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ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS 2023 – 2024

Front Cover: Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You. ,(Installation view, 1 February – 17 March 2024, Serpentine South) Photo: George Darrell.

The SerpenTine TruST

Annual Report and Financial Statements

For the year ended 31 March 2024

Charity Commission Number: 298809 Company Number: 2150221

The Serpentine Trust (A Company Limited by Guarantee)

References and Administration Details	References and Administration Details	4	Welcoming a Broad and Diverse Public	156
Letter from our Chair, Michael R. Bloomberg		6	Physical Audience Growth Press and Media Profle	160 162
Letter from our Chief Executive, Bettina Korek		8	Developing Diverse, High-Performing & Engaged Teams	167
Trustees’ Report 2023/24		12	Our Commitment to Inclusivity Promoting an Inclusive Culture	169 170
Strategic Report		15	Attracting and Retaining Qualifed and
Our Story		16	Talented Employees	170
Our Vision		16	Recognising and Rewarding Achievement
Our Mission		16	and Performance Fairly	170
Organisation Objectives		17	Future Plans	173
World Class Programming		18	Our Supporters	176
Arts Technologies		20	Financial Review	184
Ecologies Programme		20	Overview	185
New Partnerships		22	Summary of Performance	185
Summary of our Activities, Achievements and Performance Exhibitions, Public Art, Live Programme, Ecologies, Architecture Exhibitions		24 27 29	Principal Sources of Funding Expenditure Annual Fundraising Activities Fundraising Practices	186 187 188 188
Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infnite Folds Steve McQueen: Grenfell		30 32	Fundraising Performance Fundraising Events	188 189
Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life		36	Other Income Generating Activities	190
Gabriel Massan: Third World - The Bottom Dimension		42	Risk Statement	191
Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015		50	Going Concern	191
Barbara Kruger: Thinking of~~You~~ ~~.~~I Mean~~Me~~ . I Mean You Refk Anadol: Echoes of the Earth - Living Archive Public Art at Serpentine		58 66 72	Reserves Structure, Governance and Management	192 194
Touring Exhibitions		78	Governance	195
Architecture		80	Board of Trustees	195
Serpentine Pavilion 2023		82	Finance Sub-Committee	196
Live Programme		88	Operating Committee	196
Serpentine Podcast		100	Ethics Committee	197
Leading a Pioneering Educational Education	and Civic Programme	108 110	Recruitment and Training of Trustees Public Beneft Statement	197 199
Civic		126	Environmental Sustainability and Ecologies at Serpentine	200
Leading Artistic and Digital Transformation		134	Statement of Trustee Responsibilities	208
Arts Technologies R&D Platform		136 136	Independent Auditor’s Report to the Members of the Serpentine Trust	210
Future Art Ecosystems		138	Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities	214
Community Development		140	Balance Sheet	215
Doctoral Research Collaborations		140	Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow	216
Beyond Cultures of Ownership		144	Notes to the Financial Statements	217
Creative AI Lab		148
Legal Lab		150
Blockchain Lab		150
Arts Technologies Commissioning		152

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

referenceS and adminiSTraTion deTailS

Registered Office

Kensington Gardens London W2 3XA

Governing Document

Memorandum and Articles of Association

Executive Team

Bettina Korek – Chief Executive Officer Hans Ulrich Obrist – Artistic Director Max Glazer-Munck – Director of Strategic Operations and Finance

Company Secretary

WG&M Secretaries Ltd

Auditors

Crowe U.K. LLP 55 Ludgate Hill London EC4M 7JW

Bankers

Coutts & Co Media Banking 440 Strand London WC2R 0QS

Solicitors

Weil, Gotshal & Manges 110 Fetter Lane London EC4A 1AY

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

leTTer from The chair, michael r. BloomBerg

Dear Friends,

The arts play a vital role in helping us navigate change and confront pressing challenges, by pushing us to think critically and creatively and allowing us to see the world through the eyes of others.

Serpentine has always served as a platform for talented and boundary-pushing artists - both established and emerging - to respond to contemporary issues and as a convening space for people from every walk of life to engage in meaningful dialogue about the world we share. In the past year, we took important steps forward, both by showcasing innovative art from across the globe and by harnessing the power of technology to expand the ways in which art can be created and experienced.

I would like to thank everyone who has supported Serpentine this year and to recognise the outstanding work of our Board of Trustees, our CEO Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, as well as all the extraordinary artists and their advisors and collaborators, whose work we’ve been honoured to feature.

As the world continues changing at an unprecedented pace, Serpentine will continue to champion the importance of art in pointing us forward – and in helping great new ideas take root and flourish.

Sincerely,

Michael R. Bloomberg

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

leTTer from The chief execuTive, BeTTina KoreK

Dear Friends,

Reflecting on a transformative year at Serpentine, I am proud to highlight our pioneering programme for 2023/24, which featured six major exhibitions that showcased artists across different generations.

With eyes on the future, this year we presented artists who are emerging voices alongside those who have been under-recognised in the past. Our programme responded to a present context that is being shaped by advanced technologies and environmental crises, reaffirming our commitment to pushing the boundaries of contemporary art and to building new connections between artists and audiences.

Steve McQueen's Grenfell (April–May 2023), created in response to the tragic 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, emerged as a significant historical work. It powerfully captured the disaster, ensuring that audiences remember and continue to reflect on the event. After its poignant presentation at Serpentine, the work was placed in the care of Tate and the Museum of London Collection and we were honoured to partner with other institutions on this project.

The summer began with Web(s) of Life (June–September 2023), the first major UK exhibition of artist Tomás Saraceno and collaborators, that included the interspecies communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, Argentina, Somié, Cameroon, Aerocene and Arachnophilia. The show was a fully participatory collaboration with the Royal Parks that brought together decades of research into energy regimes, biodiversity and sustainability and extended the presentation into Kensington Gardens. Challenging the entire organisation to think from a climate centric perspective and our visitors as well, the show was recognised within the sector as a model project.

Drawing on natural elements that reflect its local surroundings, Lina Ghotmeh’s Serpentine Pavilion (June–October 2023) titled À table , promoted unity and conviviality in its form and function. As such, the interior of the Pavilion featured a concentric table along the perimeter, inviting us to convene, sit down, think, share and celebrate exchanges that enable new relationships to form. We were endlessly grateful to our loyal partners and supporters for making Ghotmeh’s remarkable concept for a Pavilion into an inspiring reality. À table became the fantastic backdrop for our summer of live programming.

Serpentine Arts Technologies celebrated its tenth anniversary and organised two groundbreaking exhibitions this year. Gabriel Massan’s Third World: The Bottom Dimension (June–November 2023), supported by Tezos, was an interdisciplinary living artwork made by a cast of collaborators, which showcased innovative gaming and cultural concepts and drawing. Refik Anadol’s Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive (February– April 2024) inaugurated a year of projects exploring Artificial Intelligence through the intersection of art and technology, which continues into 2024/25. Public AI was also the theme of the fourth volume of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ annual strategic briefing, Future Art Ecosystems (March 2023), which leverages creative research and development to develop cultural infrastructure to support art and advanced technologies for the public good.

Previously unseen wooden sculptures and drawings by Georg Baselitz (October 2023–January 2024) offered our audience a fresh perspective on the artist’s influential oeuvre. A highlight from the show was the monumental, nine-metre-tall sculpture Zero Dom (Zero Dome), which was presented for the first time in the UK on the plinth. Like Saraceno’s outdoor sculptures featured in his exhibition, which engaged the park’s many species, including birds, insects, foxes, and ducks, these collaborations with the Royal Parks reaffirm Serpentine’s commitment to extending our programme beyond gallery walls.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* , 2023. Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.

The same was true of Barbara Kruger's first solo institutional exhibition in London (February–March 2024) in more than twenty years, which was a landmark event. Thinking of ~~You.~~ I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You extended into Kensington Gardens as well, and also into Central London through a successful partnership with Outernet . Kruger's work continues to challenge and inspire the public sphere, and this show was a homecoming of sorts, following the artist’s 1994 participation in Wall to Wall at Serpentine.

We were thrilled to celebrate Rory Pilgrim's Turner Prize nomination in April of 2023. RAFTS and Radio Ballads reflect our mission of forging new connections between artists and audiences through listening, understanding and empathy and show how art can deepen our understanding of care and strengthen the bonds upon which we all depend. We are so proud of the work of the artists, communities and curators behind the project. It is reflected in the book How We Hold: Rehearsals in Art and Social Change , published by Serpentine Civic and Education and Koenig in September 2023.

With another exciting year in front of us, and a number of successful projects, including our 2024 Pavilion, already launched, we are deeply grateful to all of you for your unwavering support and leadership. We look forward to sharing more news and updates with you as the year continues.

Sincerely,

Bettina Korek

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Pollinator Pathmaker , Serpentine Edition Garden, 2022. Back to Earth exhibition at Serpentine North (22 June – 18 September). Installation view. © readsreads.info. Courtesy Serpentine.

TruSTeeS’ reporT 2023/24

The Trustees, who are also Directors of the Serpentine Trust for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, have pleasure in submitting their annual report and the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2024.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: The Loophole at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

STraTegic reporT 2023/24

Serpentine has presented pioneering contemporary art since 1970. From the Pavilion to our exhibitions, we champion new ideas in art across our programme of exhibitions, architecture, education and live events. Our programme takes place across our galleries and online. Access to the galleries is free for all visitors. Thanks to our unique location, we reach a broad audience and we maintain a deep connection with our local community.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

our STory

Serpentine’s story is the story of modern and contemporary art. Since its launch in 1970 within a Central London lakeside former teahouse, Serpentine has grown in scope, scale and ambition to become one of the most innovative, influential and important arts venues in the world. Defined by our commitment to remain open, accessible and free for all, Serpentine has shaped and defined the last 50 years of art in Europe.

Our commitment to offering an exhibition platform to underserved artists from across the globe, as well as intimate engagements with established artists’ practices, Serpentine has transformed how the public at large sees, understands and connects with the art, artists and ideas of our time. Today, Serpentine’s pioneering programmes of arts technologies, ecology and long-term embedded civic engagement redefine what an arts institution can be and should do in the 21st century.

our viSion

Building new connections between artists and society.

our miSSion

Art and ideas for a changing world.

Serpentine commits to:

Supporting artists to explore new possibilities through exhibitions, architecture, commissions, research and learning initiatives.
Championing artists working across ecology, technology and community.
Including and empowering diverse audiences and our collaborators.

organiSaTion oBjecTiveS

Our aims for the four years from 2023-2027 are to:

Deepen our local roots and expand our global reach, chiefly through technology.
Cement our place as an artist-led, global brand, with a full user experience of art, appealing to a full spectrum of visitors online and within our spaces.
Lead a digital transformation and become known as a global leader in arts technologies, creating new models for exhibitions, funding, distribution and audience engagement.
Deliver an ambitious and world-class programme highlighting ecology, community and technology, emerging and under recognised artists.
Progress our plans towards a net-zero emissions target thanks to our sustainable practices.
Foster an inclusive and collaborative working culture to better reflect the diversity of our home city.
Test new entrepreneurial income models and secure multi-year income streams.

Key oBjecTiveS

1. 360º Artistic Production

To successfully conceive and deliver an ambitious and thought-provoking artistic programme, leveraging technology to highlight community and ecological awareness.

2. Art for All

To strengthen the journey towards an audience-centric and artist-led organisation, appealing to a full spectrum of diverse visitors both online and within our spaces.

3. Arts Technologies Sector Leadership

To lead the sector in advocating for creative research and development in the arts, experimenting with new technologies and new models for exhibitions, funding, distribution and audience engagement.

4. Dynamic and Inclusive Culture

To develop an environment that nurtures an inclusive and collaborative culture, focused on the successful achievement of organisational, team and personal objectives.

5. Flexible Development and Entrepreneurial Leadership To underpin the current income strategy with new commercial activities, thereby reaching a blended mixed economy through flexible and entrepreneurial leadership.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Serpentine Park Nights 2023: Christelle Oyiri, Faster Than This is Suicide , 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

World claSS programming

Serpentine presents pioneering exhibitions from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists of our time. Each year, we invite artists from around the world to create an ambitious, innovative and world-class programme. We welcome a broad and diverse audience from local communities and around the world to inspire and challenge them with the urgency of art and architecture today. Our programme is designed to be thought-provoking, exciting and stimulating for our audiences while remaining relevant and responsive to a wider cultural, social and political context. We are committed to broadening our research, deepening our relationships with artists over time and establishing meaningful partnerships with other institutions. Every event we present seeks to respond to the questions: Why here? Why now?

We develop long-term and supportive relationships with the artists and architects we commission, as well as nurturing their conversation with our audiences. Emerging and celebrated artists and architects are given an open landscape for experimentation and creative collaboration. Our curators carry out regular studio visits, offer constructive critique and provide references and introductions for artists at all levels to encourage the creation of new artistic partnerships, networks, commissions and educational opportunities. We embrace the increasingly interdisciplinary approaches of practitioners and create an environment in which the artists we work with can engage with different media, spaces and forms. We work predominantly with living artists, with around one-third of our programme comprising brand new commissions.

We are committed to programming exhibitions that reflect the diversity of contemporary England. We ensure selected artists come from a range of economic and educational backgrounds while supporting new talent, both UK and international and engaging new audiences. Each exhibition is carefully conceived in relation to both the scale and architecture of the gallery buildings and their unique location in London's Kensington Gardens.

Each year since 2000, landmark buildings are created for the Serpentine lawn by internationally acclaimed architects who have not yet completed a structure in England at the time of invitation. The Serpentine Pavilion creates a context for a live programme of discussions, conversations and gatherings around ideas. It also provides a platform for more experimental, interdisciplinary work, including our annual Park Nights series. Our 2023 Pavilion, À table , designed by architect Lina Ghotmeh considered food as an expression of care and the Pavilion’s design became a space for grounding and reflection on our relationship to land, nature and a cafe – a space for dwelling which offers commercial opportunities.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

arTS TechnologieS

Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies and convenes people working in art, technology, law, policy and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society.

The foundation of the programme is in an evolving R&D Platform that nurtures innovation for future art ecologies by securing a crucial institutional space for pragmatic interventions and necessary risk-taking at the intersection of art, science and technology. This is achieved through dedicated research labs (Blockchain Lab, Creative AI Lab, Legal Lab, Synthetic Ecologies Lab and Video Games Lab), orientation and knowledge-sharing with the wider sector through Future Art Ecosystems and co-facilitation of a national Creative R&D Working Group.

Our Arts Technologies programme proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on advanced technologies through artistic interventions. Challenging and reshaping the role that technologies can play in culture and society is part of Serpentine’s commitment to supporting new artistic experiments at what has now become an historical intersection. The programme initiates and supports artists in developing ambitious artworks that deploy advanced technologies as a medium, tool or topic, often operating beyond gallery walls.

ecologieS programme

Serpentine was the first institution to embed ecological research and principles with its Ecologies project and associated post of Curator of Ecology, researching environmental action, more-than-human lives, and the role of the arts in addressing climate challenges.

In 2023, the project evolved into a department with areas of responsibility reaching throughout the institution. Ecologies is a strategic effort to embed environmental subjects and methods throughout Serpentine’s outputs, structures and networks. At the same time, Ecologies works to bring these environmental and innovative principles into the fabric of the organisation itself and promotes projects and programmes for the public and the staff body alike. We are committed to environmental sustainability, with environmental and ecological concerns embedded across all Serpentine’s programmes, infrastructure and networks. This extends to the gallery sites themselves, where Serpentine South was the first Grade II listed building in the UK to install solar panels.

In 2023, Tomás Saraceno created a porous environment where Serpentine’s building and operations responded daily to the immediate landscape of the surrounding park and weather conditions. It brought together new and recent interactive works to propose how it is possible to take a more responsible, and responsive, approach to one’s actions in relation to other people, interspecies cohabitation, and the climate injustices unfolding across the world. Challenging the ways in which exhibitions are conceived and enacted, Web(s) of Life became a ‘living organism’ that responded to the weather outside and Serpentine’s unique location in the biodiverse habitat of the park and beyond. Saraceno is a multimedia artist, who for more than two decades has produced a body of work that draws attention to our role in a complex network of relationships that make up an ecosystem. Web(s) of Life at Serpentine delved into the many ways in which life forms, extractive technologies and energy regimes are inextricably linked to climate injustice.

Emerging from Serpentine’s long-standing environmental commitment, Back to Earth invited leading artists, musicians, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to contribute artworks and projects with a call to action in response to the climate emergency. A long-term project that took place from 2020-2023, Back to Earth was both a programme about change and a catalyst for change and addressed the key environmental threats facing our world, such as land rights, water and toxicity, fishing, farming and the limits of consumption. The ambition to improve quality, engage with our audiences and establish meaningful collaborations with partner organisations resulted in our pioneering integrated Exhibitions, Live, Ecologies, Civic and Education programme.

educaTion and civic projecTS

Serpentine’s Education and Civic Projects programme seeks to redefine the role of the arts in times of transition and social change, addressing issues such as migrant rights, care, schooling and labour with individuals and groups excluded from the decision-making processes that shape the places where they live and work. Grounded in a long-term study of radical pedagogy, the programme includes ongoing commissions and workshop series, alongside toolkits and resources for change. Our projects continue to serve under-represented communities, supporting thousands of educational encounters and producing downloadable resources and podcasts. We are proud of the work our Education and Civic curators have facilitated over the last decade, inviting artists to listen to communities before making work with them. We have sought to answer how an institution can hold a process that explores the relationship between art and pressing social issues.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

neW parTnerShipS

Partnerships with other organisations play an important role in bringing about new exhibitions and collaborations that expand the reach of contemporary art to new audiences locally and globally as well as supporting artists.

Serpentine continues to engage with existing and new partnerships across its programme. Corporate partners are an integral part of Serpentine's ambitions and provide vital funding towards the gallery’s ambitious programme.

Refik Anadol’s exhibition was part of the New Alliances strand of the Serpentine programme which aims to widen audiences through engagement and collaborations. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive was presented in collaboration with 1OF1 , led by patron and philanthropist Ryan Zurrer, which partners with forward thinking artists and institutions by contextualising and supporting art of the digital age.

A new series of programming partnerships bringing artists together with the latest technology launched with BTS in 2020. This included a major multi-year collaboration with the energy efficient blockchain Tezos who support our efforts in experimenting with new technologies both inside and beyond the gallery walls, fostering synergies with audiences in marketing and communication.

In 2024, in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture, Google Deepmind and Google Technology and Society , we brought together some of the most exciting voices from culture, technology and research to discuss the future of AI, the arts and society. This urgent convening of leaders from across the cultural ecosystem including artists, curators, writers, technologists and thinkers came together to imagine and debate the possible futures of AI and culture.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Summary of our acTiviTieS, achievemenTS and performance

At the core of Serpentine's activities is our exceptional exhibition programme, championing an integrated, interdisciplinary and diverse approach to contemporary art and visual culture. In 2023/24, we presented major solo exhibitions by artists across generations who look to the future with explorations of art and activism in the age of advanced technologies and environmental emergency. These included six new exhibitions, the Serpentine Pavilion, public art commissions and two digital artworks alongside an expansive range of live, education, digital and civic programmes.

For the first time, Serpentine's visitors were evenly split between physical and digital attendees, with 674,861 in-person visitors and 758,755 online users. This marked a significant milestone in our objective to expand our global reach.

Our 2023 programme began in April with Grenfell by artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. This powerful artwork documented Grenfell Tower before it was covered, ensuring the tragic events of the 2017 fire, in which 72 people lost their lives, would never be forgotten.

That same month, we celebrated Rory Pilgrim's Turner Prize nomination for RAFTS , a Serpentine Civic project developed over three years with residents of Barking and Dagenham.

One of the year's most pioneering projects was Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life , which opened in June. This living, collaborative, multi-species exhibition explored how life forms, technologies and energy systems are interconnected in the face of climate change. Also in June, Lina Ghotmeh's Serpentine Pavilion: À table , launched to wide acclaim. Ghotmeh's sustainable design drew from natural elements and provided the setting for our summer-long live programme, emphasising our artist-led, responsive programming.

In September, Serpentine Civic and Education launched How We Hold: Rehearsals in Art and Social Change , a brandnew publication accompanied by a celebratory day of discussions, performances and music by contributors that included Barby Asante, Camille Barton and Farzana Khan in the Serpentine Pavilion.

In October, Serpentine presented a solo exhibition of previously unseen wooden sculptures and drawings by Georg Baselitz, offering visitors a rare insight into the artist's studio practice and his experiments with translating between two and three dimensions. The show added to our rich history of presenting sculptural works by major artists such as Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois. A special catalogue featured reflections from contemporary artists that included Tracey Emin, Jenny Saville and Rashid Johnson.

At Frieze London, Allied Editions , a collective of seven major non-profit art organisations including Serpentine, presented limited-edition artworks by international artists. This year's highlights included hand-crafted pieces by Georg Baselitz and new editions by Nicole Eisenman and Chiizii, with over 100 works on display ranging from £80 to £15,000, helping to support the galleries' programmes.

At the start of 2024, we presented Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You , a solo exhibition showcasing site-specific installations, soundscapes and moving image works. This marked Kruger's first institutional show in London in over 20 years, following her 1994 group show at Serpentine.

In February 2024, we launched our Year of AI with a solo exhibition by Refik Anadol. Known for his groundbreaking media works, Anadol presented large-scale digital installations that evolved in real time. using Al and data to create otherworldly, immersive experiences. The exhibition delved into Al's potential to transform public art, decentralised networks and collective experiences.

And finally, March saw the launch of Future Art Ecosystems 4: Art x Public AI (FAE4) , our annual strategic briefing publication. FAE4 explored the impact of Al technologies on the creative economy and cultural organisations, providing insights from leading voices in art, tech and government policy. The publication mapped out the risks, opportunities, and strategies for integrating Al into public cultural infrastructure.

We continued to show the Atta Kwami Maria Lassnig Prize Mural , as part of our public art programme in the Serpentine North Garden alongside Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Pathmaker , Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities and George Baselitz’ Zero Dom nine-metre-tall patinated bronze sculpture. These artworks serve to both draw the public into our exhibitions while extending our audiences beyond the gallery walls. Our collaborations with Outernet Arts also brought in brand new audiences for the Gabriel Massan and Barbara Kruger exhibitions and our Serpentine Podcast reached over 217k listeners in 112 countries.

Serpentine Arts Technologies celebrated its 10th anniversary with Third World: The Bottom Dimension by Gabriel Massan, running from June to November. Supported by Tezos, this interdisciplinary living artwork combined gaming, culture and innovative concepts to showcase cutting-edge digital art.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

exhiBiTionS, puBlic arT, live programme, ecologieS, archiTecTure

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

exhiBiTionS

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds , installation views, Serpentine North © Barbara Chase-Riboud 2022. Photo: © Jo Underhill, courtesy Serpentine.

exhiBiTion

BarBara chaSe-riBoud: infiniTe foldS

“Ahead of its time”

11 October 2022 to 10 April 2023

The Guardian

Serpentine North

Serpentine announced the extension of Infinite Folds, an exhibition featuring over 30 works by American-born visual artist, sculptor, novelist and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939, Philadelphia, USA, lives and works in Paris). On display at Serpentine North, this was the artist’s first institutional solo presentation in the UK.

“An incredible and monumental exhibition”

CNN

“A major exhibition”

Infinite Folds featured a focussed selection of large-scale sculptures alongside works on paper dating from the 1960s to the present day. The show marked the UK debut presentation of some never-before-seen pieces, as well as some of the most celebrated works in the artist’s expansive oeuvre.

BBC

Following the exhibition at Serpentine, Barbara Chase-Riboud went on to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York from May to October 2023. The exhibition, The Encounter was presented alongside works by Alberto Giacometti co-organised by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fondation Giacometti, Paris.

Engagement: 6,405 from 31 March to 10 April 2023

Total visitors: (56,484)

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

exhiBiTion

STeve mcQueen: grenfell

7 April – 10 May 2023

Serpentine South

In December 2017, artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (b. 1969, London, UK) made an artwork in response to the fire that took place earlier that year on 14 June at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, West London - 72 people died in the tragedy.

Filming the tower before it was covered with hoarding, McQueen sought to create a record so it would not be forgotten. Following the fire, a government inquiry was launched that was conducted in two phases. Four years since the publication of the phase one report, the recommendations are yet to be implemented, meaning a similar tragedy could happen again. The findings of the second and final phase of the inquiry were due to be reported in late 2023. There is an ongoing criminal investigation.

“I knew once the tower was covered up, it would start to leave people’s minds. I was determined that it never be forgotten.”

Steve McQueen

Following a period of community outreach and private community viewings, prioritising the bereaved and survivors, the public presentation of the artwork began. Following the exhibition at Serpentine, the work was placed in the care of Tate and the Museum of London’s collections.

Engagement:

18,443 visitors

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

“To me, Steve McQueen’s work suggests that there is much to gain in confronting the meanings of the damaged structure and making the shock of our painful contact with it instructive. Opening ourselves humbly to that possibility can be accomplished without betraying the tower’s plural traumas or the political complexity of this moment in which closure is not an option. We cannot understand Grenfell unless we keep the reality of this building firmly in mind.”

Paul Gilroy, contributor to the exhibition guide

“Paul Gilroy, describes in an aptly searing text about the project, as ‘the charred obscenity’ of the tower, captured on a beautiful day in December 2017, six months after the fire. McQueen has kept this material back for years out of respect for the victims, the bereaved and the survivors; now it’s unleashed, and it is suitably brutal… This relentless, devastating, surveillance-style approach feels necessary. It is undramatic, unembellished. Nothing happens, and nothing needs to: you just have the evidence of the building, the raw fact that this horrific spectacle was allowed to happen here…”

“It is difficult to look at but impossible to turn away. McQueen holds our attention, keeps us remembering what happened here.”

The Guardian

“The film stares at the evidence: examining the charred architecture, sunlight shining through empty windows…Scabbed and encrusted, at times whitened by the light so that it appears skeletal, the tower is both ruin and diagram. A monstrous idea, an inhuman structure in which lives were criminally lost.”

The Guardian

“The Oscar-winning director’s silent survey of the burnt tower makes this disaster of incompetence and corruption painful to witness – but impossible to ignore.”

The Guardian

“Again and again, McQueen’s camera circles Grenfell…like a satellite orbiting the moon. It is hypnotising in its horror.”

The Independent

“…Steve McQueen had expressed his dismay at the lack of response by politicians to his film Grenfell, a powerful visual statement on the devastating London fire of 2017…His short, wordless film has been widely hailed as one of the most direct and politically powerful artworks shown in Britain in recent years…”

The Observer

“These 24 minutes decant you into the next gallery, where the true memorial can be found: the names upon the wall of all those who died – grandparents, poets, widows, immigrants and refugees, the child of three, the little girl who died all alone. Read these, and linger. Their names will draw the homage of your tears.”

The Observer

“McQueen, who grew up in West London and once had friends living in Grenfell is drawn towards subjects… that shake our belief in the justice and humanity of the society we have created.”

The Times

“McQueen’s Grenfell is an essential piece of art, chilling to the bone. It is a resurrection of sorts. […] The film must become a permanent exhibit at a London gallery.”

The Evening Standard

“…it is the quietude as well of respectful memoriam, which also cloaks the anteroom to the exhibition, giving it the feel of a funeral or wake.”

Financial Times

“Filmed in a single 24-minute shot, Grenfell is confronting. It finds its power in what viewers already know of the tragedy and never removes its dizzying gaze from the twirl of the tower.”

Frieze

“Grenfell could even feel like the opening credits of a story yet to be told. That it works as a confrontation in itself sets it apart from other works of voyeuristic disaster entertainment.”

The New Statesman

The Evening Standard

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* , 2023. Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.

exhiBiTion

TomáS Saraceno: WeB(S) of life

Serpentine South and the Royal Parks

1 June – 10 September 2023

Web(s) of Life was the first major exhibition in the UK of artist Tomás Saraceno and collaborators, including spider/webs; the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, Argentina; spider diviners in Somié, Cameroon; the ongoing research-driven community projects Aerocene and Arachnophilia initiated by the artist; as well as the life forms of the Royal Parks.

The exhibition brought together new and recent interactive works to propose how it is possible to take a more responsible and responsive approach to one’s actions in relation to other people, interspecies cohabitation and the climate injustices unfolding across the world. Challenging the ways in which exhibitions are conceived and enacted, Web(s) of Life became a ‘living organism’ that responded to the weather outside and the gallery’s unique location in the biodiverse habitat of the park and beyond.

“This is borne out by Saraceno’s current show Web[s] of Life in Serpentine South which presents a brave new model of sustainable exhibition-making that lays down the gauntlet to all those planning and programming environmentally aware shows.”

The Art Newspaper

“To reveal what happens inside Tomás Saraceno’s new show for the Serpentine Gallery is hardly a spoiler. Nothing could lessen the impact. In galleries of pitch darkness, spotlights pick out an unfolding sequence of ethereal silver visions, all of them apparently floating in midair.”

The Observer

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* , 2023. Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.

In a radical rethink of the exhibition format, rather than simply exploring these themes through the subject matter of the artworks, Saraceno altered the operation of the building. The gallery’s climate control system was switched off and some doorways opened to the park to encourage natural ventilation and access to dogs. Rather than using climate control during days of extreme heat, areas of the exhibition closed and visitors were encouraged to engage with the interactive sculptures on the exterior of the building and in the park. Visitors were invited to pedal bicycles to activate an audio recording of the Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South written by the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South . Power for the artworks inside the gallery was generated by newly installed solar panels. Through such interventions, the working habits of the gallery’s staff, the building’s opening hours and the ways in which visitors participated shifted daily.

Saraceno is a multimedia artist, who for more than two decades has produced a body of work that draws attention to our role in a complex network of relationships that make up an ecosystem. A book published with Ivory Press accompanied the exhibition including research material relating to the project and newly commissioned texts by James Bridle, Eduardo Kohn, Yuk Hui and Maristella Svampa.

142,522 visitors

Engagement:

“Tomás Saraceno conjures up worlds liberated from the demands and depredations of global carbon-fuelled capitalism - what he calls the 'capitalocene era'. His two prime inspirations are drawn from the physical world around us - one is spiders and the intricate webs they weave; the other is the air which gives us life on this planet and in particular the simple beautiful ability of the sun to heat captured air and make it rise. Can his art help us find a new direction?”

BBC

“The whole show is him [Saraceno] saying that there’s another way, a better way: if we listen to indigenous communities, if we listen to spiders, we might just be able to get out of this mess.”

The Times

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* , 2023. Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.

“At the Argentine contemporary artist’s first solo exhibition in Britain, which ended earlier this month at the Serpentine Galleries in London, Mr. Saraceno exhibited fragile and elaborate spider webs spun in his studio in Berlin and in some cases modified by local spiders; the air conditioning was switched off for the duration of the show and one side of the gallery was left open to welcome living creatures from the surrounding Kensington Gardens — including spiders.”

NY Times

“Tomás Saraceno in Collaboration: Web(s) of Life is a barmily charming and often beautiful exhibition from the Argentine artist.”

The Times

“This is an avowedly post-anthropocentric exhibition, one that foregrounds interspecies coexistence and communication, positions us in an interconnected global ecosystem and seeks to separate us from convenient modern trappings.”

Evening Standard

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

exhiBiTion

gaBriel maSSan: Third World - The BoTTom dimenSion

“Third World includes the work of five African-diaspora Brazilian artists alongside Massan, who are also figured as ‘collaborators’ on the artist’s eye-popping, eponymous video game platform that forms the centrepiece of the show.”

23 June – 26 November 2023

Video Game available globally via Steam, Serpentine North and Outernet

Serpentine presented Third World: The Bottom Dimension, an exhibition, a video game and web3 tokens powered by Tezos. The project was conceptualised by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan in collaboration with invited interdisciplinary artists Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar and vocalist and music producer LYZZA. Extended until 26 November 2023, the exhibition platformed the ideas that have driven the creation and development of the mirroring video game. It offered audiences an opportunity to play the game in a communal setting around site-specific set design, sculptures, sound and films. Through the lenses of decoloniality, queerness and decentralisation, Third World challenged audiences to rethink the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world. Central themes included ancestral knowledge, healing, ecological awareness, transmutation and agency.

ArtReview

Third World: The Bottom Dimension emerged from Massan’s interest in technological, social and economic decentralisation and included participatory digital tokens powered by Tezos. Players could record ‘memories’ of their own actions as they played the game and by minting this record (or snapshot) on the blockchain, build a public archive of multiple perspectives and actions. In addition, a limited-edition collection brought together Massan, their collaborators and a wider community of web3 artists.

Engagement:

69,398 visitors

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

Beyond The gallery WallS

Third World: The BoTTom dimenSion video game

“Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ impels us to question our tendencies toward Western hegemonic attitudes: to engage in the objectification of a nation; to study, classify and then proceed in wealth extraction. Massan’s project is ultimately a world-building exercise, prompting participants to reimagine attitudes toward the unknown and to scrutinise what we think constitutes development.”

23 June - ongoing

Available to download from Steam

Third World: The Bottom Dimension - a free-to-download, multi-level, single-player PC game was commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. Conceptualised as a consciousness-raising tool, the game explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the ramifications of colonialism across physical and digital realities.

Alongside artist Gabriel Massan’s digital sculptures, textures and concept development, the game features artistic contributions by Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, sound design by LYZZA and work from Masako Hirano, Marchino Manga, Ralph McCoy, Carlos Minozzi, Iraj Montasham, Alexandre Pina and Sweet Baby Inc.

Each level or ‘episode’ in the game was conceptualised by a featured artist in collaboration with Massan, bringing themes central to their practice into the lore of Third World. Players assume the roles of characters Funfun and Buburu – agents deployed to the Third World by a resource extraction organisation. As they navigate kaleidoscopic and disorienting realms, players encounter new lifeforms, languages and ways of knowing, prompting a deeper reckoning with their own actions. A worldbuilding platform in which a multitude of stories and perspectives converge, Third World invites players to raise awareness of other ways of being through play, and to embrace the idea of the ecosystem as a true ‘main character’.

Frieze

Engagement: 16,034 downloads

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: The Loophole at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

conTinuiTy flaWS: The loophole

“For Massan, it’s an opportunity to bring players into his own universe, an everevolving ecosystem that explores the Black Brazilian experience, with fantasy elements that recreate the systems of inequality that shape the lived experience of those growing up in what the West calls a ‘third world’ country.”

Outernet Arts

Serpentine Arts Technologies and Outernet Arts launched an innovative partnership with the unveiling of a digital artwork Continuity Flaws: The Loophole by Gabriel Massan that simulated and explored the precarious conditions of life in the global present, an extension of Third World: The Bottom Dimension at Serpentine North.

Engagement: 82,269

Dazed

“Massan, who is currently producing a metaverse in game format for Serpentine Galleries in London, is motivated by the possibility of crossing realities and implanting the uncertainties of time into everyday life.”

Vogue

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

“Massan's cultural, national and geopolitical awareness adds a special charge to the name - Third World - he has given to the collaborative world-building video game he is creating, for launch in 2023, with Serpentine Arts Technologies; with a related blockchain project developed with the open-source platform Tezos Ecosystem. The project is part of Serpentine's London-based Artist Worlds programme, which was set up in 2021 to examine how artists might use gaming engines and simulations to build new worlds and bring audiences into an experience, streamed live.”

The Art Newspaper

“In Third World: The Bottom Dimension, 2022–23 - currently at London’s Serpentine North Gallery and downloadable for free via Steam - players dive headlong into a lush, blaring universe of aerial waterfalls, coralloid structures, and crystalline cyborgs.”

Artforum

“A yearning for a sense of community during isolation prompted a recognition of resonances among the sculptures, and their steps toward merging them in teeming, animated worlds.”

i-D

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

exhiBiTion

georg BaSeliTz: SculpTureS 2011-2015

Serpentine South and the Royal Parks

5 October 2023 – 7 January 2024

Serpentine continued its pioneering artist series with a major exhibition by one of the world’s most prolific living artists, Georg Baselitz (born 1938 in Saxony, Germany).

The exhibition included a series of sculptures and drawings as well as a monumental nine-metre-tall sculpture, Zero Dom (Zero Dome), installed on the plinth within the Royal Parks, presented for the first time in the UK. The pieces offered an intimate glimpse into the artist’s studio practice and explored the frailty of the body in relation to the highly physical and raw processes employed to make the works.

With a career spanning over six decades, Georg Baselitz emerged in post-war Germany as one of the most influential contemporary artists of his generation. Since 1969, he has inverted the human figure and other motifs in his expressive paintings to sever his works from content and narrative. Instead, Baselitz focuses on form, colour and texture, bringing new perspectives to the tradition of figurative painting. Baselitz turned to sculpture in the 1980s, continuing to explore the tensions between the figurative and the abstract through his crude approximations of figures and body parts carved from wood. These wooden sculptures were not originally intended for public exhibition, as they were made as maquettes for bronze works.

“Sculpture is a thing like a miracle. It is built up, decked out, made arbitrary not as the sign of thoughts but as a thing within the limits of the shape. Even if a sculpture is hung from the ceiling, it remains a thing.”

Georg Baselitz

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

The exhibition featured 10 wooden sculptures that had never been exhibited before. These works were presented alongside 68 related drawings rendered in pencil, pen and ink. Rather than functioning as preparatory sketches for the wooden maquettes, the drawings were made during the sculpting process. The exhibition offered a unique opportunity to gain insights into Baselitz’s sculptural process, highlighting the links between his two and three dimensional processes.

This exhibition followed a long history of presenting sculpture inside Serpentine’s galleries and in the park including major shows of Henry Moore (1978), Anthony Caro (1984), Louise Bourgeois (1985, her first in a UK institution), Alberto Giacometti and more recently Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow.

The accompanying catalogue invited artists across different generations, including Alvaro Barrington, Huma Bhabha, Tracey Emin, Rashid Johnson, Jenny Saville, Erwin Wurm and Rose Wylie, to respond to Baselitz’s continuing influence on their practices.

56,054 visitors

Engagement:

“This year Baselitz turned 85 and his birthday is being celebrated with exhibitions all over the world, from a show of his rough-hewn wooden sculptures at London’s Serpentine to new paintings of shamanistic half-stag, half-human figures that’s just opened in New York.”

The Guardian

“Get all round, behind and underneath the sculptures. The more you look, the more varied their textures are. The surfaces are cut and undercut, nicked and notched, scarified by saws. While you may want to run your hands over a Hepworth or a Moore, Baselitz is all splinter.”

The Times

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

“Over the course of his six-decade career, Georg Baselitz (b. 1938, Saxony, Germany) has been heralded for his figurative paintings and his sculptural works. At Serpentine, both inky drawings and large-scale sculptures that have been selected by Baselitz are on show, creating the illusion of a ‘forest’ of timber figures.”

Evening Standard

“Back here, the art world is preparing for Frieze, and Standard columnist Tracey Emin chatted to Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine’s George Baselitz exhibition.”

Evening Standard

“Georg Baselitz, the giant of post-1960s German art, loves a gimmick. With his paintings, that’s turning them upside down to disrupt pictorial conventions. With his sculptures, the subject of this Serpentine show, it’s carving them out of a single huge piece of wood.”

Time Out

“Ten timber sculptures by the German artist Georg Baselitz, each shaped from an individual tree trunk, stand and recline and hover over the daylight-lit rooms of the Serpentine South gallery. Some are enormous, carved with twisting and turning shapes and crude, rough edges. They are at once overpowering yet soft and gentle. And there is humor and humanity in their interactions.”

