iHayward Gallery · South Bank
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong
A major solo show by the American photographer and activist, spanning five decades of intimate work on relationships, addiction and queer subcultures, alongside four recent films including the public debut of a new work.
Preview: written before the show opened
Goldin's 2024 film You never did anything wrong, Part I starts from an old myth that an eclipse happens when animals steal the sun. She shot the total solar eclipse on Super 8 and 16mm, Mica Levi wrote the score, and no people appear in it. Its sequel, Part II, gets its first public showing here.
The show is built around four films of about 20 minutes each, every one in its own room designed by the architect Hala Wardé. Stendhal Syndrome sets her portraits of friends and lovers against Renaissance and Baroque art, and Memory Lost goes back over her years of addiction. Photographs from her archive, some never shown before, hang between them. It is her first institutional show in the UK since 2002.
You need time more than anything here: that is 80 minutes of film, and the Hayward warns of queues for the screening rooms. Tickets are £19, members free, and Saturdays run to 8pm.
Editor's pick
Five decades of Goldin's photographs of relationships, addiction and queer subcultures, plus four recent films, one of them shown publicly for the first time.
Look for
You never did anything wrong, Part II
The premiere: nature footage from the 1960s and 70s set against altered soundtracks from old films, made with the filmmaker David Sherman.
You never did anything wrong, Part I
The total solar eclipse filmed on Super 8 and 16mm, a world with no people in it, dedicated to Sulala, Gaza's oldest animal rescue.
Stendhal Syndrome
Goldin's photographs of sculpture and paintings from the Borghese, Louvre, Met and Prado alternate with portraits of her friends and lovers, matched by pose and colour.
Memory Lost
Archive photographs trace her own history with drugs, in a film dedicated to P.A.I.N., the group she founded against the opioid crisis.
Electric Gaja, Paris (2010)
A cat stares straight into the camera, lit green and pink.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Out-Of-Town Guests
With kids
For ages 12+, and under-12s must be with an adult. The work includes drug use, nudity and sexual images, and pushchairs can't go into the screening rooms.
Also at Hayward Gallery
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything WrongCourtesy of Hayward Gallery
- Salman Toor: Someone Like You© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
- Winifred Gill: A Bloomsbury Pioneer© Bodleian, Oxford
- Hayward GalleryMykReeve / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Courtauld GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- London Transport MuseumColin Park / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- National GalleryCarlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0