Focusing on artist-led programming in 2024, London Gallery Weekend is pleased to announce that the artists for 2024 are Nil Yalter and Adelaide Cioni. Nil Yalter is the 2024 recipient of the 60th Venice Biennale's Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement. Yalter’s work references the Anatolian people’s wisdom and knowledge through popular folk poetry and troubadour – or asik – music, as a source of resistance and hope. To facilitate her performance the artist will bring together multigenerational collaborators from Turkish and Kurdish speaking communities in London. Developed with curator Övül Ö. Durmusoglu, this will be Yalter’s first performance in London. Cioni’s work, Touch song, is a performance about relationships, curiosity, and desire. Cioni says, “most of all it is about the awkwardness of being bodies in the world, having to do with other bodies that carry themselves around the same planet, sometimes the same room”. A mini retrospective of Nil Yalter’s oeuvre, featuring new work, will be on view at Ab-Anbar, titled The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told and Cioni’s performance will be contextualised by a show at The Approach titled True Form. Further details on each performance will be announced in May.

The 2024 performance programme is further supported with advisory input from independent curator Rose Lejeune. The selection panel is composed of industry experts including Fatoş Üstek, Independent Curator; Sepake Angiama, Director, Iniva; Priyesh Mistry, Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery; Deborah Smith, Former Director, Arts Council Collection & Independent Curator; Florence Peake, Artist; Moira Lascelles, Executive Director, UP Projects; Emma Underhill, Founder & Artistic Director, UP Projects; and Rose Lejeune, Independent Curator.

Moira Lascelles, Executive Director, UP Projects:
“We are delighted to partner once again with London Gallery Weekend on the performance programme - bringing work by two highly experienced performance artists, Nil Yalter and Adelaide Cioni to public spaces across London. This year, the programme will be more artist-led with Nil and Adelaide choosing their own locations, allowing the programme to be more site specific.”

Florence Peake, Artist:
“It is such a privilege to get to see Nil Yalter's performance and community participation presented in London. I am really touched she will be bringing over 60 years of practice here and will form much more of an engaged project before and beyond London Gallery Weekend. I am excited to see Adelaide Cioni bring her striking costumes; a visual spectacle that questions touch and intimacy, participation and how that meets site, audience and public space. These two artists have such weight and intelligence inside their performance work. It's an honour that they will be sharing their work with us here in London.”

Curated Routes Returning for its third year, the Curated Routes initiative will offer LGW visitors personalised guides to the gallery programme, devised by notable Londoners and cultural figures. The routes will appear online and as in-person Live Curated Routes led by a dedicated team of Event Assistants employed by London Gallery Weekend, via Art Fund’s Student Opportunities Bursary. For this edition in 2024, London Gallery Weekend is pleased to present routes designed by figures including photographer Nick Knight, choreographer Wayne McGregor, and artist Flora Yukhnovich. More information will be available on the LGW website ahead of the launch in late May.