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Renée Levi reveals "September", a new painting on the façade of the Hayward Gallery

23 September 2026

Focus on the artwork.

Swiss artist Renée Levi reveals September, co-commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Her first large-scale public installation in the United Kingdom, the new artwork activates the façade of the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery in London.

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. Extending above and below this space, painterly gesture engages the building’s surface with bright colours and playful mark-making that span the scale of human reach.

"September" begins with an encounter between painting, the body and the Hayward Gallery’s distinctive forms. Its scale and geometry shape the work, while the gestures of painting remain tied to the body’s reach. The work can never be seen all at once; it is encountered in passing, from different distances and viewpoints. The painting unfolds over time – first through the act of painting itself, and later through the movement of people passing by. For a limited time, September alters the skyline, and when the work disappears, those who had passed it may notice something missing.

Renée Levi

Artist

Focus on the artwork.

"September"

Through the relationship between the artwork and architectural setting, September reflects the artist’s longstanding interest in the dialogue between painting, architecture and environment. Levi approaches each work in response to the physical and architectural conditions of each site. At the Hayward Gallery, which is Grade II listed and protected as an architectural landmark, this relationship is particularly acute. The building’s uncompromising architecture, defined by exposed concrete and a strong geometric language, gives its façade a sculptural presence of its own. Levi’s intervention responds directly to this existing composition and bringing the building’s distinctive character into the painting itself.

The choice of painting as a medium for an urban public artwork at this scale is unprecedented for the artist, and the first time that Audemars Piguet Contemporary has commissioned a painting. 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. 

Activating the Hayward Gallery’s iconic architecture, "September" expands the possibilities of painting in the public realm. Renée Levi approaches the façade not as a backdrop, but as an active surface, responding to its rhythm, materiality and scale through a work that evolves with its setting over time. As Renée’s first large-scale public installation in the UK, and the first painting commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, "September" reflects our mission to support artists as they explore new territories in their practice. It also speaks to our shared commitment to excellence, experimentation and innovation through material, process and time.

Audrey Teichmann

Curator, Audemars Piguet Contemporary

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, within the vibrant city of London across its eight-week display, inviting the public into a daily moment of artistic connection.

Using an industrial mesh as her canvas for the first time, Levi’s work is resilient to its outdoor conditions. The work exists both as a single composition and an expandable series. Levi subverts the standard use of industrial mesh, typically employed for large-scale signage, and reinterprets the commercial material in a painterly register, where 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. Both the artist and the Swiss watch manufacturer use experimentation as a tool to allow new forms to emerge through an iterative engagement with materials. Levi’s artwork unfolds through a dialogue between constraint and possibility, allowing new visual languages to emerge over time. 

Over the years, the Hayward Gallery’s raw concrete exterior has served as an unconventional canvas for artistic intervention. Renée Levi extends our longstanding public art offering with "September", a large-scale painting with sweeping gestures that disrupt the grey Brutalist facade and reflect the constant motion of the South Bank itself. Bringing a new warmth to the London skyline, 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

Portrait of the artist.

About Renée Levi

For over thirty years Renée Levi has been questioning the medium of painting. She investigates colour, the application of paint, its body, and its space on various image carriers as well as installations. Levi was born in 1960, in Istanbul and grew up in Aargau. Today, she lives and works in Basel. After studying architecture at the HTL Muttenz/Basel, she studied at the Zurich School of Art and Design. In 1998, she started working together with Marcel Schmid as a studio partner. 

Recent solo exhibitions include at Öktem Aykut (Instanbul, 2025 & 2022);  Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2024); Galerie Mezzanin (Geneva, 2024); PHILIPPZOLLINGER (Zurich, 2023 & 2021); Villa du Parc (Annemasse, 2021); Musée d’Art, Histoire et Archéologie d’Évreux (2020); Biennale de Lyon (2019); Museum Langmatt (Baden, 2019); Istituto Svizzero Milan (2019) and at Galerie Freymond-Guth (Basel, 2017). 

In addition, the artist has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2023); Centre d'art Pasquart (Biel, 2022); MAMCO (Geneva, 2021); Istituto Svizzero Rome (2019); Vin Vin (Vienna, 2018) or at Kunstverein Munich (2015). Renée Levi has received several awards, including the Prix de la Société des Arts de Genève, Arts Visuel, in 2019, or the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2002. Moreover, Levi is the winner of the public art competition of the Parliament Building in Bern, Switzerland.

AP x Art

Audemars Piguet believes that creativity feeds culture, connects people and gives purpose to our lives. Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the brand’s dedicated art programme, embodies this spirit by commissioning international artists to create contemporary artworks.

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