Forbes

“It’s no coincidence that feet and legs also loom large in the Serpentine’s new exhibition of Georg Baselitz, as Guston is one of his artistic idols. The show is the first to exhibit the original wooden maquettes for Baselitz’s better-known bronzes, though the diminutive hardly describes these massive sculptures hewn, hacked and scarified with chainsaws, axes and chisels from the single trunks of enormous trees. If Guston’s cartoon inspiration was Krazy Kat, Baselitz could be the Flintstones. Unusually for this artist, the images are the right way up. In 1969 Baselitz hit on the idea of inverting images as a halfway house between figuration and abstraction, and he has been painting and hanging canvases upside-down ever since. But the upside-down thing doesn’t work with figurative sculpture: turn it on its head and it falls over. His sculptures stand on their clodhopping feet and their related drawings, not being arsy-versy, reveal what an expressive draughtsman he is.”

The Spectator

“As Sculptures 2011–2015 reveals, his output is as uncompromising as it is prodigious.”

Sculpture Magazine

“And after just a few moments wandering through the Serpentine South gallery’s sunlit rooms (a quiet balm after the frenzy of Frieze) among the massive timber maquettes - there are ten in all, including a giant nine-metre-tall bronze sculpture Zero Dom (Zero Dome) (2015-2021) that rears its patinated bulk outdoors in the park - it’s easy to understand the draw.”

Wallpaper*

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You. , (Installation view, 1 February – 17 March 2024, Serpentine South) Photo: George Darrell.

exhiBiTion

BarBara Kruger: ThinKing of you. i mean me. i mean you

“As a succession

Serpentine South and Outernet Arts

of one-liners, incontrovertible truths, lies, misdirections, fallacies and opaque pronouncements, Kruger’s work unravels then reconfigures itself as we watch and we read. Much of the time it is as if she were replacing our own inner commentaries with hers.”

1 February – 17 March 2024

Serpentine presented the first solo exhibition in London in 23 years of recent works by American artist Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, USA) at Serpentine South and in the public realm with Outernet Arts. Kruger previously exhibited at Serpentine in 1994 as part of the group exhibition Wall to Wall. Titled Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me~~ . I Mean You, the exhibition featured a unique selection of installations, moving image works and multiple soundscapes installed across the Serpentine building, bookshop, outside banners and electric taxis as well as on large-scale, immersive wraparound screens at Outernet Arts and TikTok.

Devoted to the exploration of visual culture and image production, Kruger is known for her work with imagery and words, frequently borrowing from the languages of advertising, graphic design and magazines. Her practice often explores complex mechanisms of power, gender, class and capital.

The Guardian

43,872 visitors

Engagement:

Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You. is an adaptation of the exhibition organised by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Artwork Still, Barbara Kruger, Silent Writings , 2009/2024. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You. ,(Installation view, 1 February – 17 March 2024, Serpentine South) Photo: George Darrell.

The site-specific work wrapping all the walls of the first gallery, Untitled (That’s the way we do it) , 2011/2020, manifested Kruger’s embracement of recent digital and commercial appropriations of her work that have all been posted online. It was a further variation of the work Untitled (I shop therefore I am) displayed on the LED screen in the gallery, as it used the same image of a hand holding a placard, but in this instance the hand presented the different images and objects made across the years by other people in Kruger’s ‘style’. A single image from this work was also installed in the Koenig bookshop at Serpentine South, playing further with the context of consumerism.

The exhibition was also a UK premiere of Untitled (No Comment) , 2020, an immersive three-channel video installation, in which short snippets of footage found on social media platforms were accompanied by the artist’s work, directly addressing viewers with questions, statements and quotes by French philosopher and writer Voltaire and American rapper Kendrick Lamar. Footage of hairstyle tutorials, animated cats, acrobats, blurred out selfies, installation images of Kruger’s work and gemstones were mixed to stress our era’s short attention span.

Beyond the gallery walls

Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me~~ . I Mean You. extended beyond Serpentine South in its second collaboration with Outernet Arts – located at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road alongside Centre Point – a presentation of Barbara Kruger's work was displayed on the world's largest wraparound public screens.

Engagement: 12,124 visitors

“These homages, should we be so kind, also highlight the acuity of the real thing. Kruger is the queen of pith, firing out finely chosen words in short, shouty bursts, bringing Cartesian logic into the consumerist 20th century with her most famous slogan ‘I shop therefore I am’. Her imitators, by and large, are rarely as fast or furious. Long before Twitter was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, Kruger was employing far fewer than 280 characters to make her points about the social realities of power and gender, race and capital.”

The Financial Times

“A heady, immersive celebration of one of the few artists around who you can genuinely call iconic.”

Time Out

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~ . I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You. , (Installation view, 1 February – 17 March 2024, Serpentine South) Photo: George Darrell.

“Building new connections between artists and society, and Barbara's practice epitomises this. I hope that audiences experience her work in a multiplicity of media and contexts and see how her ideas and images are empowered by how freely they circulate in the world – and this spring, throughout the City of London.”

Harper’s Bazaar

“Making the shouty world online architecturally manifest, Kruger’s work is both painfully of our moment and (perhaps more depressingly) evergreen. Believe nothing, accept no substitutes, take pleasure where you can.”

The i

“The bluntness of tabloid English and use it in ways that are elusive and delicate. She’s like a boxer who punches you in the mouth — but instead of knocking you out, prompts you into poeticleaps and profound ruminations. Simple delivery system. Complex results.”

The Sunday Times

“Questions of class and gender, and the ways each is shaped by capital and consumerism. She understands the power of the media and advertising, which helps these works avoid seeming too preachy.”

London Review of Books

“For her current show, ‘Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I mean You’, at Serpentine in London, Kruger presents recent works including installations, moving-image works, banners, and multiple soundscapes installed throughout the building. Her site-specific work covering the gallery’s first room, Untitled (That’s the way we do it) (2011/2020), comments on digital and commercial appropriations of her work, using imagery of the many derivatives that have appeared in various media since Kruger began gaining traction in the late 1970s.”

Flash Art

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

exhiBiTion

refiK anadol: echoeS of The earTh - living archive

Serpentine North

16 February – 7 April 2024

Serpentine presented Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, an exhibition of new and recent works by internationally renowned artist, technologist and pioneer in artificial intelligence arts, Refik Anadol. Known for his digital works and large-scale public installations that present real-time generative environments, Anadol’s collaborative creative process with AI plays on human perception. This exhibition presented years-long experimentation with visual data of underwater landscapes and rainforests.

Featuring Artificial Realities: Coral (2023) , this was an immersive installation enveloping viewers in an AI's imagination of underwater landscapes. For the artwork, Refik Anadol Studio trained a unique AI model with approximately 135 million images of corals openly accessible online. Generating abstracted coral images, the AI constructed new visuals and colour combinations based on the dataset.

“It’s not about replacing nature or making an alternative nature; it’s just about understanding nature, and doing it from scratch, with a new perspective. What I had found missing in all our earlier AI research was nature, which I have a deep love and respect for. So we set out to create the world’s most advanced open-source AI model on it, called Large Nature Model. And that is a gift to humanity.”

Refik Anadol - Financial Times

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

Anadol’s solo exhibition also featured the UK premiere of Living Archive: Large Nature Model , a new site-specific installation that was first introduced at the World Economic Forum 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. At Serpentine North, the installation transformed the gallery into the AI model’s interpretation of a rainforest - the first installation in a growing body of work created employing The Large Nature Model , the world’s first open-source generative AI model dedicated to nature. For this ongoing research, the artist worked with the data of major institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution and London’s Natural History Museum. As additional data partners, such as universities, museums, foundations, government entities and libraries join the effort, the model, centred around archival images of fauna, flora and fungi, will expand over the coming years.

Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material and using a neural network, a method of AI that is inspired by the human brain, as a collaborator, Anadol creates compelling visualisations of digitised memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. His work explores the meaning of humanity in the era of artificial intelligence as well as the challenges that ubiquitous computing has brought forth. He investigates the profound ways in which the dominance of technology in our daily lives alters our perception and experience of time and space.

Since 2014, Serpentine has developed AI projects with Cécile B. Evans, James Bridle, Jenna Sutela, Ian Cheng, Pierre Huyghe and Hito Steyerl that have prefigured subsequent technological developments in the field. The establishment of the Creative AI Lab by Serpentine Arts Technologies in collaboration with King's College London in 2019 created a space for research into AI systems from artistic and cultural perspectives and interests. This generated a solid foundation for thought leadership on this topic as AI gains increasing mainstream attention in 2024 which will also see Serpentine Arts Technologies develop a new AI project with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst later in the year.

53,850 visitors

Engagement:

NB. Attendance between 15 February 2024 and 31 March 2024. The exhibition ran until 7 April 2024, with a final overall attendance of 65,889 visitors between FY 2023/24 and FY 2024/25.

“The piece also includes a summary of his work – Anadol talks a lot about the collective over the personal. Not interested in the notion of a solitary artist wrestling with psychic demons or mining intellectual formalism, he seeks a universal language that transcends all identities, biases and boundaries — dreamscapes for the 21st century’s global human aggregate.”

The Economist

“We will be sitting in these worlds and with all our senses: smelling them, touching them, tasting them, interacting with them. This is a new portal for the imagination. This exhibition is a milestone to communicate this with the public. There will be an extraordinary change in humanity, where we will question reality. We are celebrating that moment.”

Forbes

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

“Refik Anadol captures the power of technology as he turns AI from an abstraction in the cloud into art before your eyes.’ and ‘His work speaks to the innovation and anxieties of the current moment. For him, AI is a powerful creative tool. In a world where so much of life happens in a digital realm, he argues, data has become a new pigment.”

The Economist

“Engagement with AI, including establishing the Creative AI Lab, highlights its leadership in discussions on technology's cultural impact. Its commitment to free access ensures the exhibition reaches a wide audience, furthering the dialogue on art and technology's evolving relationship.”

Forbes

“Short and sweet, the show invites audiences to wander through in idle wonder but they shouldn’t expect much substance beneath these psychedelic surfaces.”

Artnet

“Anadol has had a highly visible recent path, with his pieces - based on the transformation of raw imagery into arrays of colour and light, powered by AI - featured at Art Dubai, Art Basel, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), the Grammys and more; with a new show opening this month at Serpentine North, London. And his work was featured in the eye-opening first season at the giant Sphere immersive institution in Las Vegas.”

Art Newspaper

“Whether this art lookslike a dream or a beautiful banality depends on the viewers. But like it or not, people will be seeing a lot more of Mr. Anadol’s work.”

The Economist

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

puBlic arT aT SerpenTine

The Sculpture Commission located on the plinth adjacent to Serpentine’s South Gallery features regular artworks. This alternates between commissioning an emerging artist to produce their first public artwork and presenting a sculpture by an established artist. Occasionally, artists exhibiting in the galleries expand their presentations outside and the outdoor exhibition programme invites a world-renowned artist to create an exhibition of new and/or existing sculptures across different locations in Kensington Gardens.

Serpentine’s public art programme offers an opportunity for visitors to the park and our onsite programmes, to encounter art outside of the gallery walls. It focuses on Serpentine’s immediate environment as a space for artists to engage with the natural landscape of Kensington Gardens. Public art and the activation of outdoor spaces and the lawn surrounding the gallery have been part of Serpentine’s activity since it was founded in 1970 – with exhibitions such as Inside Out (1996-97) comprising artist commissions, a collection of Eduardo Paolozzi’s sculptures (1987) and the permanent Ian Hamilton Finlay installation of the stone circle and benches (1998). In recent years, our public art programme has emerged as a central strand of Serpentine’s work with artists who are constantly expanding the possibilities of what public art could be today.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Atta Kwami, DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace) , 2021-22. Installation View: Maria Lassnig Prize Mural, Serpentine North Garden, 6 September 2022 – 3 September 2023. Courtesy the Estate of Atta Kwami. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

puBlic arT aT SerpenTine

aTTa KWami: maria laSSnig prize mural

Serpentine North Garden 6 September 2022 - 30 September 2024

In partnership with the Maria Lassnig Foundation, Serpentine presented a public art mural by the late painter, printmaker, independent art historian and curator Atta Kwami (1956-2021).

With a career spanning 40 years, Kwami’s practice brought together painting, architecture, sculpture, and education. Born in Accra, Ghana he trained and taught for 20 years at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Kwami lived primarily in Kumasi and later in Loughborough, UK, keeping a studio in both cities and drawing inspiration for his paintings from both global and local art histories and traditions. His compositions of geometric strips, stripes and grids particularly connect to Northern Ghanaian wall and house painting, street vendor kiosks, commercial sign painting, woven textiles, Ghanaian music and jazz.

Alongside making paintings, prints and artist’s books, Kwami also became known for painting constructions – kiosks and archway sculptures – that were conceived as expanded three-dimensional paintings within outdoor spaces. The commission originated from a painting on canvas that Kwami reworked in his studio in 2021, shortly before his death – making this the final, landmark public work of his pioneering career. Designed in dialogue with the North Gallery Garden, the mural Dzidzɔ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace), 2021-22, embodies the artist’s vibrant palette and fluid abstract painting style. Its title is in Ewe , a West African language spoken by Kwami and its composition characteristically plays with the colour and form improvisations distinctive to Ghanaian architecture and strip-woven textiles found across the African continent, especially kente cloth from the Ewe and Asante people of Ghana.

The mural is painted on wood – the surface Kwami used for outdoor constructions – by artist Pamela Clarkson, Kwami’s widow who shared a studio with him for over 30 years and designer Andy Philpott, his friend and collaborator on constructions in Amsterdam, Folkestone and Loughborough

“Terribly courageous – Atta Kwami’s glorious posthumous mural unveiled at the Serpentine.”

The Guardian

Engagement: 47,884 visitors

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Zero Dom (Zero Dome) , 2015/2021; Marokkaner (Moroccan) © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photos: Hugo Glendinning 2023.

puBlic arT aT SerpenTine

alexandra daiSy ginSBerg: pollinaTor paThmaKer

Part of Back to Earth

Kensington Gardens April 2022 - March 2024

Pollinator Pathmaker was a living sculpture made of plants. Unlike most gardens, this was designed to prioritise the needs of endangered pollinating insects, rather than to please humans. For her contribution to Back to Earth , artist Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg created an Edition of Pollinator Pathmaker planted near to Serpentine in Kensington Gardens. The work was laid out in eleven beds along the length of North Flower Walk, located next to Lancaster Gate. It also marked the first long-term project collaboration with the Royal Parks.

“Pollinator Pathmaker is conceived as a call to action to encourage us to consider the wellbeing of other species. In recent decades, technology has often exacerbated our separation from nature, but now it is increasingly awakening us to its plight.”

The Financial Times

Engagement: 35,655 visitors

(between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024)

TomáS Saraceno: cloud ciTieS

Kensington Gardens 1 June – 10 September 2023

Visitors to Serpentine were able to encounter interactive sculptures from Saraceno’s Cloud Cities series that engaged with the park’s rich biodiversity of birds, insects, foxes, ducks and other species. Highlighting the decline of urban wildlife populations and their role in the collapse of ecosystems, newly commissioned cloud-like sculptures populated the park, the rooftop and façade of the building, offering spaces of interspecies encounters and co-habitation.

A cycle-powered web server invited riders to generate energy as they listened to a reading of the Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South , which ‘rejects false solutions that come with new forms of energy colonialism, now in the name of a Green transition.’ For those pedalling, the social cost of energy and water regimes to power the internet was made immediate and physical.

georg BaSeliTz: zero dom

Kensington Gardens

5 October 2023 – 7 January 2024

Zero Dom (Zero Dome), 2021, a nine-metre-tall patinated bronze sculpture was installed on the plinth outside Serpentine South with its corresponding raw maquette featured in the show. Made from five carvings in the form of legs, it referenced Baselitz’s fascination in the foot motif and was presented for the first time in the UK.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

Touring exhiBiTionS

jameS Barnor: accra/london

gaBriel maSSan and collaBoraTorS: Third World: The BoTTom dimenSion

Detroit Institute of Arts

20 May - 31 October 2023

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) hosted the Serpentine exhibition, James Barnor: Accra/London - A Retrospective , the third and final venue in the tour of this comprehensive survey of the work of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor whose career spans more than six decades. A studio portraitist, photojournalist, and Black lifestyle photographer, Barnor was born in 1929 in the West African nation of Ghana. He established his famous Ever Young Studio in Accra in the early 1950s and devoted his early photography to documenting critical social and political changes that animated the nation on the cusp of independence from Britain.

As a multi-faceted project with a video game, exhibition and web3 tokens powered by Tezos, Third World: The Bottom Dimension was able to tour in different ways. As such the project was included in group exhibitions and festivals in Europe and South America, ensuring the project continued to be seen by a diverse audience.

Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age featuring Gabriel Massan

Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf

After moving to London in 1959 to further his studies, he began a hugely successful career with influential South African magazine Drum , which captured the spirit and experiences of London’s burgeoning African diaspora. Upon his return to Ghana in the 1970s, Barnor established the country’s first colour processing photo lab. An avid music enthusiast, he embedded himself in the social and highlife scene while continuing his work as a portrait photographer. He returned to London in 1994.

5 June 2022 – 4 February 2024

Presented in close collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Engagement: 11,285 visitors

Voltaje Festival Bogotá,Colombia

23-26 November 2023

Engagement: 30,016 visitors

Engagement: 18,000 visitors across 4 days

“The 94-year-old British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor calls himself ‘Lucky Jim’ - he’s been ‘at the right place at the right time and met the right people’ during a career spanning more than six decades and two continents, he said in a recent telephone interview from his London home.”

Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age featuring Gabriel Massan

Centre Pompidou Metz

New York Times

10 June 2023 - 15 January 2024

Presented in close collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Engagement: 106,899 visitors

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Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

archiTecTure

Since its launch in 2000, the annual Serpentine Pavilion has become one of the most anticipated events in the global cultural calendar and a leading visitor attraction during London’s summer season of culture. Each year, an internationally known architect is invited to design and create their first built structure in England. Open annually from June to October, the Serpentine Pavilion commission has become an international site for architectural experimentation and presents projects by some of the world's most important architects.

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Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

archiTecTure

SerpenTine pavilion 2023 À TaBle By lina ghoTmeh

9 June - 29 October 2023

The Guardian

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

A new soundscape for the Pavilion, Dawn Chorus was created by artist and composer Tarek Atoui, based on Lina Ghotmeh’s sketches, architectural materials and Atoui’s ongoing research on classical and rural Arab music. Accessible on the Bloomberg Connects app, it featured the architect’s audio introduction to the project and other material.

Lina Ghotmeh (b.1980, Beirut, Lebanon) is an architect whose projects include the Estonian National Museum (Grand Prix Afex 2016 and Mies Van Der Rohe Nominee); Stone Garden , a crafted tower and gallery spaces in Beirut, Lebanon (Dezeen Architecture of the Year Award 2021); Réalimenter Masséna , a wooden tower dedicated to sustainable food culture in Paris, France (laureate of Paris’ call for innovative projects cI); Ateliers Hermès in Normandy, the first passive low carbon workshops building in France; Wonderlab exhibition in Tokyo, Japan, and Beijing, China and Les Grands Verres for the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Ghotmeh has lectured in institutions across the world. She was the Louis I Khan 2021 visiting professor at Yale School of Architecture in the United States and Gehry Chair 2021-22 at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is Co-President of the Scientific Network for architecture in extreme climates and was a member of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2022 Jury. Among other prizes, she was awarded in 2021 the 2020 Schelling Architecture Prize, the 2020 Tamayouz Woman of Outstanding Achievement, the French Fine Arts Academy Cardin Award 2019, the Architecture Academy Dejean Prize 2016, and the French Ministry of Culture Award in 2008.

Headline Partner: Goldman Sachs

Supporting Partners: HENI, Luma Foundation, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Technical Advisors: AECOM, Stage One

Engagement:

“Ghotmeh's design for the Serpentine Pavilion 2023 is titled À table – a 'French call for people to sit down together at a table'. It is conceived to nod to ideas of unity and discussion, common ground and meaningful human interaction.”

