings that occupy a space between painting and sculpture, anticipating the shimmering metal tapestries for which he later became renowned.

Bringing together the art film KIELI BI – Woman Who Raises the Wind and a live dance performance, Dana Mussa presents TENGRI WOMAN—an immersive exploration of memory, identity and the body.
Rooted in a spiritual and temporal journey, the project evokes a time when women lived in deep connection with nature. Moving between ancestral memory and contemporary experience, the work creates a bridge between tribal roots and modernity.
*Please note there is no disabled access to the Theatre.

Watch the full Gallery Talk with artists Eleanor Lakelin and Junko Mori in conversation with curator Eleri Fanshawe.

The conversation offers insight into the artists’ influences and shared sensibilities, inviting audiences to consider how an expanded understanding of line operates as both concept and structure within their work.

Experience the thunderous energy and meditative precision of taiko drumming in a powerful live performance. Presented in conjunction with Kenji Yoshida: The Meaning of Life, the exhibition and bar will remain open to ticket holders from 6.30 – 8.30 pm.

Join Joe Nickols, Project Curator of Samurai at the British Museum and Gerard Houghton, Director of Special Projects, October Gallery for a discussion about Kenji Yoshida and his solo exhibition, The Meaning of Life. The conversation will examine the late Japanese artist's extraordinary life and artistic career.

October Gallery’s presentation at Art Basel Qatar explores El Anatsui’s innovative approach to process and materials. The exhibited works underline how the artist has — for many decades now — explored surprising avenues that have brought about a novel and unexpected synthesis of African practices and western modes. Over a career spanning more than five decades, El Anatsui has become one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists of our time. His sculptures, employing an extraordinary range of media and many uncommon materials, have investigated a broad array of different subjects.

Govinda Sah ‘Azad’ in discussion with Dr. Katie Hill, Academic Lead, Asia and Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, on the occasion of his solo exhibition, 'Journey to the Heart of Light' at October Gallery.

We are delighted to share that the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art has acquired Akua’s Surviving Children (1996) by El Anatsui. The work is now featured in the museum’s newly unveiled exhibition of over 130 pieces.

During a visit to Denmark in 1996, Anatsui discovered driftwood washed ashore in Hellebæk. The weathered logs immediately evoked, for him, the people torn from West Africa by the Danish slave trade — “torn from their land source into wild, hostile sea, tossed about, eventually returning to land with experiences of their ordeal.” Over the following days, he gathered more than thirty logs, creating a powerful memorial to a clan of survivors.

Nearly three decades later, the installation returns to Denmark’s coastline—now in the care of Louisiana Museum—where its origin and meaning resonate even more deeply.

Next spring, Yorkshire Sculpture Park will present Rise, the first solo museum exhibition by LR Vandy. Through her distinctive use of rope and found materials, Vandy transforms everyday objects into powerful reflections on migration, resilience and global interconnectedness.

Much of the rope featured in the exhibition draws on her proximity to the Historic Dockyard in Chatham—home to the UK’s last working Ropery, where rope has been produced using the same techniques for over four centuries.

Join artists Eleanor Lakelin and Junko Mori in conversation with curator Eleri Fanshawe for a special gallery talk accompanying the exhibition Lineages.

Working across wood and metal respectively, Lakelin and Mori share a deep attentiveness to natural forms, processes and cycles of growth. This conversation will explore their distinctive material practices, tracing how each artist responds to the inherent qualities of their chosen mediums through making, repetition and transformation.

In both practices, the artists’ use of line emerges as a connective thread between material and gesture as a method of ‘way finding’ that interlinks nature with contemporary sculptural form. The talk offers insight into the artists’ influences and shared sensibilities, inviting audiences to consider how an expanded notion of line operates as both concept and form within their work.

The talk takes place on the gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access