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By Von Chua
Exploring the Boundary Between Sculpture and Architecture
Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery in 2026. Image by Von Chua.
One of the most anticipated new art exhibitions this year is Anish Kapoor's return exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London’s Southbank Centre. Curated by Ralph Rugoff, the exhibition by Anish Kapoor is the centrepiece of the Hayward Gallery's 75th anniversary programme, running from 16th June to 18th October 2026. This exhibition marks Anish Kapoor’s first major London exhibition since his first show at the Hayward Gallery in 1998. The exhibition in 1998 was instrumental in further instilling Anish Kapoor’s national recognition and reputation in the UK. With recent attention from the general public, and its anticipation prior to its opening, it says something about how rare it has become for an artist, living or dead, to command that kind of attention. It is important to note, though, that Anish Kapoor did not want this exhibition to be a retrospective.
At the Hayward Gallery, upon entering the first room of the exhibition, one experiences Anish Kapoor’s work in the context of the six-metre high architectural space. The sculpture embraces the space. Seemingly simple, playful and fun, being a site-specific installation, the sculpture is actually much more complex than that. Anish Kapoor has long treated architecture less as a container for art, but rather, more as a collaborator; it is where the boundary between art and architecture blurs. The architecture of the Hayward Gallery - the brutalist concrete became the blank canvas as Kapoor’s starting point. The architecture’s void becomes the canvas. For the latest exhibition on show, what strikes me most is not the sculpture itself but how the site interacted and informed the site-specific sculpture. I caught the exhibition with a curator’s tour, explaining how Anish Kapoor intended to challenge visitors’ experience with the unexpected sense of scale. As one walks through the perimeter of the sculpture within the first room, one feels engulfed by it, especially as it is hard to decipher where the sculpture ends; one’s sense of scale is immediately destabilised. Having visited numerous exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, my spatial memory also added another layer of enjoyment when viewing the sculpture.
Anish Kapoor trained as a sculptor at the Hornsey College of Art and, subsequently, the Chelsea School of Art in the 1970s. In 1990, he was selected to represent Britain at the 1990 Venice Biennale. He also won the Turner Prize in the following year. When a sculptor’s language happens to scale up into something occupiable, the sculpture meets human interactions, weather, wear and more. In many ways, the large-scale sculptures by Anish Kapoor start to behave like spatial design, whether the artist intends that or not. Anish Kapoor is not deliberately blurring sculpture and architecture, but his commitment to scale and to physical presence keeps landing his work there. In the case of the latest exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, if the architecture was not the Hayward Gallery’s brutalist architecture, would a white cube gallery environment still work in showcasing Anish Kapoor’s work in this era? Perhaps that is one of the key distinctions Anish Kapoor's works keep returning to. With Anish Kapoor’s highly restrained and subtractive art, the effect is hugely impactful.
From the void beneath the ArcelorMittal Orbit to the folded steel skin of the Monte Sant'Angelo metro entrance in Naples, Italy, recently completed with Amanda Levete’s practice AL_A, Anish Kapoor’s practice has time and time again straddled the boundary between art and architecture. The recently completed station in Naples that opened in September 2025 after two decades of project delay, comprises two entrances designed by Anish Kapoor: one a textured form, and the other a smooth tubular shape sunken into the ground. These are sculptures within spaces that interact with the general public on a daily basis; the completed artwork is not set within a gallery or an exclusive environment, and I think that is where Anish Kapoor’s works truly shines. It is also a shame that the two mirror-polished steel sculptures on display at the Hayward Gallery’s terrace, eg. the Tsunami curve, had a barrier in front of them preventing a close up encounter with his play of scale.
As an architect and someone trained in spatial design, the spatial and material tension that Anish Kapoor manages to achieve is particularly provocative and memorable. Anish Kapoor’s works are not merely sculptures or artworks placed into buildings, but they are structures that embraces the space and call for human interactions. One starts to question the starting and ending points of the discipline of art and architecture; I had many more questions when the curator revealed that structural engineers were also involved in the preparation of this exhibition.
If you have previously visited the Hayward Gallery, it is particularly worthwhile visiting the sculpture in the first room within this Anish Kapoor exhibition. Your spatial memory runs and recalls the architecture whilst trying to comprehend the sculpture in front of your eyes that bleeds beyond your peripheral vision; it adds a unique layer of experiencing an art sculpture that I rarely experience. For information on visiting the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, United Kingdom, please use this link:
