A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery, weaving together historical and contemporary voices
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, To Improvise a Mountain, 2024. Charcoal and conte on paper, variable dimensions (unfinished). Courtesy of the artist.
Hayward Gallery Touring presents ‘To Improvise a Mountain’, a group exhibition curated by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, one of today’s leading figurative painters. The exhibition opened at Leeds Art Gallery on 16 May 2025 and remains on view until 5 October 2025, before travelling to other UK venues including MK Gallery and Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery.
‘To Improvise a Mountain’ brings together works selected by Yiadom-Boakye that have been central to her way of seeing and thinking. The exhibition combines historical and contemporary works across painting, drawing, photography, video, and sculpture, offering audiences an opportunity to encounter the references and resonances that inform her own practice.
Featured artists include: Bas Jan Ader, Pierre Bonnard, Lisa Brice, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Samuel Fosso, Peter Hujar, Kahlil Joseph, Zoe Leonard, Glenn Ligon, Toyin Ojih Odutola, The Otolith Group, Jennifer Packer, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Walter Sickert, Édouard Vuillard, David Wojnarowicz, and others.
The curatorial concept draws inspiration from a fragment of Miles Davis’s Inamorata (1971), which asks: “Who is this music that which description may never justify? Can the ocean be described?” Yiadom-Boakye relates this poetic logic to her own painting process, noting that her selections were guided by intuition, rhythm, and the search for works that embody poetry, beauty, refusal, and power.
Brian Cass, Senior Curator of Hayward Gallery Touring, commented: “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye brings us on an imaginative journey of encounters with artworks that conjure different moods, personalities, colour, and emotions. Her curation celebrates the imaginative spirit of the contributing artists, and the endless potential of art to bring new thinking and feeling into existence, continuing Hayward Gallery Touring’s longstanding history of partnering with artists on ambitious exhibitions that invite audiences inside their worlds.”
Jane Bhoyroo, Principal Keeper of Leeds Art Gallery, added: “Leeds Art Gallery is delighted to collaborate with Hayward Gallery Touring and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye to premiere this exhibition. It provides a unique opportunity to present works by internationally renowned artists from across the globe, from the late 19th century to the present day, including celebrated paintings and drawings by Walter Sickert from the Leeds Museums and Galleries collection.”
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977, London) is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer. She is known for her oil paintings of imagined figures, whose timeless and enigmatic qualities have brought her widespread recognition. Her recent solo exhibitions include ‘No Twilight Too Mighty’ at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2023) and ‘Fly in League with the Night’, a mid-career survey organised by Tate Britain and later presented at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; K20, Düsseldorf; and MUDAM, Luxembourg (2020–22). She received the Carnegie Prize (2018), the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize (2012), and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize (2013).
Hayward Gallery Touring is the UK’s most prominent contemporary art organisation, producing touring exhibitions. Based at Southbank Centre, it works with artists, curators, and institutions across the UK to develop exhibitions that reach audiences nationwide. Its programme includes the British Art Show—the largest exhibition of contemporary art produced in the UK—as well as thematic group shows and monographic exhibitions. Each year, Hayward Gallery Touring exhibitions are seen by up to half a million people in over 45 cities and towns.
About the Partners
- Leeds Art Gallery: Founded in 1888, the gallery holds one of the UK’s strongest collections of 19th- and 20th-century British painting and sculpture, alongside an extensive moving-image collection. It presents a dynamic programme of exhibitions, commissions, and projects of international and local significance.
- MK Gallery: Located in Milton Keynes, MK Gallery presents world-class exhibitions and cultural programming. Following an award-winning expansion in 2019, the gallery now houses multiple exhibition spaces, a cinema, café, and shop.
- Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery: Reopened in 2021 following a £32 million redevelopment, Nottingham Castle hosts major exhibitions and holds a rich collection of fine and decorative art, with a strong focus on Nottingham’s cultural heritage and internationally recognised artists.
‘To Improvise a Mountain: Curated by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’ is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition developed in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery, MK Gallery, and Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery. The exhibition is on view at Leeds Art Gallery from 16 May to 5 October 2025 before touring nationally. Learn more here.
