Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals @ Tate Britain, London

Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals

Tate Britain, London

27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026

J.M.W. Turner

Self Portrait, c. 1799 

Image courtesy of Tate

John Constable 

by Ramsay Richard Reinagle c. 1799 

NPG 1786 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Tate Britain presents the first major exhibition to explore the intertwined lives and legacies of Britain’s most revered landscape artists: JMW Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). Radically different painters and personalities, each challenged artistic conventions of the time, developing ways of picturing the world which still resonate today. Staged across the 250th anniversary years of their births, this exhibition will trace the development of their careers in parallel, revealing the ways they were celebrated, criticised and pitted against each other, and how this pushed them to new and original artistic visions. It will feature over 170 paintings and works on paper, from Turner’s momentous 1835 The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, lent by Cleveland Museum of Art and not seen in Britain for over a century, to The White Horse 1819, one of Constable’s greatest artistic achievements, last exhibited in London two decades ago.

JMW Turner 

The Burning of the Houses of Lords 

and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835 

Cleveland Museum of Art. 

Bequest of John L. Severance 1942.647

John Constable 

The White Horse, 1819 

© The Frick Collection, New York 

Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr

Born only a year apart - JMW Turner in London’s crowded metropolis and John Constable to a prosperous family in the Suffolk village of East Bergholt - their contrasting early lives will begin the exhibition. JMW Turner was a commercially minded, fast-rising young star who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 aged just 15, and created ambitious oil paintings like recently-discovered The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St. Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, before he turned 18. By contrast, largely self-taught John Constable undertook sketching tours to create early watercolours like Bow Fell, Cumberland 1807 and demonstrated a fierce commitment to perfecting artistic techniques, not exhibiting at the Royal Academy until 1802. Having both emerged amid an explosion in popularity of landscape art, the two were united however, in their desire to change it for the better.

The exhibition explores how both artists developed distinct artistic identities within the competitive world of landscape art, spotlighting their methods, evolution and overlap. Constable built his reputation on the Suffolk landscapes of his childhood, opting to sketch in oils outside amid the vast views of Dedham Vale and the river Stour, which often recurred in his work. Tate Britain will include his painting box and sketching chair, with visitors able to chart the development of Constable’s skilful draughtsmanship and radical handling of paint to add ‘sparkle’. A group of Constable’s cloud studies will be brought together for the exhibition. Reflective of his belief that the sky was key to the emotional impact of a painting they are now one of the most celebrated aspects of his output and underpinned the powerful skyscapes in the artist’s monumental six-foot canvases. Late works such as Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow 1836 will illustrate his deft interweaving of personal and historic memories.

JMW Turner 

The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre 

of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), 1804 

© Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts Trust)

By contrast, Turner travelled widely across Britain and Europe filling sketchbooks with quick pencil studies. This offered creative inspiration, influencing sublime Alpine scenes such as The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the Centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge) 1804, as well as commercial opportunities to have prints made after his watercolours. The exhibition explores how Turner developed original ways to apply paint and depict light, capturing the raw power of nature. Some of Turner’s most celebrated late works will feature, including Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome, first exhibited in 1838 and not shown in London in over 50 years.

John Constable 

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c. 1829

Image courtesy of Tate

By the 1830s, both Turner and Constable became recognised for taking landscape painting in bold new directions. The stark differences between their work spurred art critics to pit them against one another and to cast them as rivals. In 1831 Constable himself played into this, placing his and Turner’s work side by side at the Royal Academy exhibition. This showing of Turner’s Caligula’s Palace and Bridge next to Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, prompted a flurry of comparisons between the sun-drenched heat of Turner’s mythical Italian scene and Constable’s damply atmospheric Britain; they were ‘fire and water’. Now placed head-to-head at Tate Britain, the artists’ most distinctive and impressive paintings will highlight how, despite their differences, they made landscape a genre worthy of grand canvases and prime importance.

