LONDON.- In 2027, Serpentine will unveil a series of landmark solo exhibitions bringing together artists across generations whose practices expand the possibilities of media and explore new forms of expressions. Through these ambitious shows and public art presentations, Serpentine will nurture connections between artists and audiences, continuing its unique mission of bringing art into everyday life from its unique setting within The Royal Parks.
PIERRE ALECHINSKY | SERPENTINE SOUTH | 11 FEBRUARY – 18 APRIL 2027
From February to April 2027, Serpentine will present a solo exhibition of Pierre Alechinsky (b.1927, Brussels, Belgium; lives and works in Bougival, France), the last surviving member of the short-lived but hugely influential European avant-garde movement, Cobra. This exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with the artist and coinciding with his centenary year, marks the first major solo presentation at a UK public institution for over six decades.
Featuring over fifty works spanning the 1960s to the 2010s, the exhibition will trace the trajectory of one of the most inventive and experimental voices in postwar modern art. Rarely-seen Indian ink drawings will be presented alongside monumental all-over painterly configurations in acrylic, in a celebration of a radical and experimental figure who has had a profound influence on generations of artists from Keith Haring to Matt Copson.
For more than eight decades, Alechinsky has created a graphically rich and exuberant body of paintings and works on paper that are characterised by a bold, spontaneous and expressive pictorial language. Fusing organic shapes, anthropomorphic figures, surreal landscapes and imaginary creatures, Alechinsky frequently incorporates calligraphic marks and gestural brushstrokes that engage with the history of painting, printmaking and drawing, pushing these mediums to new extremes. A signature device in his compostions is the use of ‘marginal remarks’. This framing device evokes both comic strips and predella panels of medieval and Renaissance art, where black-and-white vignettes serve as surreal, parallel narratives.
A major catalogue will accompany the exhibition designed by Philippe Ducat in close collaboration with the artist. Richly illustrated, it includes a compelling text by French feminist philosopher and writer Hlne Cixous – published in English for the first time – alongside contributions by the late surrealist poet Joyce Mansour, among others. The publication will also feature a conversation between Alechinsky and Serpentine’s Artistic Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and an extensive chronology compiled by Serpentine’s Exhibition Curator, Chris Bayley.
MATT COPSON | SERPENTINE NORTH | 19 MARCH – 22 AUGUST 2027
Serpentine will present Matt Copson’s first major institutional solo presentation in the UK. Matt Copson (b. 1992, Oxford) is an artist and director. His multidisciplinary practice spans laser animation, sculpture, opera, film and performance. Copson uses theatrical devices to create site-specific and multi-sensory installations. Drawing from myth, folklore and pop culture, his work explores the contemporary human condition that is defined by spectacle, attention and constant flux.
Serpentine will present the artist’s first major institutional solo presentation in the UK. The exhibition centres on one of the most well-known British folkloric characters – Robin Hood - a universal archetype that represents the noble outlaw known for redistributing wealth. Drawing inspiration from Copson’s interest in theme park rides, the exhibition will take the form of a labyrinth, leading visitors through a unique journey featuring new works of laser projection, sculpture, animatronics and audio pieces.
Copson’s recent solo exhibitions include Fanfare/Lament (Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, 2026), Coming of Age. Age of Coming. Of Coming Age. (LUMA Westbau, Zurich, 2025-2026; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2025), Obituary (Aspen Art Museum, 2023), Matt Copson: On Site (Swiss Institute, New York, 2019), Down Boy (Reena Spaulings, New York, 2019) and Blorange (Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, 2018). His play without actors A Woodland Truce formed part of a series of experimental and immersive performances that took place in The Magazine at Serpentine North in 2016.
Recent group exhibitions include Adolescence: A Contemporary Art Exhibition (Zaheta, Warsaw, 2026); Dhaka Art Summit (Bangladesh, 2023), Hollow Earth (Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 2023), Baltic Triennial 14 (Vilnius, 2021), Belgrade Biennale (Belgrade, 2021), NGV Biennale (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2020) and As Above, So Below (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2017).