Wallpaper*

105,756 visitors

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

“In today's changing times, this pavilion offers a celebratory space,’ Ghotmeh said. ‘It is endowed with a table, around which we will sit together in a modest, low structure and in an atmosphere reminiscent of toguna huts of the Dogon people in Mali, West Africa, designed to bring all members of a community together in discussion," she continued.”

Dezeen

“Ghotmeh’s pavilion, a social space in-the-round, will be unveiled at Serpentine South in June. It will remain on site until October, and during Frieze week, which has become a magnet for fashion designers keen to align themselves with the world of fine art. Ghotmeh’s eponymous firm develops projects at the crossroads of architecture, art and design.”

Women’s Wear Daily

“À table, 'the French call to sit down together at a table,' and will allude to a sense of unity through its almost monastic form - an organic design of a table as well as a seating formation inviting human interactions. Ghotmeh, now, joins the impressive list of architects who have designed the annual pavilion before her, including Sou Fujimoto (2013), Francis Kéré (2017), Frida Escobedo (2018), and most recently Theaster Gates (2022).”

STIRworld

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Serpentine Cinema: Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Life Cinematic , 28 March 2023, Institut français du Royaume-Uni. Photo by Talie Rose Eigeland. Courtesy of the artist and Serpentine.

live programme 2023/24

SerpenTine cinema: menelaoS KaramaghioliS, ShorTS

27-30 March 2023

Serpentine Cinema presented a four-day festival of films by Greek filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis, exploring four decades of his work in documentary, fiction, artist film, activism and radio.

Day 3: ROM

Day 1: J.A.C.E. - Just Another Confused Elephant

Serpentine Cinema screened Menelaos Karamaghiolis’ award-winning 1989 documentary, hailed as ‘a turning point and landmark for Greek documentary film history’. In ROM , Menelaos Karamaghiolis attempted to trace the evolving story of the Romani people in Europe, particularly in Greece, through four different points of view.

Menelaos Karamaghiolis’ award-winning second feature film was based on true stories of loss, love and life on the outskirts of society. The movie followed Jace’s inverted Odyssey within a dark universe of abuse, murder and fear, as he desperately (and silently) sought a family of his own, or a love that would become his homeland.

Day 4: Shorts

Day 2: Life Cinematic

Serpentine Cinema presented a special selection of Menelaos Karamaghiolis’ short films from 1986 to present day. In addition to feature-length documentary and fiction, Karamaghiolis’ practice encompasses artist films that often foreground stories of invisible, everyday heroes, located within the ongoing crises that define the social fabric of Greece. Serpentine Cinema: Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Shorts wove together an underground, alternative narrative of the country’s history, told through unpredictable testimonies and apocalyptic images of a land in which the past and the present perpetually clash.

Life Cinematic was an immersive film lecture by Karamaghiolis that traced the extraordinary stories and lives of unsung heroes. The film traversed the thresholds between documentary and fiction and between real life and cinema and was followed by a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

In Conversation: Gabriel Massan, Tamar Clarke-Brown and Hans Ulrich Obrist. 10 July 2023, Institut français du Royaume-Uni. Photo by Talie Rose Eigeland. Courtesy of the artist and Serpentine.

ToWardS an ecoSocial energy TranSiTion: a converSaTion and manifeSTo

1 June 2023

To coincide with the exhibition Tomás Saraceno in Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , discussion was held about struggles for environmental justice, land rights and a ‘just energy transition’ – an equitable and just approach to clean energy. Tomás Saraceno was in conversation with sociologist Maristella Svampa, co-author of the seminal 2023 Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South ; writer Graciela Speranza; human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck and more. The evening was moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine.

Audience:

in converSaTion: gaBriel maSSan, Tamar clarKe-BroWn and hanS ulrich oBriST

10 July 2023

To celebrate the opening of their exhibition and the launch of their video game and web3 project at Serpentine, Gabriel Massan & Collaborators: Third World - The Bottom Dimension , Gabriel Massan was in conversation with Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine. They discussed interdisciplinary approaches to worldbuilding, experimental storytelling, play and the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world through technologies such as gaming.

Audience:

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

A Gathering on Art and Land , presented as part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon , 13 July 2024, Serpentine. Photo by Talie Rose Eigeland. Courtesy of the artist and Serpentine.

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The infiniTe ecologieS maraThon: The prelude

14 October 2023, Live Programmes and Ecologies

An all-day event that gathered key figures within environmental thinking to address pressing questions and help set the agenda for the Infinite Ecologies Marathon in July 2024 which marks the ten-year anniversary of the 2014 Extinction Marathon . Both Infinite Ecologies gatherings seek agency in current times, focusing on what must be witnessed, remembered and held in facing a climate breakdown which is unequally distributed between persons, human and non-human alike.

Audience:

SerpenTine cinema: a gaThering, ed WeBB-ingall, Beverley BenneTT, arWa aBuraWa and TuraB Shah

25 October 2023

An evening of screenings and discussion by artists and filmmakers with different approaches to collaborative production. Featuring Ed Webb-Ingall, Beverley Bennett, Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah, each artist presented a recent short film which speaks to the process of working collectively, followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Alex Thorp, Education Curator, Serpentine.

SerpenTine cinema: an acT of Wonder and graTiTude

12 February 2024, a collaboration between Live Programmes and Ecologies

A programme of artists’ moving image works which shared reflections on technology, ritual and the more-than-human world. This evening of screenings included works by Patricia Dominguez, Kyriaki Goni, Agnieszka Polska, Laure Prouvost, Tabita Rezaire, Selvagem/Ailton Krenak, and Emilija Škarnulytė. The programme was accompanied by live interventions by artists Kyriaki Goni and Patricia Dominguez.

Audience:

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Audience: 112

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Serpentine Park Nights 2023: Bambii. Photo: Bernice Mulenga.

parK nighTS

Each year, Park Nights presents a series of new performance commissions in Serpentine’s annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion. Since 2002, Park Nights has presented new works across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion and technology. Each year’s commissions respond to the Pavilion and offer audiences unique ways to experience architecture and performance. The programme has supported many artists in the early stages of their careers, as well as pioneering writers and thinkers from around the world.

Serpentine Pavilion 2023, À table – designed by Lebaneseborn, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh – became the stage for a series of interdisciplinary artistic engagements on selected evenings this summer.

panel diScuSSion: lina ghoTmeh in converSaTion WiTh hanS ulrich oBriST

Serpentine Pavilion

7 June 2023

To mark the opening of À table , the 22nd Serpentine Pavilion, Lina Ghotmeh was in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine. The conversation explored the inspirations behind this year’s Pavilion, Ghotmeh’s ‘Archaeology of the Future’ approach, and the history of the Pavilion commission.

Audience:

The living and The dead enSemBle

25 August 2023

A performance from The Living and The Dead Ensemble , a group of artists, performers, and poets from Haiti, France and the United Kingdom. The ensemble presented a rendition of their performance installation The Wake . The piece rewove a fragmented geography and asked if there is a possible future beyond the repetition of all kinds of catastrophes.

Audience:

150

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Christelle Oyiri, Faster Than This is Suicide , part of Serpentine’s Park Nights 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

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caSTiel viTorino BraSileiro

15 September 2023

In September, Brazilian-born visual artist, writer and psychologist Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro presented a new performance and installation which explored ritual, dance and celebration in both Afro-Brazilian and Western cultures. Bringing together collaborators from different backgrounds, Vitorino Brasileiro explored dance as a connective and healing practice that allowed visitors to consider the relationships between interspecific spirituality and different forms of life.

Attendees:

BamBii

29 September 2023

The programme continued through September with a performance from internationally acclaimed DJ and musician Bambii celebrating Black diasporic dance music.

Attendees:

chriSTelle oyiri

6 October 2023

In October, Park Nights hosted an experimental performance by Christelle Oyiri, an artist and filmmaker of Ivorian, Guadeloupean and Martinican origin, born in the Paris region, where she lives and works. Traversing musical genres including punk and soca, Oyiri performed a live iteration of her upcoming record with invited collaborators Nandita, Oxhy and Covco.

infiniTe ecologieS maraThon: The prelude 2023

Serpentine Pavilion, by Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture Saturday 14 October 2023

Marina Abramović, Anohni, James Bridle, Mariana Mazzucato, Tomás Saraceno, Adrian Villar Rojas, Yinka Shonibare and other key cultural, scientific figures gathered for a day long prelude to Serpentine’s acclaimed Marathon series, returning for summer 2024. Infinite Ecologies Marathon: The Prelude , addressed pressing questions on environmental issues and set the agenda for the return of the acclaimed Serpentine Marathon programme in 2024.

SaTurday TalKS

Curator-led Saturday talks of Serpentine’s exhibitions

Natalia Grabowska on Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh

Serpentine Pavilion

7 October 2023

Natalia Grabowska, Curator at Large, Architecture and Site-specific Projects, led a tour of Serpentine Pavilion 2023, À table , designed by Lina Ghotmeh.

Alexa Chow on Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh

Serpentine Pavilion Saturday 8 July 2023

Alexa Chow, Assistant Exhibitions Curator, led a tour of Serpentine Pavilion 2023, À table , designed by Lina Ghotmeh.

Attendees: 197

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Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: The Loophole at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

Beyond The gallery WallS

ouTerneT:

ouTerneT:
Gabriel Massan:	82,269 visitors
Barbara Kruger:	12,124 visitors

NB. Attendance on 4,11,18,25 March 2024. The show ran also on 1, 8, 15 and 22 April 2024, with a final overall attendance of 22,774 visitors between FY 2023/24 and FY 2024/25.

SerpenTine cinema: menelaoS KaramaghioliS

Offsite

27-30 March 2023

Serpentine Cinema presented a festival of films by Greek filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis and explored four decades of his work in documentary, fiction, artist film, activism and radio.

629 attendees

Other offsite events:

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies visual identity, the unloved.

SerpenTine podcaST

Since its inception with the On Work series in 2018, which was produced live throughout Serpentine’s Work Marathon, the Podcast has experimented with audio as a space for art, taking on different forms. Serpentine Podcast explores new ideas and urgent questions for our present moment and shared future. Weaving together interviews, original sound commissions, archival materials, discussion, music, and field recordings, each episode is an adventurous yet considered listening experience, available on all podcast streaming platforms.

Serpentine Podcast explores art and ideas for a changing world.

A curated listening experience exploring multiple facets of a singular theme per season, the Podcast shares Serpentine’s commitment to elevating the voices of artists and other practitioners whose work critically engages with the issues faced by our societies. It has consistently been produced by the highly-acclaimed audio production company Reduced Listening.

In 2022/23, Serpentine Podcast presented REWORLDING , a curated series that invited us to imagine the world we need and the practices we can use to shape more generative realities, from remembering to regenerating to reconnecting. Weaving together interviews, discussion, sound worlds, audio works and Serpentine’s rich archive, each episode of REWORLDING presented an artistic and emotive experience bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives with the aim of giving listeners tools and practices to use in their own lives. Hosted by Gaylene Gould – an experienced broadcaster – the series featured international artists, thinkers, writers, designers and other practitioners dreaming of shifts in our reality. Contributors included Etel Adnan, Barbara ChaseRiboud, Es Devlin, Gabriel Massan, Daisy Ginsberg, Hans Ulrich Obrist and many more. REWORLDING combined large-scale questions and leading ideas with simple, tangible tools that listeners could action on any scale, from reconnecting with childhood games to keeping the memory of a person alive.

REWORLDING reached over 217k listeners in 112 countries to 31 March 2024

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Serpentine Podcast: REWORLDING visual identity, the unloved.

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Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies visual identity, the unloved.

currenT SerieS inTimacieS

A new season of the Serpentine Podcast, Intimacies, released in August 2023, explored the complexities of closeness. Intimacies asked how we could expand and evolve our connections with ourselves, others and the world around us. The series gathered perspectives from artists, designers, writers, thinkers and others on how we can rekindle trust and open ourselves to new possibilities for connection. Delving into the feelings and experiences we don’t always voice, the series interrogated intimacy in unexpected ways - from our relationships with family and our interactions with strangers, to the things we fear most and our deepest desires, to our surroundings and our innermost selves. Each episode combined interviews, original audio works, conversations, pieces from the Serpentine archive and tenderly crafted sound worlds to explore what was happening within and between us.

The series featured: Adrian Piper, Tomás Saraceno, Olivia Laing, Lina Ghotmeh, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Brontez Purnell, Hetain Patel, and archival materials by P. Staff, Agnès Varda, Helen Cammock, Cecilia Vicuña and others.

Engagement: Intimacies had 21k listens to 31 March 2024

“Learned a lot about intimacy and how it's necessary for good mental health.”

Audience Q&A

“A real gem, I look forward to this dropping into my feed every week. Thoughtful conversations & beautiful sound design.”

Audience

“Thoughtful and insightful perspectives on art and beyond. Thoughtful, sensitive and incredibly well produced! Particularly love the range of guests and how the host describes the surroundings - feels really transportive.”

Audience

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“I’m listening to the first episode now, and loving it. It’s magic! I listened to the entire first episode last night and it was really riveting. Thank you so much for including me. warmest congrats on the series.”

Adrian Piper

“So good, really beautiful. Please pass on my comments.”

Audience

“What does intimacy look like in today’s divided world? Gaylene Gould explores how desire, surroundings, family and more affect connections. The first episode looks at intimacy with strangers, with perceptive contributions around privilege, privacy and consent from Scottee, artist Adrian Piper and Serpentine Galleries curator Tamsin Hong.”

Podcast of the Week - Guardian

“‘Like most people, I am stuck in a loop of busyness. Between all the working and general duties of adulting – the need to eat well, to keep fit, to raise excellent children and to ensure ageing relatives have what they need, it’s a wonder I have time to look at funny Instagrams of golden retrievers each evening.

This general busyness can be overwhelming for many of us, but I also think it is only part of the story of our golden retriever-based scrolling. Many of us use our scrolling as a distraction from the broader feeling that we are in a pretty nightmarish world right now – and sadly there aren’t nearly enough funny dog videos on the internet to distract us from that.

If this chimes with you, then I recommend spending an hour lying in the most comfortable place in your home, perhaps with a cup of something herbal and a cosy blanket, and swapping the silly dog videos for the new podcast series from Serpentine.

The London gallery’s Reworlding podcast is a series of five, hour-long, deep-dive programmes that have pulled me out of my often-present feelings of being overwhelmed. These beautifully produced recordings have helped me to create some much-needed space in my world, enabling me to switch off from the quick-fire, brainbombarding internet and settle into a much gentler, more considered, and inspirational way to respond (through art) to the world in which we live.

The Reworlding series brings together the voices of leading thinkers, writers, artists and designers and invites listeners to imagine the world we need and considers the simple practices – things like remembering, playing or reconnecting, that can help us to nurture a new way to exist.

It’s the most hopeful thing I’ve heard on the internet in a very long time.”

Museums Association Review

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How We Hold Launch Event. Photograph: Matthew Ritson.

leading a pioneering educaTional and civic programme

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How We Hold Launch Event. Photograph: Matthew Ritson.

educaTion

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How We Hold: Rehearsals for Art and Social Change , 2023.

hoW We hold

In September 2023, Serpentine Education and Civic launched a major new book, How We Hold: Rehearsals for Art and Social Change designed to support the practice of educators, artists, social workers, organisers and facilitators who want to use creativity to work towards social change. Drawing directly from a decade of projects generated by artists and groups of people through Serpentine Education and Civic programmes, How We Hold gathered project notes, documentation, conversations, commissioned texts and exercises and delved into the timely questions:

Where do we go when things fall apart, when home has been taken away, when the cracks appear?
How do we find moments of rest, joy and pleasure within an ongoing crisis?
How do we organise?

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How We Hold Launch Event. Photograph: Matthew Ritson.

Designed to be used both within organisations and as a tool to critique them, How We Hold supports dissenting and oppositional conversations and pragmatic challenges to neoliberal and colonial models of education and administration found in museums, arts organisations and other institutions today.

Written to honour and amplify the creativity and resistance of artists, organisers and the many people who have shaped these projects - from children in nursery schools to labour organisers, educators and carers, young people in academy schools and those navigating the immigration system - it celebrates those who find hope, possibility and life in the most difficult of circumstances.

How We Hold was conceived as a way to make visible the work of Serpentine Education and Civic and to hold and shape the conversation about the arts' civic role in society. The 400 page book features 23 long-term collaborative projects, 97 collaborators and 29 artist commissioned exercises. It has been shared with over 800 people in arts organisations and universities throughout the world and is being used as a tool to train the next generation of artists and curators. The RCA is using the book to teach a module on its MA Contemporary Practice programme. Colleagues in cultural institutions internationally, including Singapore Art Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Royal Parks have reached out to ask Serpentine to lead sessions with staff on learnings from the book.

“Returning from London with this beautiful new book, I am turning these pages today. Some pages are over ten years old, and some are from this year. I am looking for clues to deal with these heartbreaking moments of great intensity. Searching for ways of grieving and grounding, making alliances, listening and responding in a daily struggle for a juster present, I am happy to find many clues in this book.”

How We Hold collaborator and audience member

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How We Hold Launch Event. Photograph: Matthew Ritson.

In September 2023, the book’s contributors and collaborators gathered in the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion for a day of activations, discussions, music and food to celebrate the launch of How We Hold. Over 200 people attended the event that included a grounding by Barby Asante, a panel on liberating education with Zahra Bei and Kadeem Marshall-Oxley from No More Exclusions and artist Adelita Husni Bey moderated by Alex Thorp, a discussion on embodying change with Rae Johnson, Farzana Khan and Camille Barton, moderated by Amal Khalaf. Harold Offeh invited the audience to join a group exercise on performing power, facilitator Meenadchi shared an exercise on blessings, Ain Bailey closed with a DJ set and food was provided by Mestizos.

“What a joyful day, full of warmth, friendships but also full of new ideas and tools for fighting for a better future. It's so rare to witness this in art institutions, and so precious too.”

How We Hold collaborator and audience member

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Jasleen Kaur with the Portman Early Childhood Centre Everyday Resistance 2019. A Changing Play commission by the Serpentine Galleries Design: Cecilia Serafini Photograph: Mike Din.

everyday reSiSTance

In Spring 2024, the group launched the booklet, A Network of Care . This dual language English and Arabic publication was designed to support new parents living in Westminster and featured a letter to new parents, a conversation about parenthood and a directory of useful services offering support around housing, mental health, learning English and meeting other parents. Through a new partnership with the Westminster Health Visiting Team and existing relationships with the borough’s Family Hubs, the resource has been shared with 1600 new parents across the borough. A full evaluation will be presented in 2024.

Artist Jasleen Kaur has been collaborating with a group of women from the Portman Early childhood Centre in North West London since 2018. Everyday Resistance addresses the politics of mothering in a hostile environment. Commissioned by Serpentine Education as part of Changing Play, the multi-year project embeds artist commissions in partnership with the Portman Early Childhood Centre, which provides education, care and family support services for young children and their families. Through the process of cooking and eating together the group asks: How can cooking and eating be an act of resistance? How can we create a network of care to support ourselves and others? How can we take up space and make our voices heard when the government is systematically working to remove us?

“It's definitely very useful, especially for new mums, especially for me. When a baby comes it's very overwhelming. What kind of support do we have for new parents?”

New parent

“Our voices have been put into black and white and with all the advice and tips and everything, that's something now physical that's going to be giving out. You feel like the message is going, it's like a cycle now. So, yeah, it feels good.”

Community collaborator

“There's something about being able to hand over a physical copy of a book, which is really quite powerful, as a gift. Not just as a material gift, but as a gift from families to families. I think that's really special.”

Children and Family Services

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Ed Webb-Ingall, A Bedroom For Everyone , 2023.

SerpenTine cinema: a gaThering

Serpentine Cinema: A Gathering was a sold-out event and featured the London premier of A Bedroom for Everyone alongside collaboratively made work by artist and filmmaker Beverley Bennet and filmmakers Arwa Abuwara and Turab Shah. In the panel discussion that followed, the artists shared different models of collaboration, the ethics of collective working and their advice to practitioners beginning their journey in filmmaking.

