Lorna Simpson returns to the UK for the first time in eight years with Previous & Ongoing, a new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London from October 13th to December 23rd, 2026. Spanning painting, collage and sculpture, the exhibition continues her longstanding engagement with memory, history and the shifting meanings of images.
From conceptual photography to painting
Simpson rose to prominence in the 1990s through her pioneering conceptual photography. Since turning to painting in 2014, the medium has become increasingly central to her practice, in dialogue with her photographic and sculptural work.
The exhibition features multi-panel compositions, large-scale paintings and sculpture rooted in found photographic material from defunct news archives, particularly images published in Ebony Magazine. Simpson treats these fragments as vessels of memory, sourcing, reconfiguring and reproducing them to examine how images survive, gather new meanings and shape our understanding of the past.
Her recent works draw on vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, photo booth images and discarded Associated Press photographs of natural elements, particularly ice. The motif extends into sculpture through glistening glass blocks, adding a tactile dimension to her investigation of memory and perception.
A conversation with Zoé Whitley
To mark Lorna Simpson. Previous & Ongoing, Hauser & Wirth London will host a conversation between Simpson and curator Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery. Whitley has worked across major UK institutions and co-curated Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern and its international tour.
The conversation will take place in the gallery’s North Gallery, with the private view beginning at 9.30 am and the talk running from 10 to 11 am. Admission is free with advance booking required; seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
A wider practice
Simpson’s practice moves between film, painting, collage, photography and sculpture, using metaphor, metonymy and carefully constructed compositions to reflect on American life. The London exhibition follows her first major survey devoted to painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2025 and her current solo exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice, her most significant European exhibition in more than a decade.