Together with Oliver Leith he created the opera Last Days which premiered at the Royal Opera House, London in 2022, was revived in 2025 and had its US premiere with the LA Phil at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles in 2024 with the LA Phil. He is currently directing a feature film adaptation of Last Days, produced by MUBI.
ADRIAN PIPER | SERPENTINE SOUTH | 26 MAY – 5 SEPTEMBER 2027
In May 2027, Serpentine will present Adrian Piper, I’m This Space: Selected Works 1967–2027, the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the UK in over 30 years. Tracing Piper’s pioneering conceptual artmaking over six decades through works chosen in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition highlights the breadth of her groundbreaking and uncompromising practice across installation, sculpture, participatory performance, video, digital imagery, and drawings.
Known for her work as both a first-generation conceptual artist and analytical philosopher, Piper draws from diverse visual languages to explore the nature of the self, individual agency and identity politics. Her works often cultivate space for doubt or ambiguity in order to question viewers’ long-held beliefs, particularly concerning the construction of race and gender, the nature of truth, and the social and political context in which value systems are ascribed. Piper’s practice incorporates potent symbolism while avoiding singular interpretations to create space for debate and contemplation. The artist underscores the crucial role of the audience in bringing diverse perspectives, and therefore multiple meanings, to the work, particularly in her use of irony, humour and play.
Many of the works included in the exhibition will invite audience participation, such as Adrian Moves to Berlin (2007), a video work featuring the artist dancing in Alexanderplatz with space in front of the projection for visitors to dance with her.
Staged for the first time in the UK is The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3 (2013–27), a participatory work that invites visitors to sign a personal and binding contract with themselves and for which Piper was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
A new publication will accompany the exhibition, featuring two historic works on paper, Parallel Grid Proposal for Dugway Proving Grounds Headquarters (1968) and Untitled Map/Circle (1969), alongside new works Piper has created specifically in relation to the Serpentine exhibition.
Piper (b. 1948, New York City, US) is based in Berlin where she has lived and worked since 2005. Since 1969, Piper has been included in numerous exhibitions, including her recent solo exhibitions Adrian Piper: Who, me?, Portikus, Frankfurt (2024); RACE TRAITOR, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2024); and Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965-2016, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018), which travelled to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018).
THE 26th SERPENTINE PAVILION | SERPENTINE SOUTH | 12 JUNE – 31 OCTOBER 2027
2027 will see the unveiling of the 26th Serpentine Pavilion. This groundbreaking commission, first launched in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid, has introduced the UK’s inaugural structures by many of the most influential figures in international architecture.
In recent years it has grown into a highly anticipated showcase for emerging talents, from Sumayya Vally, Counterspace (South Africa), the youngest architect to be commissioned, and Frida Escobedo (Mexico), to Dibdo Francis Kr (Burkina Faso) and Bjarke Ingels (Denmark). In 2023 table was designed by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture (France and Lebanon), in 2024 Archipelagic Void was designed by Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies (Seoul, South Korea), in 2025 A Capsule in Time was designed by Marina Tabassum (Bangladesh) and in 2026 a serpentine was designed by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, LANZA atelier (Mexico City). The Pavilion is on view until 25 October 2026.
Each year’s commissions respond to the unique architecture of the Pavilion, inviting audiences to experience the activated space. Once opened, the Pavilion becomes a stage for live activations.
SERPENTINE X THE FLAG FOUNDATION PRIZE: GOZO YOSHIMASU | SERPENTINE NORTH | 24 SEPTEMBER 2027 – JANUARY 2028
In autumn 2027, Serpentine will present a major solo exhibition of Gozo Yoshimasu (b. 1939, Tokyo, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan). This exhibition, conceived in close dialogue with the artist, marks the inaugural recipient of The FLAG Art Foundation Prize. Following its presentation in London, the exhibition will be reimagined for The FLAG Art Foundation in New York in spring 2028.