Creators of some of the most daring and captivating works in the history of British art, Turner and Constable changed the face of landscape painting with their two competing visions, elevating the genre with their recognition of its endless potential to inspire. The exhibition will end with a new film featuring contemporary artists Frank Bowling, Bridget Riley, George Shaw and Emma Stibbon reflecting on the enduring legacy of Turner and Constable.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

Bridget Riley @ Tate Britain, London

Bridget Riley 

Tate Britain, London 

21 July 2025 – 7 June 2026

Bridget Riley 

Concerto I, 2024 

Tate, Presented by the artist 2025 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved

Tate announced that it has received the gift of a major recent painting by BRIDGET RILEY (b.1931), one of the most influential artists of our time. Premiering at Tate Britain as part of a new display of Riley’s paintings running until 7 June 2026, Concerto I 2024 has been generously donated by the artist and joins Tate’s holdings of her work spanning a remarkable six-decade working life.

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain said: “We are extremely grateful to Bridget Riley for her generosity in making such a significant gift to the nation. Riley’s work changed the landscape of abstract art and Concerto I demonstrates how she continues to expand her practice while upholding a commitment to exploring energy and sensation through colour and form. We’re delighted to be able to show the painting in Tate Britain’s free collection displays over the next year, and I have no doubt it will soon become one of the best-loved works in the gallery.”

Bridget Riley 

Elongated Triangles 5, 1971 

Presented by the Institute of Contemporary Prints 1975. 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved 

Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)

Renowned internationally for her visually vibrant works, Bridget Riley’s particular approach to painting involves the skilful balancing of forms and colour to explore perceptions of space, balance and dynamism. Her recent works, Concerto 1 and Concerto 2 reflect the artist’s abiding love of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters and their engagement with colour. High in key, Concerto 1 is uplifting, while Concerto 2 explores hidden images.

Bridget Riley 

Fall, 1963 

Tate, Purchased 1963 

© Bridget Riley 2025. All rights reserved. 

Photo © Tate (Joe Humphrys)

Highlighting Riley’s dialogue with the sensory experience of sight, the new display includes Fall 1963, an important early abstract painting in Tate’s collection. The artist has described this painting as “a field of visual energy, which accumulates until it reaches maximum tension.” Using black and white curves, it evokes feelings of both elation and disturbance. Fall is being shown for the first time since receiving sustainable conservation treatment as part of GREENART, a groundbreaking new project researching ways to preserve cultural heritage using environmentally friendly materials.

Building on the long-standing relationship between Bridget Riley and Tate, this display is the artist’s fourth showing at the institution, having previously presented displays in 1973, 1994, and a large-scale retrospective survey in 2003. Fall was the first work by Bridget Riley to enter Tate’s collection in 1963 and has since been joined by nine paintings, 25 studies, and three works on paper by the artist. Concerto I is the first work by Bridget Riley created within this decade to be brought into Tate’s collection, expanding its representation of her practice.

Bridget Riley’s work is part of a series of regularly changing displays at Tate Britain to be staged since the gallery unveiled a full rehang in 2023. Collection works by Jacob Epstein, a key figure in the direct carving movement of the early 20th century, are currently installed in the Duveens Galleries at the heart of Tate Britain. Exploring the interplay between carving and modelling in Epstein’s work, monumental sculptures in stone are juxtaposed with bronze portrait busts. On 28 July, Pieter Casteels’s painting A Fable from Aesop: The Vain Jackdaw 1723 will be shown for the first time as part of a display looking at how artists have been inspired by birds. Several new artist interventions, first implemented with the rehang, will also appear throughout the collection. Found ceramics painted by Lubaina Himid will feature in the room exploring the rise of the urban metropolis in the era of Hogarth. Archive materials from Stuart Brisley’s time working on a project to record the experience of the inhabitants of Peterlee New Town and its surrounding villages will be included in the display exploring the place of abstract art in Britain’s post-war reconstruction.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

Paula Rego @ Tate Britain, London - Retrospective Exhibition

Paula Rego

Tate Britain, London

7 July – 24 October 2021

Tate Britain presents the UK's largest and most comprehensive retrospective of the work of Paula Rego. An uncompromising artist of extraordinary imaginative power, Paula Rego (b.1935) redefined figurative art and revolutionised the way in which women are represented. This exhibition will tell the story of this artist’s remarkable life, highlighting the personal nature of much of her work and the socio-political context in which it is rooted. It will reveal her broad range of references, from comic strips to history paintings. Featuring over 100 works including collage, paintings, large-scale pastels, drawings and etchings, it will span Rego’s early work from the 1950s to her richly layered, staged scenes from the 2000s.

The exhibition will begin with a selection of Rego’s rarely seen early works in which the artist first explored personal as well as social struggle. In Interrogation 1950, painted at fifteen years of age, Paula Rego asserted her commitment to denouncing injustices and standing up for victims. In her paintings, collages and drawings from the 1960s to 70s, Rego passionately and fiercely opposed the Portuguese dictatorship, using a range of sources for inspiration including advertisements, caricatures and news stories. She also explored folk tales as representations of human psyche and behaviour, as with Brancaflor – The Devil and the Devil’s Wife in Bed 1975.

Paula Rego abandoned collage in 1980 and returned to painting, combining childhood memories with her experiences as a woman, wife and lover. The exhibition will include major paintings from this period such as examples from ‘The Vivian Girls’ series, in which girls rebel against a coercive society, and the seminal works that established Rego’s reputation when first exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in 1988 including The Policeman’s Daughter 1987. Many of these pictures relate to Rego’s intense relationship with her husband, the painter Victor Willing, who for many years suffered from multiple sclerosis and died in 1988.

Throughout her career, Paula Rego has been fascinated with storytelling and this imbues much of her work. The exhibition will include prints from her series Nursery Rhymes 1989 in which Rego explores the strangeness and cruelty of traditional British children’s songs. As the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery, Rego also took inspiration from art history, weaving references to old masters such as Hogarth and Velázquez into paintings in which the protagonists are women, exploring their struggle and their journey towards emancipation, as in The Artist in Her Studio 1993.

The exhibition will feature Rego’s large pastels of single, female figures from the 1990s to 2000s, including the ‘Dog Woman’ and ‘Abortion’ series, some of the artist’s most celebrated and arresting pictures. Works from the ‘Abortion’ series, which the artist was proud to see used to campaign for the legalisation of abortion in Portugal, depict women in the aftermath of illegal abortions. Possession 2004, another major series of pastels rarely exhibited, combines Rego’s personal experience of depression and therapy with inspiration from 19th century staged photographs of women diagnosed as suffering from ‘hysteria’.

The exhibition will invite visitors into Rego’s creative world and explore the mise-en-scènes that the artist has been setting up, drawing and painting in her studio throughout the 2000s. Seminal paintings from this period will include War 2003 and The Pillowman 2004. The exhibition will also bring together striking works addressing the issues of women’s trafficking and female genital mutilation. These powerful images confront difficult stories of pain and abuse that Rego feels need to be told.

Paula Rego is curated by Elena Crippa, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art, with Zuzana Flašková, Assistant Curator, Modern & Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain. It is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Den Haag. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing.

TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

www.tate.org.uk

Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 – 1979 @ Tate Britain, London

Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 – 1979
Tate Britain, London
12 April – 29 August 2016

Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979 will show how artists working in Britain transformed the nature of art. This exhibition will trace the course of this pivotal movement from its origins in the mid-1960s through to the late 1970s, bringing together 70 works by 21 artists. It will demonstrate the radical, thought-provoking and politically-engaged nature of this defining period in art history.

Conceptual artists made ideas the essence of their art. This exhibition will position conceptual art not as a style but rather a game-changing shift in the way we think about art, how it is made and what it is for. Conceptual art emerged during a time of political and social change. Surveying a period which spanned Harold Wilson’s first Labour government to the election of Margaret Thatcher, it will show how conceptual art drew its material and content from the real world. The exhibition will showcase how conceptual artists took art beyond its traditional boundaries and questioned how it was defined. Seminal works will include Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree 1973 – a glass of water on a glass shelf, alongside a text suggesting possible meanings of the work – and Roelof Louw’s Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) 1967 – a pile of fruit from which visitors are invited to take a piece.

