Artist: Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson returns to the UK for the first time in eight years with an exhibition of new works at Hauser & Wirth London that reveal the symbiotic relationship between her paintings, collages and wider oeuvre.

Coming to prominence in the 1990s for her pioneering approach to conceptual photography, Lorna Simpson’s masterful paintings have become a defining facet of her creative output following her turn to the medium in 2014. From multi-panel compositions and large-scale paintings to sculpture, the works on view are anchored by the artist’s sustained engagement with found defunct photographic news archive photography, particularly from Ebony Magazine. Treating these fragments of the past as carriers of memory, she sources, reconfigures and reproduces archival material to both reveal how histories persist and accrue new meaning over time.

Simpson’s first survey dedicated to her painting practice was displayed in a major solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY in 2025, followed by a solo show at Punta della Dogana (Pinault Collection) in Venice, Italy, the most significant presentation of her work in Europe in more than a decade, currently on view until 22 November 2026.