October saw the culmination of Ed WebbIngall’s multi-year residency with Portman Early Childhood Centre, Like Coming Home. A Changing Play commission by Serpentine Education and in partnership with housing charity Shelter, the project asked questions about home and housing and centres and the lived and everyday experiences of people who feel the impacts of changes in housing policy and bureaucracy most acutely. Emerging from this research and collaborations with grassroots groups across the UK, Ed Webb-Ingall created a new animated film A Bedroom for Everyone, that asked what is the role of filmmaking in response to the current housing crisis in the UK?

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Cracks in the Curriculum #5: What is it to be Oneself? By Jade de Montserrat, 2024. Serpentine Education. Design: In the shade of a tree. Photo: © readsreads.info.

cracKS in The curriculum: WhaT iS iT To Be oneSelf?

Collectively the group asked:

Serpentine Education commissioned artist Jade de Montserrat to develop the fifth iteration of Cracks in the Curriculum. What is it to be Oneself? aimed at holding space for young people in secondary school to explore their multiple and fluid identities. The resource supported teachers working with young people to consider the impact of gender, race, class, religion, disability, culture and politics on the sense of self. What is it to be Oneself? delved into Afrofuturism and digital culture, using the process of collage to normalise fluid exploratory approaches to the formation, deconstruction and reformation of identity. It offered ways that liberated futures might be imagined where everyone can live freely and thrive. De Montserrat invited young people to use collage as a way to layer and remix identities, to time travel by placing archival material alongside contemporary imagery and to think about collage as a way to repair and heal. The resource was developed in collaboration with teachers, organisers and through a series of research and editing workshops in late 2023.

How can educational settings find communality and connection and embrace difference?
What is the potential of creative processes to celebrate difference and create a sense of belonging?
How can we overcome static categorisation and encourage fluidity, embrace identity as always in process, cultivate spaces that inspire discovery and the freedom to express oneself?
What are the challenges in exploring one’s identity? How can these concerns be transformed into consciousness-raising?
What freedoms emerge and what needs are met through embodying an alternative identity?
Presented in print and digital versions, the resource featured critical questions, creative exercises, sources of support and a short story by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Folding out into a poster designed by Jade de Montserrat it combined a quote from the 19th century abolitionist Sojourner Truth with the Progress Pride flag. This juxtaposition stressed how historical struggles can provide sustenance for contemporary campaigns.

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Cracks in the Curriculum #1-5. Serpentine Education. Design: In the shade of a tree. Photo: © readsreads.info.

cracKS in The curriculum x google arTS and culTure

Cracks in the Curriculum was originally conceived as a way to address what is missing or misrepresented in the school curriculum and bring together artists, educators and young people to use creativity to work towards change. The series included editions on exploring diverse personal histories with the Octavia poetry collective, inclusive sex education with artist collective Bedfellows , thinking about colonialism and its legacy with Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe and how to address race and racism with Barby Asante. The partnership with Google offered a way to initiate a new digital component for Cracks in the Curriculum, expanding reach and connecting with younger and international audiences. Over 100 digital assets were generated to communicate the ideas in the series, including nine short films.

In 2023, Serpentine Education developed a new partnership with Google Arts and Culture, to translate the Cracks in the Curriculum archive onto the Google Arts and Culture platform. The aim of the project was to expand the reach of Cracks in the Curriculum and connect with a younger online audience through specially commissioned illustrations, graphics and short-form videos.

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RAFTS: Live , Rory Pilgrim, Cadogan Hall, 2022. Photo: Matthew Ritson.

civic

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Rory Pilgrim, RAFTS , Barking and Dagenham Youth Dance, Production Still, 2021. Photo: Matthew Ritson.

radio BalladS

31 March - 29 May 2022

This exhibition presented at Serpentine North, was accompanied by a range of activities, events and a publication that explored four artist commissions and their bodies of research. This culminated in RAFTS: Live, nominated for the Turner Prize alongside Rory Pilgrim's Radio Ballads film commission in 2023, RAFTS. Serpentine continued to deliver the Support Structures for Support Structures fellowship and collaborated with Serpentine Education to produce the publication How We Hold: Rehearsals for Art and Social Change.

Over 2022/23 Serpentine Civic supported 14,140 encounters and 71 workshops through the Radio Ballads exhibition and ongoing projects with new and existing communities. We continued to share our work with the wider public through talks and events, sharing our sectorleading practice with peers and new audiences. Exhibition visitor figures totalled 12,165 across both sites, with some of the commissions subsequently travelling to institutions in Europe and the US.

SupporT STrucTureS for SupporT STrucTureS

From May 2022 to present

Support Structures for Support Structures is a fellowship programme initiated by Serpentine, that supports up to ten artists and collectives working at the intersection of art, spatial politics and community practice. The fellowship consists of an unrestricted grant to develop creative ideas. It invites grantees to join an interdisciplinary network for support, development workshops and mentoring. Over this period, Support Structures for Support Structures fellows re-engaged in a reflection and evaluation process for the first iteration of the fellowship and a celebratory lunch with Serpentine Civic and Directors.

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RAFTS: Live , Rory Pilgrim, Cadogan Hall, 2022. Photo: Matthew Ritson.

rory pilgrim nominaTed for Turner prize for SerpenTine civic commiSSion rafTS

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Pilgrim developed RAFTS as the second chapter in a body of work exploring how the climate crisis related to support structures in our everyday lives. The commission was narrated by the voices of eight residents of Barking and Dagenham from Green Shoes Arts , who reflected on the symbolism of a raft to them.

In 2023, Serpentine welcomed the announcement that artist and composer Rory Pilgrim had been nominated for the Turner Prize for Serpentine Civic commission RAFTS. Created over three years with residents of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, RAFTS was made for the exhibition Radio Ballads at Serpentine North and Barking Town Hall.

At the heart of RAFTS was a concert that wove stories, poetry and reflections around a seven-song oratorio that made connections between work, mental health, home, recovery and environment. Further voices and people from near and far joined the journey, including members of the Barking and Dagenham Youth Dance, members of Project Well Being – a group for those experiencing homelessness in Idaho, USA – and solo singers Declan Rowe John, Robyn Haddon and Kayden Fearon.

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We riSe: voice and SurvivorShip

hoW We hold: rehearSalS for arT and Social change

2022 - 2024

We Rise: Voice and Survivorship began as a series of workshops led by vocal practitioner Marged Siôn in collaboration with the We Rise Hub in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The project explored the possibilities of the voice as a tool to support women and non-binary people, who have experienced or are experiencing domestic abuse and gender-based violence. Through different exercises, the group connected with their breath, resonance, body alignment and imagination, as resources for vocal liberation.

Some of the questions that emerged from the project included:

How do we speak from our hearts?
When is telling our stories healing and transformative? And when is it re-traumatising? And how can we create capacity within ourselves to know the difference?
How can voicing and sounding together enable us to find strength in collectivity?
How might our experiences differ if moving forward we were deeply connected to our intuition and could knowingly voice our needs and our longings?
How can working with the voice lead to personal and social transformation?
Following a two year collaborative process, the group created We Rise: Voice and Survivorship , sharing their experiences and exercises with other survivors, organisers, and practitioners, who are working towards futures free from violence.

This resource drew on voice as an embodiment practice to reclaim voices, reconnect with bodies and reshape self-perception and storytelling. It addressed the impact of trauma on one’s ability to express needs and desires and offered embodied ways to listen and imagine collective futures.

We Rise: Voice and Survivorship emerged in response to significant cuts to survivor services over the past thirteen years, which have made it harder for women to leave dangerous situations and heal from trauma. The resource advocates for community and survivor-led initiatives, providing a trauma-informed embodiment practice not widely available in public services.

30 September 2023

How We Hold is a publication that draws directly from collaborative projects spanning over a decade of Serpentine Education and Civic programmes. The book uplifts and celebrates the creativity and resistance of artists, organisers and the many people who have generated and shaped these projects – including children in nursery, labour organisers, educators, carers, young people in academy schools and those navigating the immigration system – who find hope, possibility and life in the most difficult of circumstances. The book’s contributors and collaborators spoke at the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion to celebrate its launch. The day included discussion, activations and music by Barby Asante, Camille Barton, Ain Bailey, Adelita Husni Bey, Rae Johnson, Farzana Khan, Harold Offeh, Zahra Bei, Kadeem Marshall-Oxley and Jasleen Kaur.

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Danielle Brathwaite Shirley, THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE . Art Night, Dundee June 2023. Photo: Erika Stevenson.
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leading arTiSTic and digiTal TranSformaTion

Serpentine’s artist-led programme proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of emerging technologies. As we stand at the brink of the next technological revolution, Serpentine is committed to supporting new experiments in art and technology, challenging and shaping its role in our cultural and social landscape. We work with artists to realise new works that consider emerging technologies as a medium, a tool or a topic that can operate beyond the gallery walls. Through exploring artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and drones, biotechnology and immersive technologies, our Arts Technologies programme examines the critical impact of these innovations on the way we work, think and collaborate.

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arTS r&d TechnologieS plaTform

Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies. It brings together people working in art, technology, law, policy and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society. Areas of focus include blockchain, artificial intelligence, video games and life sciences.

Serpentine’s Research and Development Platform is a space where our institution’s ‘back-end’ (operations, protocols, in-built values) and ‘front-end’ (what we produce) are brought into experimental realignment. In today’s environment of hyper-production and accelerated change, arts organisations need a reflexive space that allows for thoughtful and conscious advancement. Historically, art has frequently taken the form of social risk-taking and thus an undercover engine of ‘innovation’, presents a distinctly different paradigm for innovation to the fields of science and technology. Meanwhile, the importance of arts organisations as scalable sites for dedicated artist-led research and development is only now becoming apparent.

The R&D Platform at Serpentine develops organically from the organisation’s long-standing commitment to advancing new forms of cultural production. Our R&D Platform is built on inter-operable modules that manifest themselves in capacity-building workshops for the wider sector, roundtables and summits bringing experts from different fields to develop an art-field specific view on innovation and precedent-setting artworks that challenge conceptions of what art is and where the boundaries of art’s impact lie.

Some of the questions guiding the development of the R&D Platform include:

How can art institutions become better at identifying and harnessing their evolving capabilities?
What will the core values of cultural production be in 2050?
How can greater focus on infrastructural care and design build a more resilient and socially significant cultural field?
What can the full stack of contemporary artistic production (i.e., all stages of a project’s development) teach arts organisations and other fields about innovation?
What new organisational processes would be required for the art field to develop more meaningful and longterm relationships with other fields invested in seeking answers to today’s most challenging questions?
How does the art field claim an active position in shaping future technologies that yield significant impact on contemporary and future societies?

Recent labs include Legal Lab , led by Alana Kushnir, Director of Guest Work Agency, Blockchain Lab , led by Ruth Catlow, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Furtherfield and DECAL DeCentralised Arts Lab; Creative AI Lab , led by Eva Jäger, Curator, Arts Technologies and Mercedes Bunz, Senior Lecturer in Digital Societies at King’s College; Synthetic Ecologies Lab led by Yasaman Sheri, Creative Director and Designer. Although emerging from Serpentine, the R&D Platform is a constantly growing community of individuals and organisations without whom it would not be a reality.

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fuTure arT ecoSySTemS

Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) was born out of a need to inform organisational development in the arts and specifically around ecosystem design for art and advanced technologies (AxAT). While there is a rich discursive space that revolves around art’s critical interventions into contemporary technologies such as AI, blockchain and immersive technologies and their mainstream narratives, a dedicated focus on operational and infrastructural conditions for supporting and developing AxAT has been largely lacking. Since 2019, FAE has united and platformed the voices of leading artists, technologists, cultural organisations and civic actors, whose efforts are directed towards building out new systems that can drive organisational and creative innovation.

annual STraTegic Briefing

Arts Technologies’ annual publication, Future Art Ecosystems (FAE), focuses on the implications of different technologies for art and cultural organisations. FAE briefings identify the dynamics and opportunities within emerging technology spaces and offer a roadmap for building 21st-century public cultural infrastructure. The past publications have accurately predicted a variety of phenomena that now dominate the art and technology landscape, from the changing role of art patronage with the expansion of the tech sector to emergence of a new artist-led technological and commercial practice (FAE1), and the use of the art space as a test case for new technology-driven economic and governance models (FAE3).

fuTure arT ecoSySTemS 4: arT x puBlic ai

In March 2024, Serpentine Arts Technologies released the fourth volume of the annual strategic briefing, Future Art Ecosystems (FAE4). The publication focuses on the implications of different technologies for art and cultural organisations. This year, FAE4 zooms in on the emerging landscape of AI technologies as they impact the creative economy and society at large. With insights from leading voices in art, tech industry and government policy, this publication maps the risks and opportunities in building and integrating various elements of AI systems within the cultural domain. The publication offers conceptual tools for practitioners and organisations to navigate this technological landscape and to develop pragmatic approaches to creative and organisational strategies. FAE4 highlights how organisations and artists, as agents, producers, sense-makers, truth finders and curators, can negotiate the different components of how AI systems land in society. The research was led by the Creative AI Lab, a collaboration with King’s College London’s Digital Humanities Department and the Legal Lab at Serpentine.

fuTure arT ecoSySTemS 4: arT x puBlic ai (fae4) launch

Reference Point and Serpentine Twitch 19 March 2024

The writers of FAE4, Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead, Eva Jäger, Arts Technologies Curator and Creative AI Lead; and Alasdair Milne, King’s College presented an overview of the latest Future Art Ecosystems report. FAE4 lays bare the various layers of the AI stack - from its software components like applications, data and the AI models themselves to the natural resources that AI systems need to function, showing that public and non-public entities are deeply entangled in every layer of the AI stack.

Inperson attendees:	98
Twitch views:	851

It was launched as a digital-first reader, built to optimise for a mobile reading experience. Since the launch on 19 March, the reader has been viewed 4.9k times to the end of March.

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The Bottom Dimension Agents Report – Inaugural Awareness. Minted memory captured during the game play of Third World: The Bottom Dimension by Gabriel Massan & collaborators exhibited at the Serpentine Galleries 23 June – 26 November, 2023 © Gabriel Massan and Serpentine.

communiTy developmenT

r&d plaTform neWSleTTer

Ongoing

The R&D Platform newsletter is dedicated to communicating the Arts Technologies programme along with information from the wider sector. In 2023/24 its subscribers grew by over 64%.

fuTure arT ecoSySTemS QuarTerly communiTy call

Ongoing

arTiSTS TechnologieS TWiTch channel

Ongoing

The Arts Technologies Twitch channel, launched in July 2021, hosts live, interactive conversations and projects with artists, thinkers, collaborators and co-conspirators from our R&D Labs, Arts Technologies network and growing audience.

docToral reSearch collaBoraTionS

Ongoing

The Arts Technologies programme at Serpentine supports and facilitates both practice-based and academic doctoral research projects in collaboration with leading research centres and universities in the UK and beyond. The programme is currently hosting one doctoral research project:

Alasdair Milne (2020-23)

LAHP/AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award at King’s College London Department of Digital Humanities in collaboration with Serpentine’s R&D Platform. This studentship commenced in October 2020 on the topic of creative AI as a medium in artistic and curatorial practice.

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Line of flight: Organization © Crosslucid 2024.

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Beyond culTureS of oWnerShip

Beyond Cultures of Ownership is an everevolving project and global community of artists, researchers, activists, technologists and policy-makers exploring the role of art and culture in reconfiguring ownership. It is part of an ongoing collaboration between Serpentine Arts Technologies and RadicalxChange, dedicated to nurturing a space where art, culture, civic activism and techno-social experimentation intersect. The collaboration builds on the research and findings of Future Art Ecosystems 3: Art x Decentralised Tech (2022) which explored the possibilities of developing new ownership and distribution models. By leveraging blockchain technologies, the project positions the cultural domain as a critical site for experimenting with such models.

Beyond culTureS of oWnerShip conference

3 November 2023 Somerset House

This day-long event gathered invited attendees to explore and strategise how art and culture can play an active part in reconfiguring ownership.

Serpentine Arts Technologies in collaboration with RadicalxChange, Dark Matter Labs and Somerset House Studios invited artists, activists, researchers, technologists and policymakers active and those interested in connecting the dots between cultural production, political economies and systems change. If ‘ownership’ is one of the underlying power dynamics of our times that can either create or block possibilities for rebalancing our relationship with technology, the planet and one another, what new alliances and experiments are necessary to shift beyond it? By creating a space for sharing across different contexts, the day was dedicated to collectively sketching out new imaginaries and practices for more plural and relational protocols for interdependence.

Beyond Cultures of Ownership ran in an ‘unconference’ style, which allowed for emergent agenda-setting and deep exchanges between participants. Improbable – a theatre company that specialises in using a process called Open Space Technology (OST) – facilitated this conversation. OST is a simple way for groups of people to think, work and take action together around a shared concern. There was no set agenda and the audience decided what to discuss.

The day began and ended with contributions that drew from multiple areas of contemporary thinking and practice, to inspire participant-led open space sessions with presentations by artists, policy and technology researchers, activists and social innovators: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Adrienne Buller, Hilary Cottam, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Indi Johar, Divya Siddarth and Sam Sivapragasam. Their provocations provided a set of common references to explore the role of the arts alongside the legal, political, cultural and ethical assumptions that underpin ownership.

120 conference attendees

Engagement:

open call for neW modelS for inTerdependence and oWnerShip in arT and culTure

In December 2023, Serpentine Arts Technologies and RadicalxChange , a community of activists, artists, entrepreneurs and scholars committed to using mechanism design to inspire radical social change, launched an open call for proposals that evolve our understanding of the concepts and practices that underwrite ‘ownership’. We received 71 project submissions from a diverse range of researchers and practitioners, who received support to develop their idea and present it at a Beyond Cultures of Ownership gathering in Oakland, California in March 2024.

The winning proposals were:

The Mesh - A United Screens Pirate Network by Abhishek Nilamber, Laura Klöckner, Alessandro Y. Longo, Pekko Koskinen, Anna Fasolato.
The Anarchiving Game : a Web3-Based Proof-ofCelebration Protocol by Erik Bordeleau, Lene Vollhardt, Pedro Victor Brandao.
Whole Earth Codec, Ch. 3: The Revelation of Planetary Entanglements through Synthetic Intelligence by Connor Cook, Christina Lu, Dalena Tran.

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Google AI Roundtable March 2024.

parTial common oWnerShip (pco)

Art enriches society through the weaving of relations between the cultures that create it and the cultures that receive it. PCO is a new system that allows artists, communities and holders of art to create structures of shared ownership and value distribution that better reflect those living relationships.

In 2023/24, activity included the development of the PCO blockchain system and Fairclouds , a prototype PCO project developed with RadicalxChange and the Aerocene Foundation , founded by artist Tomás Saraceno. This was initiated as part of the exhibition Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life in 2023 at Serpentine.

Over 18 months, an international, distributed community assembled towards the creation of a collective, intergenerational artwork – Fairclouds - made with and for the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc. Tracing the possibilities of dreaming and conveying, storing and retrieving, revealing and obscuring, this project takes up and renews the practice of weather reading through the phenomenon of pareidolia - the impulse that leads us to recognise patterns in ‘random’ information. Over 750 drawings imaged upon cloudscapes were contributed within the framework of exhibitions at Serpentine, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, as well as online via a dedicated repository. The stewardship system is set to be launched as part of a wider collaboration with the Indigenous Communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in Jujuy, Argentina, centred around the communities’ preservation of their environmental and cultural ecosystems in the face of lithium extraction’s damaging effects.

The project will launch publicly in Summer 2024.

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creaTive ai laB

Creative AI Lab is a collaboration between Serpentine R&D Platform and the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. From artistic practice, new approaches to technical and narrative aspects of machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI/ML) are emerging, continuing a lineage of artistic endeavours that build upon and critique computational systems as tools for communication and analysis. Since 2019, the Creative AI Lab has provided a space for longterm research into artistic practices (and their attendant collaborators) working with AI/ML. By focusing on the ‘back-end’ environment of artistic production, the Lab uses artistic practice and prototyping to speculate on the systemic impacts of emerging tools, systems and infrastructures both within the arts and humanities but also, importantly, in terms of wider public interest.

The Lab is run by:

Professor Mercedes Bunz - Department of Digital Humanities, KCL
Dr Daniel Chávez Heras - Department of Digital Humanities, KCL
Eva Jäger - Arts Technologies, Serpentine
Dr Serena Iervolino - Culture, Media and Creative Industries, KCL
Alasdair Milne - LAHP PhD Researcher, Department of Digital Humanities, KCL
Professor Joanna Zylinska - Department of Digital Humanities, KCL

Activity in 2023/24 included:

under The cloud: infraSTrucTural field reSearch in SouThWeST china

In May 2023, a group of artists, curators, media theorists, and anthropologists travelled to Guizhou. The province is one of the eight national ‘big data hubs’ under the Data in the East, Computing in the West programme - the Chinese strategic approach to data that aims to leverage the distinct advantages of each region toward technological growth. The group, led by curator Iris Long and artist HE Zike, visited key sites of computational infrastructure (the hardware, software, and networking components that collectively enable computers to run and process data) that have emerged in Guizhou province over the last decade.

These explorations investigated the real-world implications of techno-industrial policy that increasingly aims to optimise data and computing capabilities to adopt artificial intelligence. For Iris and Zike, the goal is to develop and test a fieldwork methodology for artists within infrastructural studies - a discipline that draws from technology, ethnography and environmental studies. The week-long trip, documented in a new publication (in English and Chinese) published by Serpentine Arts Technologies, shared details from the trip including this fieldwork and written reflections by the participants.

More information about the project can be found at temporalstack.com.

Participants were Cao Fei, Liu Chuang, Kevin Ziyu Liu, Payne Zhu, Shi Qing, Wang Hongzhe, Xu Haomin, Yu Weiying, Zhou Tao, Zhao Xiaoxiao, Eva Jäger, Xu Chuan, Tim Zuo and Gary Zhexi Zhang.

under The cloud: infraSTrucTural field reSearch in SouThWeST china

Serpentine Twitch

23 January 2024

Arts Technologies Curator, Eva Jäger, independent curator Iris Long, artist HE Zike and media scholar Kevin Ziyu Liu presented Under the Cloud , a new publication compiling research gathered during their field study in the Guizhou province of Southwest China.

523 Twitch views

Engagement:

creaTive ai field mapping: reSidency aT gray area, San franciSco

Gray Area hosted Alasdair Milne, Creative AI Lab and LAHP PhD Researcher, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London in Summer 2023. During this time, Alasdair expanded his doctoral thesis project, conducted studio and exhibition visits and initiated discussions with artists, curators and creative technologists.

arT x puBlic ai reSearch

Art x Public AI is a new research project by the Creative AI Lab that has informed the development of Future Art Ecosystems 4: Art x Public. The aim is to expand the conversations around AI by offering a more nuanced vision and approach to the negotiation of its public value and interest. Through the lens of art-making, we are able to explore key questions with greater precision and specificity. The project began with a workshop co-hosted by the Creative AI and Legal Lab on 2 June 2023 at Somerset House, the results of which were shared by Eva Jäger and Alana Kushnir at the AI Art Turing Workshop, held at City University, on 7 June 2023.

ai, arTS and SocieTy: Where are We Today? Where Should We go from here?

Roundtable discussion hosted by Serpentine and Google 13 March 2024

In a moment marked by rapid technological advancement and a continuous evolution of ideas, the intersection of technology and creativity is a fertile ground for innovation. Serpentine and Google convened 29 practitioners from across the UK cultural ecosystem including artists, curators, writers, technologists and thinkers to imagine and debate the possible futures of AI for artists and creative practitioners. With a diversity of perspectives, approaches and experience from art, museums, broadcasting, science, technology, academia and ethics, the roundtable examined where we are today, where the field should go and how to move in the right direction. The results will be shared in Summer 2024.

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Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: The Loophole at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

legal laB

Serpentine’s Legal Lab is a pioneering effort within the art field dedicated to the development of legal infrastructures for cross-industry collaboration, developed with Alana Kushnir of Guest Work Agency. The Lab is focused on the sharing and development of new knowledge and relates to complexities emerging from new artistic fields of practice, particularly in relation to the intersection of art and advanced technologies. Legal structures and tools, such as contracts, are crucial to structuring innovative enterprises and effective operational models. However, in the sphere of art, there is a tendency to shy away from legally onerous forms of arrangement. This has resulted in legal infrastructures being underacknowledged for their multifaceted potential in supporting cutting-edge creative practice. These concerns are present in the internal organisation of the art field and the expanding realm of crossdisciplinary relationships between art actors and external fields.

In 2023/24, the Lab was focused on building a series of open-source legal tools for artists and cultural institutions, working closely with Oio Studio on their development. On 25 May, a workshop was held at Somerset House for a cross-section of artists, curators, technologists and legal experts in order to test these tools and gather feedback on the current proposals.

BlocKchain laB

Supporting network development between visionary artists, cultural workers, blockchain entrepreneurs, as well as local initiatives, communities, institutions and businesses, Serpentine's Blockchain Lab fosters new translocal and transnational systems and an ethos of global cooperation within the arts.

The first series of events ran in 2017/18 in collaboration with the Goethe Institut London, with international artists, engineers, crypto-economists, musicians, technologists and theorists joining forces to understand how blockchain technologies - cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts - could enable a critical, sustainable and empowered culture. This was followed in 2019 by the Blockchain and Art Knowledge Sharing Summit UK in collaboration with Digital Catapult , which examined the cultural sector opportunities available for working with blockchain technologies. The conclusion of a five-year research project followed in 2022, led by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty, with the publication of Radical Friends: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts , in partnership with the Goethe Institut.

In 2023/24, the next phase of the Blockchain Lab was in development, working towards a three-year R&D and infrastructure prototyping project led by Blockchain Lab Principal Investigators, Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty. The mission of the project is to regenerate city art ecosystems by building new pathways for exchanging value translocally and within local communities. The aim is to set up processes, know-how and translocal exchange to enable art patrons and institutions to stake resources directly into the hands of cultural communities in evolving global cities, thereby centring local cultures, urgencies and social practices, whilst building new translocal exchange systems. The project will deliver a set of global city demonstrators, leaving local ecosystems more connected and enriched, with reflexive evaluation and research underpinning every phase, culminating in a second Radical Friends symposium where the results will be presented along with Blueprints and archives of work.

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arTS TechnologieS commiSSioning

Serpentine’s artist-led Arts Technologies programme develops contemporary artworks with artists that focus our attention on emerging technologies as a medium, tool or topic that can operate beyond the gallery walls through which the Arts Technologies team supports advanced production, development, distribution and engagement. Each commission aims to expand how we understand the effect of digital technologies on artistic and cultural practice today.

danielle BraThWaiTe-Shirley, The lacK: i KneW your voice Before you SpoKe

Art Night Dundee 23 June 2023

Inspired by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s love for chooseyour-own adventure games, with players’ decisions influencing every element of their surrounding world’s reconstruction. The installation included a performance component, featuring bespoke dance mats as video game controllers and sound generated by players. BrathwaiteShirley sought to create an environment of active participation in which the audience was as much the medium as the games she crafts. Co-commissioned for Art Night Dundee, 2023 by Art Night, NEoN Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies.

640 visitors

Engagement:

gaBriel maSSan, Third World: The BoTTom dimenSion

Development work began in late 2022 on Third World: The Bottom Dimension , a multi-level, single-player PC game commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. Conceptualised as a consciousness-raising tool, the game explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the ramifications of colonialism across physical and digital realities.

The game invites players into a fantastical and disorienting world populated with Massan’s digital sculptures, bespoke animation, films and camerawork, accompanied by sound developed with their collaborators. The game uses world-building and collaborative storytelling to challenge colonialist concepts of ‘exploration’, ‘nature’ and ‘knowledge’ to encourage a different kind of wayfinding.

Developed in dialogue with the artist’s interests in decentralised knowledge exchange, fictional archaeology, ecology and the critical role that collective memory plays in constructing futures, Third World is a platform for Massan’s collaborations with artists, technologists and thinkers. It featured artistic contributions by Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, sound design by LYZZA and work from Masako Hirano, Marchino Manga, Ralph McCoy, Carlos Minozzi, Iraj Montasham, Alexandre Pina and Sweet Baby Inc.

gaBriel maSSan’S Third World: The BoTTom dimenSion virTual launch

Serpentine Twitch and Fact YouTube 6 July 2023

Serpentine Arts Technologies, 180 Studios and Fact presented the XR online launch and playthrough of Third World: The Bottom Dimension , powered by Tezos. Third World is a single player multi-level game designed by artist Gabriel Massan and collaborators. Hosted by Gabriel Massan and Serpentine Arts Technologies Curator, Tamar Clarke-Brown, the event explored Third World’s characters, lore and world-building design born from an exploration of post-colonial queer Black-Brazilian experiences.

2303 viewers

Engagement:

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Line of flight: Artist © Crosslucid 2024.

in converSaTion: gaBriel maSSan, Tamar clarKe-BroWn and hanS ulrich oBriST

Institut français du Royaume-Uni 10 July 2023

To celebrate the opening of their exhibition and the launch of their video game and web3 project at Serpentine, Third World: The Bottom Dimension , Gabriel Massan was in conversation with Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director Serpentine, to discuss interdisciplinary approaches to world-building, experimental storytelling, playing and the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world through technologies like gaming.

dmSTfcTn fT. eviTa manji: Waluigi’S purgaTory

HQI London

8 February 2024

Waluigi’s Purgatory was a new interactive audiovisual performance by artist duo dmstfctn, featuring an original soundtrack composed and performed live by Evita Manji. Set in a 3D theatre simulated in real-time, the performance tells the story of an AI finding itself in a purgatory for AIs that cheated during their training. Burdened by memories of its past and by doubts on its future, the AI explores purgatory with the help of interacting audiences.

50 live

Engagement:

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Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

Welcoming a Broad & diverSe puBlic

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Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces* , 2023. Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.

In 2023/24 we had 674,861 visitors, which is 98% of pre-pandemic figures and represents a 101% growth compared to the previous year. Overwhelmingly, our visitors had a positive experience of Serpentine, with 93% of visitors reporting a good or very good experience. We also welcomed a more diverse audience, with more young people, more individuals from the global majority and more families than the previous year.

The composition of our total audience, both 'physical' and 'digital,' has transformed since the pandemic, with a dramatic 83% growth in our digital audience in 2019/20, increasing to 133% in 2023/24. While visitor numbers declined during the pandemic, attendance has since recovered to 2018/19 levels. In response to our growing digital audience, Serpentine has moved beyond the traditional white-cube gallery approach, which presents rarefied objects to a general public. We now offer a ‘user experience’ of art that appeals to a diverse range of users, integrating both online and offline platforms into one holistic experience.

Creating engaging digital content for paid and organic social media, producing clear and engaging marketing materials and offering a range of accessible, interactive experiences have been crucial to growing and diversifying our audience in 2023/24. Interactive activations included a family guide and ‘spider trail’ for kids, Web3 memory minting during the Gabriel Massan exhibition and a TikTok filter for the Barbara Kruger exhibition. In 2023/24, Serpentine increased the number of young visitors to the gallery to 8.5%, a 2.2% rise compared to the previous financial year (6.3%). A key driver of this increase was the Gabriel Massan exhibition, where 26.7% of visitors were aged 16-24. This highlights that relevant exhibition content and targeted communications can successfully attract this demographic. In 2024/25, we plan to utilise media, influencer and university partnerships to further strengthen relationships with this audience.

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phySical audience groWTh

The four key drivers for Serpentine’s audience growth were:

1. Seasonal Programming

This year we learnt that presenting exhibitions by more recognised artists during the low season is instrumental in achieving our attendance goals. Programming Barbara Kruger and Refik Anadol in Q4 of 2023/24 led to a 140% increase in exhibition attendance compared to Q4 of the previous year (from 41.9k to 100.7k). The average daily attendance of these exhibitions far exceeded our other exhibitions this year.

2. Collaborations Beyond Gallery Walls

Art in the Park

Our public art programme has played a significantrole in our visitor growth, with thousands discovering the Atta Kwami mural (47.9k), Pollinator Pathmaker (35.7k) and Pavilion (105.8k) during their trips to the park.

Sculpture Commissions

Large exhibition-related sculpture commissions strategically placed on the plinth have proven effective to extend our reach, acting as a beacon that attracts curious park visitors to see the sculpture then visit the related exhibition.

Outernet

This year Serpentine went beyond our gallery walls by commissioning two immersive artist installations in collaboration with Outernet , a multifaceted public arts venue that features contemporary works displayed on the world’s largest wrap-around screens and the iconic architecture in Central London. These projects have helped us to reach a broad audience in the busy Tottenham Court Road area and accounted for 13% of our overall attendance numbers in 2023/24. We supported both activations with advertising to drive audiences from Outernet to the accompanying exhibitions at Serpentine. For Gabriel Massan, we placed advertising within Tottenham Court Road tube station, while for Barbara Kruger, we produced flyers that were distributed to Outernet visitors.

3. Digital Content: social first and platform specific

In 2023/24, we achieved a digital reach of 13.7 million. Our digital audience has grown by 133% since 2018/19 and by 6% since 2022/23. The biggest contributions this year came from Instagram, which increased by 24k followers, LinkedIn, which gained 6k followers and TikTok, which we launched in November 2023 and rapidly grew to 6.7k followers by March 2024.

The key drivers of our digital audience growth are a social-first and platform-specific strategy that prioritises video content. We tailor our content according to each platform, leveraging their unique strengths. For example, on Instagram we have created more Reels and published more collaborative posts with artists, media partners and other influential accounts, enabling us to reach new audiences beyond our current followers.

4. Ticketing: targeting audiences and dynamic ticketing

In January 2024, we tested hybrid ticketing for the Refik Anadol and Barbara Kruger exhibitions, offering ticket holders guaranteed entry at a specific time, along with the option to donate online. This ticketing approach has proven successful for Serpentine.

Ticketing generated more donations than we typically receive in cash at the entrance to the exhibition.
Ticketing allows us to improve marketing efficiency to increase redemption and reach new audiences.
Pre-booking helped us to manage audience capacity and increase visitor numbers.
We offered ‘new benefits’ with a VIP link allowing members to walk in and see the show at any time, bypassing the large queues at weekends due to the artist’s popularity.
Ticketing enables us to capture more data and insights, helping us engage and learn about our audience. Our post-visit survey emails have significantly increased the number of responses we receive.

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preSS & media profile

From April 2023 to March 2024, Serpentine’s programming, featuring exhibitions, civic, technology, ecology, architecture and live activations, attracted extensive and significant media coverage across print, online and broadcast media, both nationally and internationally.

Steve McQueen

March 2023 marked the presentation of Steve McQueen’s exhibition Grenfell , the inaugural show of the year. The presentation of McQueen’s film at Serpentine South required a unique and historic PR campaign, due to its sensitive nature. In a departure from our usual press conference formats, media were invited to attend a special screening of the work and received the press release in advance.

The resulting campaign was very successful, garnering excellent previews, reviews and opinion pieces across the full spectrum of media, from culture, politics, society, business, lifestyle and the arts. One of the strongest attendance lists in the history of Serpentine’s press openings, The Guardian , The Evening Standard and The Independent gave the exhibition five stars. Further coverage featured prominent pieces in the BBC , The Observer , The Art Newspaper , The Financial Times , The Week , New Statesman , Metro , Time Out , ArtReview and Artforum among many others. Notably, Steve McQueen gave an exclusive and highly regarded interview to The Guardian.

Rory Pilgrim nominated for Turner Prize

Following the nomination of Rory Pilgrim as one of the Turner Prize nominees and the success of Radio Ballads, which was presented at Serpentine North in 2023, Serpentine issued a special press release to announce the news. This initiated a focused PR campaign running from March to December 2023, culminating in the award ceremony. The campaign garnered significant media attention, resulting in prominent coverage in The Guardian , The Financial Times , Apollo magazine , Studio International , Artdaily and several other notable publications.

Lina Ghotmeh’s Serpentine Pavilion

Architect Lina Ghotmeh’s Serpentine Pavilion was announced in November 2022 and was accompanied by an exclusive interview with The Guardian’s architecture correspondent, Olly Wainwright. The announcement resonated strongly within the architecture and design media, setting the stage for widespread coverage when the Pavilion was unveiled in June 2023. The launch received extensive press attention both nationally and internationally, with highlights including features in The Guardian , The Financial Times , Dezeen , Wallpaper *, WWD and prominent coverage in lifestyle, culture, arts and architecture publications.

Internationally, the Pavilion was featured in publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald , Le Quotidien de l’Art , Elle Décor Italia and others. The collateral live programme including the Park Nights event series was picked up by numerous platforms such as Time Out and i-D magazine. Lina Ghotmeh provided significant interviews, contributing to the Pavilion’s extensive media coverage and critical reviews.

The Summer Party 2023

The Pavilion played host to Serpentine’s annual fundraiser The Summer Party . This highly successful event was attended by Editors-in-Chief and garnered media coverage from Artnet , The Art Newspaper , Harper’s Bazaar UK , Vogue UK , Tatler and WWD . Coverage highlighted the evening’s activations, its unique setting and the notable guests in attendance. Key features included the step and repeat, Gabriel Massan’s live character interactions with guests during the party and Tomás Saraceno’s special film screening, all of which provided compelling stories for these publications.

Tomás Saraceno

Web(s) of Life by Tomás Saraceno was one of Serpentine’s most successful PR campaigns. The artist’s popularity, the show’s conceptual framework, and its innovative perspectives on sustainability, biodiversity and space - combined with advocacy from the Royal Parks – resulted in outstanding media coverage. Highlights included a notable interview on BBC Hardtalk , a review in The Observer and significant visibility in The Financial Times and The Times , which gave the exhibition a fourstar review. Additional coverage appeared in The Daily Telegraph , in Forbes , The Art Newspaper with a focus on sustainability, Wallpaper* , Time Out , The Evening Standard and more spanning features, reviews and interviews with the artists across print, online and podcast formats.

Gabriel Massan and Outernet

Third World, the Bottom Dimension was a comprehensive campaign that began with the announcement of the game in October 2022 and extended through the presentation of the exhibition and in-gallery gaming stations at Serpentine North from June 2023. The campaign also included the artist’s presentation at The Outernet in Tottenham Court Road, London and featured prominently at the Summer Party 2023.

The campaign was highly successful, generating numerous interviews and profiles including in Dazed , i-D , The Art Newspaper , ArtReview and Artforum . The exhibition, game and NFT components - powered by Tezos – received broad media coverage across both cultural and technological spheres, including Designboom , The Guardian , Hypebea , The Talks , Art Basel Journal , and Vogue Brazil among others. Additionally, the inclusion of Gabriel Massan’s artwork in Madonna’s latest tour which coincided with the exhibition, led to further notable interviews in Artnet , The Art newspaper , NUMERO Art and Wallpaper* among others.

Podcast: intimacies

In August 2023, Serpentine relaunched a new season of its podcast, featuring a curated series of six episodes available on all podcast streaming platforms including Apple Podcasts , Spotify and Google Podcasts . The relaunch received reviews and mentions in The Guardian (including its regular newsletter), The Wick and other publications that highlighted both the relaunch and the overarching themes explored in the episodes.

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How We Hold Rehearsal

Serpentine Civic and Education launched a new publication, How We Hold: Rehearsals in Art and Social Change published in collaboration with Koenig. The launch was celebrated with a day of discussions, offerings and music on Saturday, 30 September 2023. A targeted mini-campaign supported the launch with invitations sent to selected editors and a press release distributed to Serpentine’s global media database.

Allied Editions

Allied Editions returned to Frieze London with a unique presentation at the fair, staged in Regent’s Park from 11–15 October 2023. Allied Editions is a collaborative collective of artists’ editions composed of seven of London’s leading not-for-profit arts organisations: Camden Art Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Serpentine, South London Gallery, Studio Voltaire and Whitechapel Gallery.

The announcement generated remarkable coverage with an article in The Financial Times by Melanie Gerlis featuring quotes from Bettina Korek, CEO of Serpentine discussing the collaboration with other institutions in London to raise vital funds to keep galleries and museums open. The article highlighted Georg Baselitz’s pendant on sale in the Serpentine shop to coincide with the exhibition. Additionally, Frieze magazine noted the booth in its roundup of events and highlights during the fair.

Georg Baselitz

The exhibition Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011–2015 , garnered significant attention from both UK and international media. The campaign generated strong mentions, previews and a significant interview with the artist. Arts and culture correspondents familiar with Baselitz’s work responded positively to the exhibition. Coverage appeared in The Financial Times , The Evening Standard , The Guardian , London Live (featuring an interview with the curator of the show), The Times and Time Out . The monumental nine-metre-tall sculpture Zero Dom (Zero Dome) served as a compelling focal point for the media, which also expressed interest in Serpentine’s public art programme. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue featuring newly commissioned texts by contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin and Alvaro Barrington, which also attracted considerable interest from journalists across the arts and culture sectors.

2024 Highlights Release

Announcing the new season during Frieze Week resulted in strong coverage of the upcoming exhibitions and activations. The Art Newspaper covered the news with an extensive article on the women artists represented in the programme, including Judy Chicago, Babara Kruger and Lauren Halsey. Ocula magazine also featured the announcement.

Barbara Kruger and Outernet

Barbara Kruger’s Thinking of ~~You.~~ I Mean ~~Me.~~ I Mean You opened at Serpentine South Gallery from 1 February, becoming one of the year’s most acclaimed exhibitions. It garnered substantial media coverage, including an exclusive interview with The Financial Times and was featured in lifestyle publications such as Harper’s Bazaar , Dazed , The Face , Muse and Vogue UK . Arts publications Apollo , Aesthetica , The Art Newspaper , Creative Review , STIRworld , 10 magazine and Artnet also highlighted the exhibition. It received five-star reviews from major national newspapers, including The Guardian and The i , with exceptional reviews also appearing in The Sunday Times , Daily Telegraph , City AM and The London Review of Books . The photocall for the exhibition generated more coverage in The Independent and others publications.

In March 2023, Serpentine partnered with Outernet Art for a Barbara Kruger focused initiative, aligning with the final weeks of the exhibition to enhance visibility among Central London pedestrians. This partnership resulted in broader coverage, including a feature in The Art Newspaper that explored the impact of immersive institutions on the art world, a preview in The Evening Standard highlighting the accompanying merchandise, and key mentions in The Sunday Times . Notable elements of the campaign included the artist’s iconic works, London taxis featuring the artwork, a TikTok effect launched for the show as well as new merchandise. Each provided strong entry points for media engagement.

Refik Anadol

In February, AI pioneer and technologist Refik Anadol presented Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive . This exhibition culminated years of his experimentation with visual data of underwater landscapes and rainforests, transforming Serpentine North into an AI interpretation of the flora and fauna that populate these environments.

The exhibition secured extensive coverage, with major articles published in The Economist , The Art Newspaper and Forbes . Highlights included picture stories featured in key national titles such as The Guardian , The i , The Financial Times , The Times online and the front page of the Daily Telegraph . These included interviews with the artist in The Financial Times and Creative Review alongside a broadcast interview with Associated Press that was syndicated globally.

Year of AI

In 2024, Serpentine celebrates a decade of pioneering work in its Arts Technology Programme with a year-long exploration of how artists are engaging with artificial intelligence. To mark this milestone, we launched Future Art Ecosystems 4: Art x Public Art , which was accompanied by a dedicated press release outlining the full Arts Technology programme. This initiative garnered widespread coverage across prominent arts publications such as Ocula , Apollo , Surface , Forbes , Observer , Artnet and FAD , as well as the specialist tech site BIMA . The campaign was supported by interviews with Serpentine Arts Technologies curators.

A monthly column spotlighting the work of the Arts Technologies team has been secured for The Art Newspaper . This ongoing series will explore AI and technological advancements that are shaping the arts world.

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Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, Courtesy: Serpentine.

developing diverSe, highperforming & engaged TeamS

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Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

At Serpentine, we are committed to continuously improving our working environment and culture, ensuring that we remain a top employer for both current and future team members. We strive to create a workplace where employee voices are valued, behaviours are aligned and everyone has a clear understanding of our shared goals and their individual contributions.

our commiTmenT To incluSiviTy

We are committed to fostering a more inclusive and diverse art institution. This involves creating an environment where all individuals feel safe and empowered to flourish, creating a dynamic programme that attracts diverse audiences and supports a diverse range of artists. We do not tolerate discrimination in any form. We stand in solidarity with those who confront discrimination and actively work to dismantle structures that perpetuate discrimination.

We appreciate everyone in our organisation and community who has challenged us to do more and recognise our journey is ongoing. We are dedicated to taking continuous and effective action to advance our commitment to equity and inclusivity. To drive this commitment forward, we have developed a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy, building on the work that has already been done since 2020. Our strategy was created in collaboration with our employees and external EDI experts.

As of 31 March 2024, our workforce consists of 70% women, 28% Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse, 13% LGBTQ and 8.5% with a disability. Our people represent a blend of both art and non-art backgrounds. We continue to develop and work upon delivering our equity, diversity and inclusion strategy and action plan alongside our EDI group.

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Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

promoTing an incluSive culTure

aTTracTing and reTaining Qualified and TalenTed employeeS

To continuously improve our culture we are focusing on:

Workplace Culture: ensuring Serpentine feels like an inclusive place to work, where employees feel safe, engaged and valued. Our people have an understanding of diversity related issues and act as allies.
• Diversity Representation: we reflect the diversity of the population that we serve.

We recognise having a diverse, inclusive team with a variety of different perspectives and experiences will enhance Serpentine’s strategic aims. Our recruitment and retention strategies are designed to attract top talent from diverse backgrounds and foster an inclusive and supportive work environment to retain them.

Programme Content and Audience Experience: we continuously attract diverse audiences through our diverse and accessible programme. recogniSing and reWarding
• Diverse Programming: we continue to support a achievemenT and performance diverse range of artists at critical stages of their career. fairly

This year, we established our EDI group, comprising representatives from across the organisation dedicated to championing diversity and advancing our EDI action-plan.

Serpentine remains an accredited Living Wage Employer. This commitment applies to directly employed staff as well as contractors providing services to Serpentine. We regularly benchmark employee salaries and benefits to remain competitive in the talent market.

Key iniTiaTiveS in our acTion plan

Communications and Training: regularly hosting events and training to educate, raise awareness and celebrate diversity at Serpentine.
Diversity Reporting: provide regular reports to the executive team on employee diversity and feedback and implement initiatives to further increase our diversity.
• Development Pathways: ensure there are clear career development pathways, in particular for underrepresented employees.
Policy Equality: ensure equality is at the forefront of every new policy and process.

The Listening Circle

The Listening Circle provides a confidential, safe space for individuals of all backgrounds to discuss their experiences, concerns, or to engage in open conversations about the issues that matter to them.

Queer Currents

Queer Currents (QC) is a working group created to represent the voices of Serpentine staff members who identify as LGBTQI+. The mission of QC is to represent the voices and interests of LGBTQI+ staff in the organisation and explore connections with the wider LBTQI+ community through outreach and programming.

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Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States , 2024. Installation view, Serpentine South. © Yinka Shonibare CBE 2024. Photo: © Jo Underhill. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare CBE and Serpentine.

fuTure planS

In three years, Serpentine will have:

Our mission for 2024/25 is to build new connections between artists and society, leveraging technology and to inspire local communities and ecological awareness

Deepened our local roots and expanded our global reach, chiefly through technology
Cemented our place as an artist-led, digital-first, global brand, with a full user experience of art, appealing to a full spectrum of visitors online and within our spaces
• Led a digital transformation and become known as a global leader in arts technologies, creating new models for exhibitions, funding, distribution and audience engagement
Delivered an ambitious and world-class programme, highlighting ecology, community and technology and emerging and under-recognised artists
• Progressed our plans towards a net-zero emissions target, thanks to our sustainable practices
• Fostered an inclusive and collaborative working culture, to better reflect the diversity of our home city
• Tested new entrepreneurial income models, securing multi-year income streams

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Our world-class arts programme, digital touchpoints and experiences will speak to the following strategic programming pillars:

Dynamic memory

Shaping a more just, diverse and polyphonic art history – for example, with solo shows by artists who have been working for decades but have not always received the exhibitions they deserve.

Support for emerging artists

Giving emerging artists major opportunities: their first museum shows in Europe, through the Pavilion and/or the Park Nights experimental programme.

New experiments in art and technology

Commissioning works rooted in and reliant upon emerging technologies.

Civic engagement

Commissioning artists to address urgent issues like ecology and community – with public art and the annual Pavilion, going beyond gallery walls allowing people to encounter our art in unexpected ways and places.

Convenings

Fostering new alliances and producing reality through collaboration.

New blockbuster user experiences

Both physical and virtual experiences that go beyond the gallery space.

exhiBiTionS for 2024/25

Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States Serpentine South

12 April - 1 September 2024

The artist's first London solo exhibition in over 20 years will interrogate the ecological impact of colonisation and imperialism's legacy on conflict and consequential attempts at peace.

Judy Chicago: Revelations Serpentine North

23 May - 1 September 2024

Tracing the arc of the artists' career, this exhibition will bring together never-before-seen artworks that contextualise the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon.

Serpentine Pavilion 2024 by Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies Serpentine South

7 June - 27 October 2024

The Serpentine Pavilion 2024, Archipelagic Void , will be designed by architect Minsuk Cho and his firm, Mass Studies.

Gerhard Richter: STRIP-TOWER

Serpentine South

25 April - 20 October 2024 Serpentine will present a major new public sculpture by luminary Gerhard Richter.

Yayoi Kusama: Pumpkin

The Round Pond Kensington Gardens

9 July - 3 November 2024

Pumpkin (2024) is Kusama’s tallest bronze pumpkin sculpture to date, standing at six metres tall and 5.5 metres in diameter. The work will be installed by the Round Pond, in Kensington Gardens and offer a wide range of viewpoints in dialogue with the surrounding environment.

Precious Okoyomon: But Did You Die?

Book Launch

Offsite

9 September 2024

Precious Okoyomon will read from But Did You Die? followed by readings by Bhanu Kapil and Caleb Femi.

Esther Mahlangu Serpentine North

4 October 2024 - 28 September 2025

Serpentine will unveil the first public artwork in the UK by acclaimed artist Esther Mahlangu.

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: The Call Serpentine North

4 October 2024 – 2 February 2025

A collaboration between artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst and Serpentine Arts Technologies, The Call proposes new cultural, legal, and technical rituals for art in the age of AI.

Lauren Halsey: emajendat Serpentine South

4 October 2024 – 2 March 2025

The artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, will transform Serpentine South Gallery into an immersive ‘funk garden’ that responds to the building’s location in Kensington Gardens, offering an extension of the park into the galleries.

Lenio Kaklea Aypimi (Fauve) Sadler’s Wells, Lilian Baylis Studio

31 October and 1 November 2024

Serpentine will present the UK premiere of Αγρίμι (Fauve), a performance by Greek leading dancer, choreographer, director and writer Lenio Kaklea in partnership with Sadler’s Wells.

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our SupporTerS ThanK you

Serpentine Trustees

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE and Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairmen Marcus Boyle Treasurer Andrew Cohen Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo Off. OSI Lady Elena Foster Maja Hoffmann Ruth Mackenzie CBE Megha Mittal (started 19 March 2024) Robert Rosenkranz Amanda Sharp OBE Jonathan Wood Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Aditya Mittal (stepped down 19 March 2024)

Serpentine Council

Lady Elena Foster Chair Narmina Marandi and Francis Sultana Co-Heads of Cultural and Social Affairs Committee The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE Head of Education Committee Iwan Wirth Head of Exhibitions Committee Nina Fialkow and Kristín Ólafsdóttir Co-Heads of Film Committee Saffron Aldridge Robin and Esha Arora Veronica and Lars Bane Foundation Ms Goga Ashkenazi Sofia Barattieri-Weinstein and Brian Weinstein Erin Bell and Michael Cohen

Nicolas Berggruen Mrs Laurence Bet-Mansour Blavatnik Family Foundation Ivor Braka Donatella Campioni

Kate and John Carrafiell Tom and Ruth Chapman Priscilla and Louis de Charbonnieres XiaoMeng Cheng Nick and Caroline Clarry Andrew Cohen Irene and John Danilovich Alexander DiPersia Griet Dupont Carla du Manoir Alia El Gazzar James and Jennifer Esposito Dr Paul Ettlinger, Raimund Berthold and The London General Practice Mr. Fares Fares and Mrs. Tania Fares Idit and Moti Ferder Nina and David Fialkow Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo and Giovanni Russo Ms Silvia Fiorucci Candia Fisher The Lord and Lady Foster of Thames Bank Futura Seoul – Dahoe Ku Alys and Jim Garman Sasan and Yassmin Ghandehari Good Produce Ltd. Richard and Odile Grogan Mr Huh Yongsoo Sue Hostetler-Wrigley Alex Ionescu Frédéric Jousset Kirsh Foundation Nicolette Kwok Murtaza and Manal Lakhani Xin Li-Cohen Camilla and John Lindfors Mrs Aarti Lohia Tony Lyu Sanda Lwin and Farhad Karim

Darja Kočerova Narmina and Javad Marandi Svetlana Marich Samantha McManus Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal Alexandre and Mahsa Mouradian Anh Nguyen and Christopher Schläffer Batia and Idan Ofer Kristín Ólafsdóttir and Thor Björgólfsson Julia and Hans Rausing Christian Ravina and Robin Woodhead Patrizia Re Rebaudengo Frances Reynolds Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr Bianca Roden Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, LondonParisSalzburg Mr and Mrs Spas Roussev Karen and Ely Michel Ruimy Almine Ruiz-Picasso Suzan Sabancı Dinçer Mr and Mrs Jean Salata Dr Catherine Schmid Anders and Yukiko Schroeder Andrée Shore Tatiana Silva Thea Sprecher Kate and John Storey John Studzinski CBE Odeta Stuikys Francis Sultana and David Gill Antigone Theodorou and Stefan Bollinger Madeleine Thomson Laura and Barry Townsley Mrs Aizel Trudel Piril and Igno Van Waesberghe Tamara Varga Robert and Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE

White Cube Limited

Millicent Wilner The Lars Windhorst Foundation Manuela and Iwan Wirth Jonathan and Lucy Wood Poju Zabludowicz and Anita Zabludowicz OBE

Programmes supported by

180 Studios 1OF1 AG Sarah Arison Debbie and Glenn August Bagri Foundation Veronica and Lars Bane Marc and Lynne Benioff Hannah Barry Deborah Beckmann Kotzubei and Jacob Kotzubei Diego Berdakin Bloomberg Philanthropies Camalotte Foundation Cockayne Grants for the Arts at The London Community Foundation James Cohan Gallery The John S Cohen Foundation Cristea Roberts Gallery Nancy and Steven Crown Suzanne Deal Booth Cultural Trust Don Quixote Foundation Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer Nina and David Fialkow Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Ford Foundation Stephen Friedman Gallery Gagosian Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G Goodman Gallery Kenneth C. Griffin

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Agnes Gund

HENI

Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation Yongsoo Huh Kadima Foundation The London Community Foundation Luma Foundation The Marandi Foundation Mayor of London Maria Lassnig Foundation Victoria Miro Aditya and Megha Mittal Jarl Mohn Angella Nazarian Kristín Ólafsdóttir Gilberto Pozzi Ressler-Gertz Family Foundation Frances Reynolds Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr Thaddaeus Ropac The Rosenkranz Foundation Suzan Sabancı The Samsung Foundation of Culture Jordan Schnitzer, The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation

Jessica Silverman, San Francisco Reggie and Leigh Smith Sprüth Magers The Julia Stoschek Collection Adam and Jessica Sweidan Terra Foundation for American Art Oliva Walton and The Momentary White Cube Lars Windhorst David Zwirner

Capital Gifts

Wolfson Foundation

Platinum Corporate Benefactors

AECOM Bloomberg Dior Dorsia Goldman Sachs Lugano Diamonds Muse, The Rolls-Royce Art Programme Tezos Ecosystem VIVE Arts Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Gold Corporate Benefactors

Google Hublot Ruinart Maison Northern Trust

Silver Corporate Benefactors

Edwardian Hotels London Gallowglass Health and Safety The Pictet Group

Bronze Corporate Benefactors

DP9 Stage One The Technical Department Whispering Angel Zumtobel

Principal Corporate Members

Bloomberg Citi Foster + Partners

Annual Corporate Members

Julius Baer

Associate Corporate Members

CBRE London Essence The Peninsula Hotels Travers Smith

Serpentine Americas Foundation Board

Susan Danilow Board Chair Marina Abramović Sarah Arison Debbie August Abigail Baratta Kasseem, Swizz Beatz, Dean KAWS Bettina Korek, ex officio Robin Saunders Rirkrit Tiravanija Ted Vassilev _Honorary Member_

Serpentine Americas Foundation Supporters

Sarah Arison | Arison Arts Foundation Debbie and Glenn August Abby and Matt Bangser Abigail Baratta Diego Berdakin Berggruen Charities Blavatnik Family Foundation Deborah Beckmann and Jacob Kotzubei Camalotte Foundation Wendy and Matthew Cherwin James Cohan Gallery Nancy and Steven Crown John and Irene Danilovich Susan and Greg Danilow Suzanne Deal Booth Cultural Trust Sarah DeBlasio and The DeBlasio Family Foundation The Dinan Family Foundation Alexander DiPersia

Jennie and Richard DeScherer* (In Memoriam) Jamie Drake

Carla and Gerald Du Manoir James and Jennifer Esposito Shaari Ergas

Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer Lisa S. Firestone

Fuhrman Family Foundation Katia Francesconi Charitable Fund Lauren Schor Geller and Martin Geller Claire Hofmann and Ben Goldhirsh Laurie and Peter Grauer

Scott D. Greenberg Kenneth C. Griffin Agnes Gund Mimi Haas

Josh Harris and Layla Nemazee Marlene Hess and James Zirin Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation Alex Ionescu

Thomas L. Kempner Jr. Foundation Inc. Elizabeth Khuri and Otis Chandler Nicole and Joel Klein

Eric Kranzler

Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Nancy Lainer Vincent LaPadula Agnes Lew Xin Li-Cohen

Elizabeth S. and J. Jeffry Louis Marian Goodman Foundation Samantha McManus

Lachlan Miles and Christopher Hill Pamela and Jarl Mohn The Moore Charitable Foundation Sandra Muss Angella Nazarian Patty Newburger and Brad Wechsler Scott Rechler | Rechler Philanthropy, LLC Ressler-Gertz Family Foundation Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr The Rosenkranz Foundation Steve and Kaayla Roth Foundation A.S.C. Rower Doug Schoen Jordan Schnitzer, The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation Carla Shen Tatiana Silva Samira Sine Ed Skyler | Citi Reggie and Leigh Smith Tishman Speyer Wendy Stark Morrisey Gillian and Robert Steel Kate and John Storey Odeta Stuikys Rose Grazka Taylor Roxann Taylor Piril and Igno Van Waesberghe Simona and Ted Vassilev Oliva Walton and The Momentary Hope Warschaw Maureen White and Steven Rattner Bonnie and Darrin Woo Barbara and David Zalaznick

*In Memoriam

Patrons

Joy Adams Alka and Ravin Agrawal Nora Alangari Almine Rech Jose Antonio Alcantara Yassaman Ali Kamel Alzarka Zachery and Deanne Anderson Parita Bagheri Dr Bettina Bahlsen Caroline Boseley Romanos Elie Brihi Mr. Adam Brunk and Dr. Madeleine Haddon Burger Collection