Launched to provide artists, at a significant stage in their careers with the time, freedom and resources to develop and experiment with new work; Yoshimasu was the recipient selected by a jury comprised of Michelle Kuo, Venus Lau, Hans Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine), Jon Rider (The FLAG Art Foundation) and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Having emerged from Tokyo’s interdisciplinary avant-garde of the 1960s, Yoshimasu is now considered one of Japan’s most radical and celebrated figures of poetry. Through his work, the artist has sought to express the multiplicity of writing and poetry, engaging with and combining various disciplines such as performance, audio recording, painting, photography and his own moving-image form known as gozoCin. Attempting to ‘crack open the conventional composition of language to reveal the innate imperfections’, many of Yoshimasu’s writings have served as scores for performances that that explore expressive vocalisation, bodily gesture, movement, and diverse modes of enunciation.
Frequently experimenting with language, typography and punctuation, Yoshimasu’s disruptive compositions extend beyond the written word into painting and mark making. A notable example is the series Kaibutsu-kun (Dear Monster) (2012–16) which responds to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, as well as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Comprising 600 manuscripts, the series reflects on memory and trauma through an attempt to locate what Yoshimasu describes as ‘possible poetry’ in the aftermath of these catastrophic events. His visual poems combine line drawings, handwritten inscriptions, collaged elements and vivid ink paintings, often rendering the text partially or wholly invisible. This process of creation, destruction, remembrance and reckoning continues in later series such as Fire Embroidery (2016–18) and Voix (2016–18), many of which will be on view at Serpentine. Beyond Yoshimasu’s works on paper, the exhibition will bring together his extensive archive of sound recordings, performance documentation, moving image and photography, offering audiences a comprehensive overview of an artist working at the intersection of poetry, performance and visual arts.
The exhibition will mark the first major solo institutional exhibition of the artist’s work in both the UK and the United States. It will be accompanied by a dedicated catalogue and a dynamic live programme, developed and produced collaboratively by both institutions.
LISA BRICE | SERPENTINE SOUTH | 8 OCTOBER 2027 – 6 FEBRUARY 2028
Lisa Brice (b. 1968, Cape Town, South Africa) is a London-based painter whose work challenges traditional representations of women in art history. The exhibition brings together paintings from the past five years alongside new works created in response to Serpentine’s location and architecture. The galleries are organised around four settings that recur in Brice’s paintings: the park, the studio, the bar and the fight arena, each a stage for her female protagonists. Mirrors, doorways and reflections, recurring motifs in Brice’s work, are incorporated into the exhibition’s scenography, extending the theatrical qualities of her paintings into the gallery space.
New large-scale paintings created for Serpentine’s entrance and central gallery extend Brice’s ongoing exploration of women’s self-defence, resistance and solidarity.
An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, surveying Brice’s practice to date through new contributions responding to different bodies of work.
CRISTINA IGLESIAS: MINERAL FOREST IN AN IRREGULAR PENTAGONAL ROOM, 2025-27 | ON VIEW SPRING - AUTUMN 2027
In spring 2027, Serpentine and The Royal Parks will unveil a major public sculpture by Cristina Iglesias (b. 1956, Donostia-San Sebastin, Spain) in Kensington Gardens. Situated in close proximity to Serpentine South, Mineral Forest in an Irregular Pentagonal Room will be on view from April to autumn 2027 and continues Serpentine’s long-standing tradition of public presentations by internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, including Giuseppe Penone, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in The Royal Parks.
Mineral Forest in an Irregular Pentagonal Room, 2025-27 is related to the artist’s Vegetation Room series and expands on Iglesias’ exploration of geology, literature, architecture and psychology that has occupied her practice for more than four decades. A roofless open-air room, Mineral Forest in a Pentagonal Room is composed of a forest of densely textured columns that resemble organic matter, inspired by vegetal and mineral forms. A place that can be entered both physically and in one’s imagination, the sculpture opens up a passage to another dimension, where a connection to the geological time scale can be felt. First presented in a solo exhibition at Fundaci Catalunya La Pedrera in Barcelona, the work has been reconfigured for the outdoor presentation in Kensington Gardens, where it’s external walls mirror the brown and green hues of the surrounding trees, inviting visitors to consider the relationship between sculpture and landscape, natural environment and manmade structure.
