Renée Levi Transforms the Hayward Gallery Façade with September

Le Brassus, 23 September 2026 — Swiss artist Renée Levi today reveals her first large-scale public installation in the United Kingdom. The new artwork is a two-panel painting activating the façade of the Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery in London, co-commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Unveiled today, the co-commission will remain on view on the Hayward Gallery façade until 15 November 2026.

With this site-responsive intervention, Levi occupies the Hayward Gallery's iconic Brutalist architecture, taking the distinctive, protruding rectangular window — the 'eye' of the building — as part of the work's composition, expanding the painting around its form. Painterly gesture activates the surface, with bright colours and playful mark-making that span the scale of human reach. The choice of painting as a medium for an urban public artwork at this scale is unprecedented for the artist, and its location invites all visitors and passersby to have a personal and unobstructed relationship with this temporary artwork, from a position not possible within a typical gallery environment.

From her early wall-based works to more recent large-scale interventions, Levi approaches painting as an ongoing act; one that reveals, conceals, filters and reshapes the surfaces it inhabits. Her works emerge through an encounter between body, material and site, foregrounding painting as a performative, situational process. Presented on the South Bank — a location celebrated for its long history of creative experimentation as well as being an area of daily movement through the city — each encounter with the work will be unique: seen as a whole, up close, in glimpses at angles, in bright daylight and in shadow. This transience is reflected in the work's title, September, a time of change in weather, light and in the pace of metropolitan life. For many, the artwork will become embedded into routine for a season across its eight-week display, inviting the public into a daily moment of artistic connection.

September reflects the artist's longstanding interest in the dialogue between painting, architecture and environment. At the Hayward Gallery, which is Grade II listed and protected as an architectural landmark, this relationship is particularly acute: the building's exposed concrete, protrusions and strong geometric language give its façade a sculptural presence of its own, which Levi's intervention responds to directly. Resilient to its outdoor conditions on the South Bank, the work uses an industrial mesh as canvas for the first time to allow air to pass through its surface — subverting the standard use of this material, typically employed for large-scale signage, and reinterpreting it in a painterly register. On its surface, organic gestures in fluorescent colours are applied at a size never exceeding that which is allowed by human movement. Levi's approach to innovation in materials resonates with Audemars Piguet's own creative process — and this is the first painting commissioned by the brand's programme Audemars Piguet Contemporary.

"September begins with an encounter between painting, the body in the act of painting, and the distinctive building of the Hayward Gallery." — Renée Levi, Artist

"Levi's commission turns a routine walk along the Thames into an unexpected encounter with vibrant art to enjoy every day." — Yung Ma, Curator, Hayward Gallery

"September reflects our mission to support artists as they explore new territories in their practice." — Audrey Teichmann, Curator, Audemars Piguet Contemporary

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