Press room

In 2026, the Barbican celebrates its 20th year of commissioning artists for The Curve, a cornerstone of the Barbican’s Visual Arts programme since 2006. Across the last two decades, more than 40 artists have been invited to create and exhibit new, captivating and thought-provoking works responding directly to the unique proportions of the Barbican’s Curve gallery, a space which unfolds along a 90-metre curve, wrapping around the Barbican’s concert hall.  

Marking its 20th year, the Barbican will present two new commissions for The Curve in 2026 by Julia Phillips and Yuko Mohri. Opening in January, Inside, Before They Speak, will be the first UK institutional solo exhibition by the Chicago-based artist Julia Phillips showcasing new sculptures and drawings, informed by Phillips’s interest in the body, conception, and human connection. In October, multidisciplinary Japanese artist Yuko Mohri will develop a new site-responsive installation embracing states of flux, to reveal the imperceptible phenomena of our surrounding environment. 

Julia Phillips and Yuko Mohri join a swath of contemporary artists who, over the past 20 years, have responded to and transformed The Curve with works that engage social and environmental questions of today, spanning painting, film, textiles, performance, installation, sound, poetry and drawings. Previously exhibited artists include Damien Ortega, Cory Arcangel, Thomas Saraceno Walead Beshty, Jeppe Hein, Francis Upritchard, Yto Barrada, Shilpa Gupta, Song Dong, Imran Qureshi, Bedwyr Williams, Richard Mosse, John Akomfrah, Daria Martin and most recently Julianknxx, Soufiane Ababri, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Citra Sasmita and Lucy Raven. 

Commissioning artists sits at the heart of the Barbican's Artistic Vision for 2025-2030, continuing the institution’s long-standing commitment to enabling some of today’s most exciting artists to realise their most ambitious ideas and presenting them, free of charge, to visitors. To make this possible, the Barbican has established a Commissioning Council - an engaged group of passionate supporters with a shared belief in the importance of this work. 

Shanay Jhaveri, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, says: “The Curve Gallery at the Barbican is known for its distinctive architecture. Wrapping around our Concert Hall, this unusual space since the Centre’s opening in 1982 has always been a free common area, where our audiences could view art. Its programme was reimagined in 2006, when we began to commission artists to respond specifically to the space. Over the past 20 years its 90-degree curved design has challenged and thrilled generations of artists, who continue to embrace and reveal its potential. The Curve is central to the Visual Arts programme, affirming our commitment to bringing trailblazing work by today’s most exciting artists from across the globe and making it accessible to the widest possible audience. We are delighted to welcome Julia Phillips and Yuko Mohri to The Curve in this milestone year celebrating two decades of commissions.” 

Devyani Saltzman, Director for Arts & Participation, Barbican, says: “Commissioning new projects from artists sits at the heart of our Artistic Vision here at the Barbican, reflecting our purpose and responsibility as a leading space to support groundbreaking new work and critical conversations in an ever-changing world. The Curve is well known as an iconic space in London and internationally. We look forward to continuing to build on the incredible legacy of artists who have created work here over the past twenty years and continue to support them to explore, experiment and bring ambitious new work to life.” 

Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak 
The Curve 
Fri 30 Jan—Sun 19 Apr 2026 
Press View: Thursday 29 January 2025, 10am-1pm 

In January 2026, the Barbican will stage the first UK institutional solo exhibition of the German and American artist Julia Phillips with newly commissioned works for The Curve. Through her multidisciplinary practice, which spans sculpture and drawing, Phillips gives material form to intangible concepts ranging from psychological states to biological processes. Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak features new works which explore the surreal qualities of the human body, visualise the stages of conception through the lens of medical technology, and propose hypothetical apparatuses which merge the industrial with the anatomical. 

At the core of Phillips’s sculptural practice is her use of ceramics. She often employs a casting process, pressing and moulding thin clay slabs against her body, before firing and glazing each fragment to produce dynamic surface effects. Alongside her experiments in clay, Phillips incorporates industrial hardware, such as clasps or springs, into her sculptures. These elements, which suggest the possibility of movement or reconfiguration, also function metaphorically for Phillips—evoking the relative strength or tenuousness of human bonds and attachments.  

Her cast ceramic fragments and fabricated metal armatures combine to form compelling objects that, while often surreal or machine-like, elicit a visceral response. Among the commissioned works on display, the exhibition will showcase two spherical hanging sculptures, which represent new motifs within her practice. Suspended Interior I and Suspended Interior II (2026) feature casts of the artist’s hands among an undulating surface of draped clay folds. Recalling the insides of a body, these fleshy forms defy human scale, enlarging what appear to be organs or growths to outsized dimensions. 

Another section of The Curve features a suite of drawings bookended by a sculptural pair, in which Phillips deepens her exploration of the mechanics of human conception within the context of medical technology. While past works mined her own experience of becoming a mother, these new examples are inspired by conversations with a friend undergoing donor-assisted fertilization. Informed by the vivid language particular to this scientific field, such as “(un)viable embryo” or “fresh transfer,” Phillips has composed ink drawings from layered drips, sprays and smears that suggest the vital life force animating these biological processes. 

Responding to the site’s distinctive architecture, the works in Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak will gradually reveal themselves across The Curve, creating a dynamic play in texture between their own slick surfaces and the rough concrete finish of the Barbican's Brutalist architecture. Marked by the enduring trace of the body and her skilful deployment of negative space, Phillips’s sculptures invite a variety of readings, encouraging visitors to project themselves into the works’ charged absences. 

A free guide will accompany the exhibition, featuring a newly commissioned interview by British writer, psychotherapist, scholar and activist, Professor Gail Lewis, addressing the nuanced psychosocial concepts embedded within Phillips’s practice. 

This exhibition is generously supported by Lonti Ebers (Lead Support) and Patrick Collins with additional support from the Henry Moore Foundation, Allison and Larry Berg, and the Barbican Commissioning Council. 

Yuko Mohri 
The Curve 
Thurs 1 Oct 2026 – Sun 24 Jan 2027  

In October 2026, the Barbican will present an exhibition by the multidisciplinary Japanese artist Yuko Mohri, whose dynamic practice – spanning kinetic sculpture, sound, film, photography and painting – embraces chance and imperceptible phenomena to make us radically attuned to our immediate surroundings, and the interconnectedness of our planetary crises.  

For The Curve, Mohri will create a new, site-specific installation responding to the unique architecture of the gallery, its environmental conditions and the presence of visitors. Often repurposing found and everyday objects, Mohri triggers chains of reaction activated by “unstable elements” – including magnetism, electricity, gravity, dust and water – to humorous and surprising effect. Rather than present a finished composition, she choreographs porous environments where changing inputs generate improbable outputs, manifesting as sound, motion and scent in continuously transforming installations. 

The anarchic, DIY sensibility of Mohri’s work draws on her background in experimental punk-rock music, philosophies of impermanence and art historical traditions of Mono-ha, surrealism and dadaism. Foregrounding improvisation and entropy, her practice resonates with the ecological and social precarity of our time, channelling a material exploration of human and non-human entanglements into poetic prompts for collective resilience. 

This exhibition is supported by the Barbican Commissioning Council.