Iglesias writes: 'The idea of slowing down proliferation, solidifying millennia of evolution within layers of hardened matter puts our temporal existence into perspective.'
Cristina Iglesias’ practice is guided by a deep sensitivity for natural environments and built form. Her large-scale environments and sculptures poetically shift audience’s temporal and spatial perception and create contemplative spaces that slow down movement and prompt embodied exploration and reflection. Iglesias’s recent solo exhibitions include Fundaci Catalunya La Pedrera, Barcelona, Spain (2025); Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, US (2023); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, Madrid, Spain (2013); Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy (2009); Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2006) and Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2003). Iglesias represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1986 and 1993. In recent years Iglesias has realised a number of large-scale installations in public space, including Deep Fountain at Leopold de Wael Square in Antwerp, Belgium (1997–2006); Forgotten Streams at Bloomberg’s headquarters in London (2017); Inner Landscape (the Lithosphere, the Roots, the Water) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (2020); and Hondalea (Marine Abyss) at the Santa Clara Island lighthouse in San Sebastin, Spain (2021).
ARTS TECHNOLOGIES | FUTURE ART ECOSYSTEMS R&D FELLOWSHIP AND ARCHIVE DISPLAY
The Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship, Serpentine’s flagship programme supporting artistic practice, research and experimentation in art and advanced technologies, will continue in 2027.
Supported by a new three-year partnership with Glass Castle, which includes a significant contribution towards one major commission each year, the fellowship supports the research of pioneering practitioners working across art and technology. The programme connects creative R&D with industry, academia and policy, creating opportunities for artists and other practitioners to contribute to wider conversations around how emerging technologies are developed, understood, governed and used.
Selected through an international open call for artists, curators, organisers, producers and technologists, which attracted close to 1,000 applications, the 2026-27 Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellows Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Alice Bucknell, Auriea Harvey and Reina Mun are undertaking original research through a six-month programme that concludes with public events in Spring 2027. Their work explores how advances in AI are reshaping cultural production, institutions and public life.
Spring 2027 will also see the commencement of the process of selecting the 2027-28 Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellows who will begin their work in September 2027.
The fellowship is founded on the belief that artists are not simply observers of technological change, but essential contributors to shaping its direction and implications. Each fellow receives a meaningful bursary, travel support to London, and dedicated mentorship to support their research and development. Together, each cohort will bring diverse disciplinary perspectives to questions at the intersection of technology, culture, governance and everyday life.
FORMAFANTASMA | LEAD R&D FELLOWS, ECOLOGY
A multi-year collaboration with Formafantasma, who will join the organisation as Lead R&D Fellows, Ecology. The partnership strengthens Serpentine’s long-term commitment to embedding environmental thinking across its programme, operations, and organisational culture.
Formafantasma, the research-based design studio led by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, explores the environmental, historical, political, and social forces shaping contemporary design. Working across Serpentine’s programmes and systems, they will help develop new approaches to integrating ecological thinking into Serpentine’s day-to-day activities and long-term strategy.
Beginning in summer 2026, the appointment will span curatorial guidance, institutional advisory, and knowledge-building across exhibition-making, daily operations, resource use, labour, and Serpentine’s civic role. The collaboration will begin with an in-depth research phase to map Serpentine’s existing processes and systems, from curatorial practices to operational structures, identifying opportunities for ecological intervention and long-term change.
Running alongside this work, a multi-year public programme will invite audiences into the process, creating opportunities to share, document, and disseminate the findings and methodologies emerging from the ongoing research.
In 2020, Formafantasma presented Cambio at Serpentine North, a major research-led exhibition examining the ecological, political, and economic dimensions of the global timber industry.
