British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers

British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers opens in Swansea on 12 February and runs until 16 May 2027. It's not a single exhibition in one room, but a spread across several city-centre venues: Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Elysium Gallery, GS Artists, Mission Gallery, Volcano Theatre and Swansea Museum. If you're going to see it all, you'll be walking between them rather than staying put.

For context, the British Art Show happens every five years and is the UK's largest recurring contemporary art exhibition. It's meant to be a survey of the most significant work produced in the country over the previous five years, so this tenth edition looks back at the art coming out of the UK since the last one. This version is curated by Ekow Eshun and produced by Hayward Gallery Touring as part of the Southbank Centre's 75th-anniversary national programme. It's touring five UK cities, and Swansea is the only Welsh stop on the route.

Eshun has built the show around three themes taken from British writers: 'Moments of Being' from Virginia Woolf, 'Ways of Living' from Stuart Hall, and 'States of Nature' from Timothy Morton. Together they reframe the 'Stranger' not as a single person, but as a wanderer moving between borders, and as a polyvocal, polyrhythmic chorus rather than a collection of individuals. Over 30 artists are involved, with Okiki Akinfe, Alvaro Barrington, Shiraz Bayjoo, Joy Gerrard, Alastair MacKinven, Precious Okoyomon, Osman Yousefzada and Emma Talbot among them. Local talks, tours and workshops are planned around the show, so there's more to it than just walking through the galleries.

It runs from 12 February to 16 May 2027 across the city centre, with the Glynn Vivian, Elysium, GS Artists, Mission Gallery, Volcano Theatre and Swansea Museum all playing a part.