London’s largest free contemporary arts festival, Art Night: celebrating diversity, culture, heritage and architecture

London’s largest free cutting edge arts festival will take over Europe’s biggest development, a regenerated power station and the country’s largest meat and flower market tomorrow – for 10 hours until dawn on Sunday.

Artworks will be created or exhibited across a dozen historic sites along the trail, at landmarks such as the Hayward Gallery and the Garden Museum, to New Covent Garden Market, the British Interplanetary Society, Embassy Gardens, and Battersea power station.

A group of Art Night Guides, supported by Art Fund, will be on hand across the trail to guide visitors throughout the night, with a dedicated MBNA Thames Clippers boat running a bespoke route until 4am.

Art Night is one of London’s largest free contemporary arts festival, transforming the city annually in an exploration of the history, culture and architecture of a different part of London, inspiring a series of new commissions, one-off events and premieres by international and local artists from all stages of their careers.

Art Night is free to attend, and those visiting the Flower Market simply need to turn up between 6pm and 4am to catch Tamara Henderson’s durational performance – but the trail from the South Bank to Battersea Power Station will continue until 6am.

Night owls can explore the Saturday trail all night – each venue or site is within walking distance of the next event on the trail and there is step-free access to all venues in the Hayward Gallery-curated programme.

Visitors should come prepared for a stroll through public parks and gardens, historic buildings and unusual sites.

The night of creativity in Battersea and Vauxhall will see 12 special projects curated by the Hayward Gallery, alongside more than 50 venues curated by cultural organisations, independent artists and creatives throughout South Bank, Vauxhall and Nine Elms.

The space at the flower market at New Covent Garden Market will become a unique stage for a spectacular experiential performance conceived by Canadian-born artist Tamara Henderson.

MS Henderson will take over the Flower Market from 6pm-4am, creating a newly-commissioned durational performance piece called Vision 3: Flower Transition (2018).

As the UK’s biggest, specialist flower and plant hall, supplying 75 per cent of London’s florists, the market provides an apt location for this celebration of horticulture.

Ksenia Zemtsova and Philippine Nguyen, Founders of Art Night, said: “Art Night 2018 will continue to offer an artistic exploration of London, celebrating diversity, culture, heritage and architecture, through an engaging, free and multidisciplinary programme of events.

We’re delighted to present the programme in South London for the first time this year and to continue to be a part of the city’s growing night-time culture.”

Further highlights of the programme curated by the Hayward Gallery team include:

Dwelling (2014), a single-channel video work by Yuan Goang-Ming, in which a comfortably furnished living room explodes in slow motion, projected outdoors at the Hayward Gallery.

Suzanne Treister will transform the area surrounding Battersea power station with a new site-specific commission, consisting of an 80m-long mural, wrapped along hoardings at Circus West Village.

Artist Anna Skladmann will also create an installation piece for the facade of the flower market building.

Her work will explore notions of nature and society, cultivation and the machine, using specimens sourced from the market.