Iconic Women of the Hayward Gallery

Artists Maggi Hambling, Bharti Kher and Linder Sterling discuss key figures in the gallery’s history with Chief Curator Rachel Thomas, chaired by Shahidha Bari. Since opening in 1968, the Hayward Gallery has been shaped by the bold, uncompromising work of the women who have exhibited there. In 1971, Bridget Riley became the first contemporary painter to receive a full retrospective at the gallery. Since then, iconic artists including Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin have brought provocative and boundary-pushing exhibitions to the space, expanding what audiences expect from contemporary art. Kher – whose 2024 commission Target Queen transformed the Hayward Gallery’s façade with thousands of bindis – joins Thomas to celebrate those who have shaped the space over the past six decades and to explore how women artists continue to push the Hayward Gallery forward. Kher’s 30-year-long career encompasses painting, sculpture and installation. Their artistic practice is renowned for how it explores the boundaries between humanity and nature, and merges references that are at once topical and traditional, political and poetic. Celebrated for her edgy humour and visual playfulness, Linder is a pioneering artist whose work invites us to see beyond traditional ideas about gender and sexuality, dissecting our fascination with the body and its representation. Deliciously satirical, her photomontages remix images from popular culture. At other times, Linder uses her own body like a piece of