In Tate’s recently announced 2027 programme, moving-image art features boldly yet sparsely.

Announced last month, the exhibition programme presents retrospectives from many time periods, as well as new commissions, bringing international art to its over 7.5 million yearly visitors. 

From early 2027 to early 2028, Tate Modern will see shows centred around ink painting, a 90th birthday show for the maverick-turned-household-name David Hockney, as well as an expansion of the installation work by Nalini Malani already on display. They will also participate in a multi-venue return of the sculptor and “pourer” Lynda Benglis, whose sculptures are currently in dialogue with Alberto Giacometti’s in the ongoing Encounters season at Barbican. These retrospectives will be accompanied by new commissions in the UNIQLO Play and Infinities Commission, which this year was awarded to nora chipaumire. 

The programme also coincides with the reopening of Tate Liverpool, as well as the Turner Prize, which will be displayed in Tate St. Ives for the first time in 2027.

The programme will follow an impressive couple of years of moving-image art at Tate: in 2025, Christelle Oyiri filled Tate Modern’s Tanks with her multimedia installation In a perpetual remix where is my own song? for the inaugural Infinities Commission, Onyeka Igwe’s our generous mother is still on show in Tate Britain’s Art Now space, plus many more, including retrospectives from Ed Atkins and the legendary Bruce Conner. It would be a hard year to top for any programme, even for one of the world’s leading modern and contemporary art galleries.

It has popped up this year at Tate Modern, in Tracey Emin’s seminal retrospective, and will again in this summer’s Ana Mendieta show. Tate Britain will also see 90s mavericks like Mark Leckey and Steve McQueen in their exhibition on the decade. The latter will also have his deftly important and ever-prescient film Greenfell (2019) screened at Bluecoat, to tie in with the reopening of Tate Liverpool this Spring. Two major London commissions of the year, Infinities at Tate Modern and the Tate Britain commission, will feature nora chipaumire and Zineb Sedira, respectively, two artists who use video in situ in sculptural and performance work.

Next year, moving-images will also feature as such in a survey of Nalini Malani’s work; her immense installation In Search of Vanished Blood (2012-20) has already been a mainstay in the Tate Modern collection since 2021. While less literally present, movement and representation in art will likely appear in Tate Modern’s first solo exhibition of Claude Monet’s work, Painting in Time, which will draw on new research of the artist’s interest in capturing natural and industrial cycles, a prescient model for landscape film across the globe. 

Another survey exhibition that will cover will be on show at Tate Britain over the spring-summer period will be for the 2022 Golden Lion recipient Sonia Boyce, presenting her multimedia series Devotions.
Tate’s 2027 programme is looking to a time in the future when Tate will have a new director at Tate Modern, a newly relaunched gallery in Liverpool, and a verdict on the Labour government’s consideration to charge overseas visitors to the gallery—something that, The Art Newspaper reports, is currently unpopular with institutions like Tate. With drastic political change on the horizon, it doesn’t seem like the art economy will slip past unscathed.

Image: Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012-20. Artwork © Nalini Malani; Photo Johan Pijnappel.