Conceptual artists often employed theory and philosophy to produce work that invited analysis and enquiry rather than purely contemplation. Influential figures such as Art & Language, Keith Arnatt, Richard Long, Bruce McLean and Stephen Willats prioritised ideas, concepts and artistic process over material form. The exhibition examines how artists questioned the nature of art and addressed issues of society, politics and identity, including Victor Burgin’s critique of modern consumerism, Possession 1976, Mary Kelly’s examination of the mother-child relationship in her Post-Partum Document 1974-8, and Conrad Atkinson’s Northern Ireland 1968 - May Day 1975 1975-6, which uses photography and text to represent different points of view in the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The exhibition features the work of such artists as Sue Arrowsmith, Braco Dimitrijević, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Margaret Harrison, Ed Herring, Susan Hiller, John Hilliard, John Latham, Bob Law and David Tremlett. It will also provide a unique chance to see over 250 archival objects rarely on public display. The exhibition will frame a multiplicity of voices and positions, revealing the key role played by British art schools such as Saint Martin’s School of Art, the Royal College of Art and Coventry School of Art in the formation of a ground-breaking generation of artists. Seminal exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and ICA will also be explored. Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 –1979 will trace the course of conceptual art to demonstrate its intrinsic engagement with the spirit of its time, and reveal its implications for the art of today.

The exhibition is curated by Andrew Wilson, Curator Modern and Contemporary British Art and Archives, with Carmen Juliá, Assistant Curator Contemporary British Art. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue by Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

TATE BRITAIN
www.tate.org.uk

Richard Deacon at Tate Britain, London

Richard Deacon
Tate Britain, London
5 February – 27 April 2014

Tate Britain presents a major exhibition of the work of Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon (born 1949), a leading British sculptor who first achieved international recognition in the early 1980s. Consisting of approximately 40 works, this chronological survey includes large, mid-scale and small sculptures shown alongside a series of important drawings. The show celebrates his innovative use of form as well as his interest in working with a diverse range of materials.

Richard Deacon is known for open structures where form is described not by its shape but by its boundary or edge. A number of such works are shown in the exhibition. These include After 1998, a huge serpentine form which balances volume, space and material in a way that plays with the viewers’ sense of interior and exterior. Its continuous and looping form explores depth, surface and structure.

Richard Deacon has consistently described himself as a ‘fabricator’ – a maker of things who places emphasis on the construction and manipulation of materials. This is highlighted by a group of works from his Art for Other People series which started in 1982, made with a diverse range of everyday materials including steel, foam, rubber, chrome, leather and marble. The show also includes a series of early drawings collectively titled It’s Orpheus When There’s Singing 1978. These have been of great importance in the making of subsequent sculptures, especially those that develop the possibilities of organic and curved forms, and in his thinking about language and communication.

The challenges Richard Deacon sets himself grow from the nature of his materials and their relationship to an evolving form. His interest in ‘material diversity’ has led him to produce experimental new works in cardboard and ceramic, whilst expanding his vocabulary with other materials. For example, Out of Order 2003 is constructed from ribbons of steamed wood, twisted and frozen as if in an agitated state.

Richard Deacon was born in Bangor, Wales, in 1949. He studied at Somerset College of Art, Taunton (1968), St Martin’s School of Art, London (1970–3) and the Royal College of Art (1974-77) where he gained an MA in Environmental Media. He has exhibited widely throughout the world with solo exhibitions, and in significant international surveys such as Documenta IX (1992) and Venice Biennale (2007). Deacon’s work is also permanently sited in locations around the world ranging from Yonge Square Plaza in Toronto, to Redheugh Bridge in Gateshead, from Krefeld in Germany to Auckland, New Zealand. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1987 and he has recently unveiled new public commissions for the Cornice of St. James’s Gateway, Piccadilly and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (both 2013).  He lives and works in London.

This exhibition is curated by Clarrie Wallis, Curator, Modern & Contemporary British Art with Sofia Karamani, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art. It is accompanied by a book on the artist and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

TATE BRITAIN, LONDON
www.tate.org.uk

Mona Hatoum at Tate Britain, London

Mona Hatoum

Tate Britain, London

24 March - 9 July 2000

An exhibition of new work by MONA HATOUM is on view at Tate Britain in the Duveen Galleries. This is her first major solo show in London and the first in a new series of sculpture displays by British artists in the Duveen Galleries. The series highlights Tate Britain's strong commitment to contemporary art and artists.

Responding to the architecture of the galleries, Mona Hatoum has created large scale works which reflect her current interest in everyday objects. These sculptures, focusing on household objects, emphasise and yet undermine their character as aids to domestic comfort and efficiency. Mouli-Julienne (x 21) is based on the French kitchen device for slicing or shredding vegetables, but is dramatically enlarged. The threatening scale of this piece reinforces the intensity of the object, where the shredding drum is intentionally large enough to accommodate a human body. The artist's transformation of this and other domestic tools renders them beautiful, yet malevolent. Another new work uses domestic furniture and kitchen implements but the additional element of live electrical currents running through the objects makes them sinister.

The confrontational themes that Mona Hatoum focuses on, such as violence and oppression, often make powerful reference to the human body, its vulnerability and resilience. Through the juxtaposition of opposites such as beauty and horror, Mona Hatoum aims to engage the viewer in conflicting emotions of desire and revulsion, fear and fascination.

MONA HATOUM was born a British citizen, to Palestinian parents, in Beirut in 1952. She settled in London in 1975 after civil war broke out in Lebanon while she was on a visit to Britain. After studying at the Byam Shaw and Slade Schools of art, she first became known in the early 1980s for a series of performance and video pieces which focused with great intensity on the body. Towards the end of that decade her work shifted towards installation and sculpture including the video installation Corps étranger 1994 an endoscopic journey through the artist's body.

Mona Hatoum's work has been exhibited widely. In 1998 a solo exhibition, initiated by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago toured to The New Museum, New York, MoMA, Oxford, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Other solo exhibitions include Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1994) and Castello di Rivoli, Turin (1999). Hatoum's work was included in Rites of Passage, Tate Gallery, London (1995) and in the same year she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.

An illustrated catalogue is available with essays by cultural critic Edward Said and Sheena Wagstaff, Head of Exhibitions and Display, Tate Britain (32pp, £12.99). 

The exhibition is curated by Sheena Wagstaff with Clarrie Wallis, Programme Curator, Tate Britain.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

Major expansion of Tate Gallery in London

New Millennium sees major expansion of Tate Gallery in London

In spring 2000 the Tate Gallery will create two new galleries in London. Tate Britain, at the original Millbank site, will open to the public on 24 March 2000, and Tate Modern, in the transformed Bankside Power Station in Southwark, will open on 12 May 2000. These join Tate Liverpool which opened in 1988, and Tate St Ives which opened in 1993, to form a network of galleries across the country.

The new galleries have been made possible with funding from the National Lottery. In February 1997 the Tate Gallery Centenary Development at Millbank was awarded £18.75 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Work will continue until 2001 on this development, transforming the north west quarter of the building to provide new galleries, a new entrance and many new facilities for visitors to Tate Britain. Tate Modern has received £50 million from the Millennium Commission and £6.2 million from the Art Council’s Lottery Fund.

Since 1950, the number of works in the Tate Collection has more than doubled, and the Tate’s audience has grown to over 2 million visitors each year. By the early 1990s it had become clear that the Gallery’s responsibilities to display both the British and Modern Collections in London could no longer be adequately fulfilled on the current Millbank site. In 1992 the Tate announced its decision to divide displays of the Collection between two sites in London, enabling it to show more effectively its Modern and British collections.

Tate Britain will present the world’s greatest collection of British art in a dynamic series of new displays and exhibitions. The gallery will show British art from the sixteenth century to the present day, highlighting masterpieces of the collection, while also introducing lively thematic approaches to British Art.

Tate Modern will be one of the foremost modern art museums in the world. It will house the Tate’s collection of international modern art from 1900 to the present, and it will be a gallery for the twenty-first century, exhibiting new art as it is created. The new museum will match those already established elsewhere in Europe and America and its opening will be equivalent to that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1920s or the Pompidou Centre in Paris in the 1970s.

In spring 2000 the two London galleries will be linked by a new transport strategy which will include a new shuttle bus and boat service, as well as bicycle and pedestrian routes.

Tate Britain, London, UK
www.tate.org.uk