In June 2020, Art Night will celebrate its fifth edition and reflect on what the nocturnal event has achieved since its first iteration in 2016. Transforming extraordinary and unusual public spaces from 6.00pm on Saturday 20 June into the early hours of Sunday 21 June, the festival will return to a previous stomping ground to celebrate its five-year anniversary: The Strand on the North Bank of the Thames.
Helen Nisbet will return as the festival’s Artistic Director for 2020, following this year’s spectacular edition in King’s Cross and Walthamstow, which welcomed over 80,000 visitors throughout the 24 hours. Art Night will be supported by international auction house Phillips for the fifth year running.
Titled Nothing Compares 2 U, the programme for Art Night 2020 takes inspiration from defiance in small acts, personal gestures and moments of self-determination. Influences include Anna Burns’ Booker Prize winning The Milkman; the ‘Wakefield Grandmother’ anti-Brexit graffiti artist; anti-racist, trans and non-binary activism; #Justice4Grenfell; Stormzy at Glastonbury Festival; and Sinead O’Connor’s recent performance on Ireland's ‘The Late Late Show’. Artists will make new work in response to the world they live in, to their own experiences and in solidarity with the communities they live and work within.
Co-commissioners and venue partners for Art Night 2020 will include ATLAS in Skye, Somerset House, Somerset House Studios, and 180 The Strand. Partners returning for this year include Time Out London.
Previous editions of Art Night have been curated in collaboration with cultural institutions and leading curators such as Kathy Noble and the Institute of Contemporary Art (2016); Fatoş Üstek with the Whitechapel Gallery (2017); and Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff in 2018.