Bringing together a multi-channel moving-image work and three new paintings, Hades considers how online narratives manufacture fear and division, distort shared realities, and give rise to dangerous ideologies.

At a moment when the boundaries between truth and fiction are increasingly contested, Happening asks whether the damage can be undone or whether the dystopian future is already here.

Happening (2026) is a three-channel moving-image adaptation of a verse play written and performed by Hades, which premiered at Stone Nest Theatre in London in October 2026. Reimagined as an installation across three vertically-oriented screens, the work immerses audiences in a continuous doomscroll that traces the rise and fall of a fictional authoritarian regime.

Drawing on the wartime broadcasts of Sefton Delmer and the writings of French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul, this major new work unfolds through 31 characters, each performed by Hades, examining how propaganda exploits the individual’s need for belonging, shaping collective identity and political consent.

Hades transforms the gallery into an environment in which political messaging becomes inescapable, authority feels absolute, and resistance appears futile: the space is saturated with political imagery and text drawn from its first canto as well as portraits and slogans, recalling the omnipresence of state propaganda in public space.

In the second gallery, three new paintings extend Hades’ exploration of power, inequality, violence, and the individual through allegorical scenes drawn from human society and the natural world. Their figurative compositions move between humour, violence, and absurdity, as Hades considers questions of judgement, punishment, and the consequences of human action through the terms of the mortal, the eternal, and the divine.

Across this body of work, Hades returns to the relationship between individual judgement and collective belief. The works consider the ambitions of those who seek to place themselves above others, and the consequences borne by those subjected to their power. The exhibition asks what it takes to recognise and challenge these systems; whether the methods used to resist them can be separated from those through which they are maintained; and what it is that we owe to each other.