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Aditi Chadha

Chantal and Greg Chamandy Radhika Chanana Katherine Chapman Stemberg Quaid Childers Greg and Ania Coffey Niki Cole Coleridge Capital Pilar Corrias Frederic Court Thomas Croft Yoav Dangoor Colleen De Bonis Sophie Diedrichs Valentina Drouin Genevieve Dunn Ugoma Ebilah Maryam Eisler Leonie Fallstrom Alessandro Maria Ferreri Kateryna Filippi Sara Fitzmaurice Mr Tim Flynn Katia Francesconi Marc Freeman and Camilla Freeman-Topper Mala Gaonkar Amy Gardner Houda Ghazal Richard Grosse Francesca Guagnini Oliver Haarmann

Linford Haggie Maxine Hargreaves-Adams Josh and Layla Harris Isabelle Henkell von Ribbentrop Kelly Hoppen Eva and Iraj Ispahani Mrs Mary Jeffersa Mr Vladimir Kantor Charles Karsten Guldeep Kohli Vivian Landau Wipf Maged Latif Lyndon and Sophie Lea David and Laura Lewis Simon and Lily Liebel Olena Lutsenko

Daniel Macmillian

Cary Martin and Adrienn Almásy-Martin Alexandra McManus Pramod Mittal

Natalia Miyar Manuela Morgano John Mortimer Maiguelle Moulene Natasha Müller Richard Muirhead Paul and Charlotte Munford Opera Gallery London Asli Ozok Maureen Paley Asta Paulauskaite Alexander Platon Ahmed Rahman Marc Renard-Payen Luciana Rique Kimberley Robson Francesca Roni Tarika Sawhney Ajazul Shah Henrietta Shields Nayrouz Tatanaki Michael Tian and Sharon Zhu Adi Tiroche Ms Warly Tomei Emily Tsingou Anastasia Velikovsky Andrianna Whish Ashley White Julia Zaouk Mr and Mrs Zorbibe David Zwirner

Future Contemporaries Committee Robert Sheffield and Nicholas Kirkwood Co-chairs HRH Princess Eugenie of York Alayo Akinkugbe Alia Al-Senussi Milo Astaire Ashkan Baghestani Hannah Barry Evelyn Booth-Clibborn Efe Cakarel Chiara Carboni Laura De Gunzburg Alex Eagle The Hon Paola Foster Jasper Greig Anna Guggenbuehl Landau Joe Kennedy Karen Levy Joanna Masiyiwa

Alexander Hankin

Eugenio Re Rebaudengo Annabelle Scholar Hikari Yokoyama

Future Contemporaries Members

Jade Adams Toluwani Adejuyigbe Chard Adio Jose Antonio Alcantara Sara AlRashed

Aurore Ankarcrona Hennessey Gianluca Arrigoni Nur Arvas Mila Askarova Marco Assetto Mrs. Bahamdan Tosca Baharani Josephine May Bailey Adam Baldwin Alastair Balfour Mrs Natasha Barnaba Isabel Barrachina Gomez Anna Nora Berstein Valeria Biamonti Maribelle Bierens Sabina Bilenko Lucas Bitencourt

Diego Bivero-Volpe and Charlotte C. Carroll Berry Bloomingdale Julia Bolgova Cassandra Bowes Monelle Bradshaw Leonie and Mikael Brantberg Keeli Brantl Romanos Elie Brihi Žanete Bukarte Alexandra Burston Jonny Burt Manfredi Campioni de Filippo Alaric Cao Jez Cartwright Louis Chapple Tahira Chawla Cherry Cheng Claudia Cheng Chen Chowers Nathan Clements-Gillespie William Comfort Sherrett Dahlstrom Ilayda Danisman

Filipe de Almeida Assis Sophie De Mello Franco Sophie Dickson Margarita Domuschieva Catherine Doronin Carolina Drago Warren Ehgoetz Izly El-Hammouti Angela Enzo Rayan Fayez Eduardo Foster Phoebe Forster Natalia Fuller, Galerie Max Hetzler Maria Garmaeva Yasmin Gee Mikel Giordano Adam Gordon Martell Graf Von Hardenberg Taymour Grahne Nico Guardansai Lydia Guett Bibi Hamidi Celina Hares Laura M. Herman S Holt

Amanda Ibrahim Adam Irving Domino Jahn Vegetti Charles Janeway Millie Jason Foster Javier Jileta Peter Jones Nicole Kaiser Zoe Karafylakis Sperling Simmy Kaur Shakil Karim Minnie Kemp Bella Kesoyan Victoria Kleiner Cordelia Knaack Mrs Sonja Koenig Casey Kohlberg Yulia Kondakova Mimi Koné Dustin Kronsbein Darya Kravchenko Anna Kuchina Cansu Kucuk Philip Kwok Flavia Lascetti Arianna Laufer

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Dominic Sylvia Lauren Charles Le Pelley du Manoir Jasmine Li Pinyuan Li Sam Lincoln Matilda Liu M-C Llamas Simon Lyall-Cottle Sonia Mak Jean-David Malat JD Malat Gallery Quinn Martinelli Florence B M Mather Magnus and Maria-Theresia Mathisen Oliver T.R Marques Lena McCroary Jayne Mckenna Alexandra Meyers Olivia Mieke-Maria Paulina Martha Abigail Miller Nina Moaddel Francisco Mourao Mu Qing Kate Munk Kevin Nathan Devon Nocera Patrick Oehlschlaeger Charlotte Rohani Eliza Osborne Charlie Pannell Pietro Pantalani Aurore Pasquet Santa Pastare Dyvia Pathak Jan-Christoph Peters Sophie Philippe Ryan Poon Polina Proshkina Mr and Mrs Alexander Purcell Rodrigues Jacob Rawel Brooke Reese Ariana Regalado Piotr Rejmer Jonathan Ridgway Sophia Robert Niklas Röhling Anastasia Ruimy Natasha Ryumina Phoebe Saatchi Yates Ceyda Sabancı Dinçer Haluk Sabancı Dinçer Valerie Sadoun Kiara Salazar

Salima Sarsenova Sally Eugenia Schwartz Kitty Shenlin Mai Miss Alaira Tirtha Shetty Bianca Shi Wei Shi Skylar Xie Oksana Smirnova Nicolas Sorbac Joseph Spieczny Mithra Stevens Stephanie Stevens Kira Streletzki Jana Suhani Soin Gigi Surel Roxana Sursock Karam Molly Susman Ying-Hsuan Tai Aizhan Tampayeva Alexandra Tango Leopold Thun Philip Tomei Milan Tomic Margo Trushina Elina Tsokri Jason Tucker Dexter Ukaegbu Alina Uspenskaya Rachel Verghis Angelina Volk Matilda Liu Alexa and Marcus Waley-Cohen Georgina Walker Luning Wang Pamela Weinstock Tish Weinstock Katy Wickremesinghe Agata Woloszczuk Susan Wu Yuyao Xie Dr Penny Dan Xu Arthur Yates Maya and Roy Zabludowicz Nabil El Zaouk Fabrizio D. Zappaterra

With additional thanks to Diya Sikka and any Council, Patrons, Serpentine America Supporters and Future Contemporaries who wish to remain anonymous

And kind assistance from

The Royal Parks

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Public Funding by Arts Council England

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financial revieW

overvieW

Over the past year, Serpentine has continued to build on its strategic focus, with particular emphasis on expanding our fundraising efforts and securing funding for our ambitious programme of works. In the face of rising costs, driven by persistent inflation and our commitment to delivering high-quality exhibitions and programmes, we have seen growth in our income, reflecting our success in adapting to the evolving funding landscape.

In the year ending 31 March 2024, Serpentine has maintained a robust programme of in-person exhibitions and events, marking our second full year of operation since the lifting of all pandemic restrictions. Our income and expenditure have both exceeded pre-pandemic levels, with funds available for programme activities increasing further, demonstrating our resilience and adaptability.

Looking ahead, we anticipate continued financial and operational challenges. The funding environment remains tight, inflation continues to exert pressure and the ongoing maintenance and development of our facilities are essential. Nevertheless, with a dynamic programme planned and strong support from our extensive network of supporters and funders, Serpentine is well positioned to continue delivering world-class exhibitions, events and programmes.

Summary of performance

Total income has increased to £13.6m, representing a 14% rise compared to the previous year. Total expenditure has increased to £14.6m, up 38% on prior year results. Overall net expenditure is therefore £1m, with a surplus of £1.2m, accruing to the unrestricted fund after several transfers between funds.

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principal SourceS of funding

The majority of Serpentine’s income is from donations and sponsorships. These totalled £6.3m in the year to 31 March 2024, compared to £6.8m in the prior year with the £0.5m decrease attributable to a reduction in Arts Council England funding. Trading income arising from fundraising events, gallery hire and sale of limited editions fell from £2.1m to £1.7m for the year. This decline was primarily due to a strategic shift on one of the planned fundraising events, the Summer Party, to be more exclusive for 2023.

Income 2023/24

Donations and Legacies	£6.3M
Grants	£0.7M
Donations & Support	£5.6M
Fundraising Trading Activities	£1.7M
Merchandise	£0.8M
Other Commercial Activities	£0.9M
Income From Charitable Activities	£5.6M
Exhibitions	£3.2M
Education	£0.9M
Architectural Commission	£1.5M

----- Start of picture text -----
Total Income
£13.6M
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expendiTure

While total costs of raising funds have been maintained at £3.0m, in line with prior year results, total expenditure on charitable activities have increased in the year to 31 March 2024 to £11.5m (2023: £10.5m). This rise is attributed to inflation, higher operating costs, and the hosting of two digital exhibitions.

A more detailed analysis of income and expenditure is reported in notes 3 to 8 to the Financial Statements.

Expenditure 2023/24

Raising Funds	£2.2M
Fundraising Trading Costs	£0.8M
Charitable Activities	£11.5M
Exhibitions	£8.8M
Education	£1.2M
Architectural Commission	£1.6M

----- Start of picture text -----
Total Expenditure
£14.6M
----- End of picture text -----

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annual fundraiSing acTiviTieS

Fundraising Practices

Serpentine’s Development team is structured to focus on different income streams, namely: Corporate and Partnerships, Individual Giving, Major Gifts, Trusts, Foundations and Government Grants. Each area adheres to relevant rules and regulations and works within best-practice guidelines of the Charity Commission, the Fundraising Regulator and the Institute of Fundraising, as well as Serpentine’s own policies, such as the Ethical Fundraising Policy. Serpentine’s fundraising activities are monitored by the senior management team, and additionally overseen and approved by the Board of Trustees.

The Charity does not employ third parties to fundraise on its behalf. The Ethics Sub-Committee also monitors fundraising activities to ensure adherence to due diligence processes. Complaints are dealt with through Serpentine’s complaints and feedback procedures. In 2023/24, Serpentine received no fundraising complaints. The fundraising approach undertaken by the Development team is to take reasonable steps to understand the circumstances of each donor, including taking into consideration whether the donor is vulnerable or requires additional care or support to make informed decisions. Serpentine has complied with all data processing requirements in accordance with GDPR legislation and updated our privacy policy. A clear opt-out process is available on all electronic mailings and communications.

Fundraising Performance

Under the leadership of the CEO and Artistic Director, the fundraising team had a positive year given the challenging circumstances. The significant contribution from the department has been key to Serpentine’s financial sustainability during this period. Corporate fundraising totalled £0.2m (2023: £0.2m), in line with the previous year as we successfully renewed or extended contracts with a number of high-profile partners. Individual Giving schemes break down into several levels of engagement and financial support. Despite another challenging year, the ongoing commitment of our supporters led to a membership group totalling 311 (2023: 276), with a combined income to the charity of £2.1m (2023: £1.7m).

We engage closely with our members through several committees including the Exhibitions Committee, the Education Committee, Cultural and Social Affairs Committee and the Future Contemporaries Committee. In 2023/24, we were able to successfully organise a number of curated trips and events, which provided opportunities to re-engage with our members in person. Major gifts were all accepted in accordance with the Charity’s Ethical Fundraising Policy and following due diligence processes. The Development team carry out risk assessments on all new prospective donations or sponsorship opportunities of £10k or more. Major gifts totalled £3.5m (2023: £3.2m) over the financial year. All funding achieved through grants from UK and international Trusts and Foundations followed the protocols and guidance of specific funders.

fundraiSing evenTS

The Serpentine Summer Party, a key event in London’s cultural calendar, successfully united prominent figures from the arts, fashion, music and business sectors. The event, led by Serpentine’s CEO Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, served as a major fundraiser and was celebrated for strengthening connections within the Serpentine community.

Lina Ghotmeh’s Pavilion, À table , central to the evening, highlighted themes of unity and conviviality. Ghotmeh’s architectural vision influenced the event’s design and programme, which featured a live performance by the A ga Khan Master Musicians , reflecting the Pavilion’s cultural focus.

Artist Gabriel Massan contributed interactive elements through real-life representations of his project Third World: The Bottom Dimension , creating an engaging experience for guests. A limited-edition digital momento by Massan was also minted for attendees.

The event showcased other notable works, including Tomàs Saraceno’s Web(s) of Life and a film screening of Aerocene for Ruinart. Guests also enjoyed a preview of Sissel Tolaas’s olfactory art project, further enriching the evening’s artistic offerings.

The amount raised was £0.4m (2023: £0.9m).

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oTher income generaTing acTiviTieS

SG Commerce Limited

The Serpentine Trust owns 100% of the issued share capital of SG Commerce Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales under registered number 8052071. Its financial performance has been consolidated into the Trust’s group accounts.

The company carried out non-charitable commercial trading activities for the Trust, primarily for the sale of limited editions prints, catalogues and other merchandise. In 2023/24, its annual turnover was £1.2m (2023: £0.9m), with profits of £0.8m (2023: £0.4m). The profit will be gifted to the Serpentine Trust.

Serpentine Online Shop

Serpentine’s shop and website offer a range of Serpentine limited editions, exhibition catalogues, print and merchandise and titles released in parallel to the Serpentine programme.

Limited Editions

Serpentine commissions limited edition prints in conjunction with its exhibition programme. Revenue for the year was £0.6m (2023: £0.5m).

Publications

Serpentine produces exhibition catalogues and journals to accompany the programmes. Sales for the year were £65k (2023: £34k).

Gallery Hire

Serpentine offers a unique event space for hire which attracts businesses and individuals. Gallery hire income in 2023/24 was £0.3m (2023: £0.1m).

Magazine Restaurant

Benugo took over operation of The Magazine in the summer of 2021. Total income generated from the Magazine in the year to 31 March 2024 was £0.1m (2023: £0.1m).

Koenig Bookshop

Koenig Books continues to act as the main co-producer and distributor of Serpentine’s exhibition catalogues which are sold in the on-site bookshop, which is the main London branch of Walther Koenig Books Ltd, Europe’s largest independent bookshop. It also stocks a broad range of artists’ books, monographs and international titles relating to art, photography, architecture and design.

Serpentine Americas Foundation

The Serpentine Americas Foundation was launched in 2014 and is an independent charity which brings together supporters from across the Americas to serve as ambassadors for Serpentine. Americas Foundation members' generous support, which in 2023/24 amounted to £0.7m (2023: £0.4m), helps showcase the work of North and South American artists at Serpentine. Members receive access to a range of special events and programmes throughout the year, including two annual meetings in New York featuring noted artists, architects and global leaders.

riSK STaTemenT

The Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring that there are effective and adequate risk management and internal control systems in place. It discharges this responsibility through the Finance Sub-Committee and Operating Committee, which lead the review and management of the Trust's risk management framework.

The Trustees have assessed all major risks to which the Charity is exposed. Risk areas reviewed include strategy, operations, financial performance, fraud, knowledge management, compliance, reputational and business continuity. For each, a programme of action or review has been developed, which is updated twice yearly.

Key risks currently identified by trustees include ongoing high inflation, a tightening funding environment and retention of staff. In response to these risks, as well as the continued threat of worldwide public health, ecological, and economic crises, the Trustees have continued to take actions to ensure organisational resilience whilst reviewing and monitoring the evolving impact of external factors through more frequent board reporting. The specific actions included a revised strategy and income diversification plan and a risk-based review of reserves requirements. Serpentine developed and implemented a fraud risk register and an integrated data strategy to align audience development with fundraising. The organisation continued to champion equality, diversity and inclusion among staff, artists and audiences.

going concern

Serpentine’s unrestricted funds were £2.6m at 1 April 2023 and £3.8m at 31 March 2024. Cash balances were £3.0m at 1 April 2023 and £1.9m at 31 March 2024.

Serpentine has considered its ability to continue as a going concern for the 12 months following the signing of the financial statements. Detailed budgets, scenario analysis, and cash flow estimates for 2025 and 2026 have been prepared, taking into account current national and global uncertainties and high inflation and Serpentine’s ability to manage the risks arising from these.

After reviewing these and considering potential short and mid-term opportunities and risks, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that Serpentine has adequate resources to continue its activities for the foreseeable future.

Accordingly, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.

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reServeS

The Trustees regularly review the reserves of the Charity. This review encompasses the nature of and risks to income and expenditure streams, the need to match variable income with predominantly fixed expenditure commitments and the different types of funds held by the Trust.

In the past, the policy has been to progressively build reserves, targeting a range between £2.7m and £3.0m to ensure greater flexibility and resilience. However, reserves were drawn down during the pandemic and its aftermath. In addition, in late 2022, Serpentine initiated a major capital installation of a vital climate-control system in the Serpentine South Gallery, resulting in the transfer of £0.5m from designated funds into the fixed asset fund during the year ending 31 March 2023.

Unrestricted funds at 31 March 2024 increased by £1.2m to £3.8m (2023: £2.6m) and comprised £2.5m reserves (2023: £1.6m), £nil designated funds (2023: £0.1m) and £1.3m fixed asset funds (£0.9m).

The reserves policy was reviewed by trustees in July 2023, and the revised policy stipulates that Serpentine should hold reserves equivalent to two to three months of forecast annual expenditure. Trustees are pleased to report that as of 31 March 2024, the reserves are in line with the revised policy.

Unrestricted Fund: closing balances at year-end

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2019/20 £3.0M
2020/21 £2.9M
2021/22 £2.7M
2022/23 £2.6M
2023/24 £3.8M
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STrucTure, governance & managemenT

governance

The charity is a charitable company limited by guarantee. It was founded in 1970 and was incorporated as a company in 1987. It is governed by Memorandum and Articles of Association, which were last amended in November 2015. The primary

charitable objective is to promote, improve, develop and maintain public education in all forms of the arts and music.

The Board members, as charitable Trustees and Company Directors, have the legal responsibility for the effective use of resources in accordance with the objectives of the Serpentine Trust and for providing effective leadership and direction.

Directors delegate certain financial and operational functions to the Finance Sub-Committee and Operating Committee, which operate under specific Terms of Reference. The committees meet on a regular basis and their decisions are ratified by the full Board.

Responsibility for strategy, planning and day-to-day management of operations is delegated to the executive team, who are considered to be the key management team, led by the Chief Executive Officer, Artistic Director and Director of Strategic Operations and Finance. Formal reporting to the Trustees takes place regularly throughout the year.

Board of TruSTeeS

The Board of Trustees meets quarterly and is responsible for the Serpentine’s management and administration. The following is a list of the Trustees of the Serpentine Trust who served for all or part of the year to 31 March 2024:

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE Co-Vice Chairman Marcus Boyle Treasurer Sir David Adjaye OBE – resigned 4 July 2023 Andrew Cohen Nicoletta Fiorucci Off. OSI Lady Elena Foster Maja Hoffman Ruth Mackenzie CBE Aditya Mittal – resigned 19 March 2024 Megha Mittal – appointed 19 March 2024 Robert Rosenkranz Amanda Sharp OBE Jonathan Wood Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

The Trustees are aware of the Charity Governance Code, which sets out the principles and recommended practice for good governance within the sector. The Trustees are satisfied that the Charity applies the principles of the code within its current Governance arrangements.

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finance SuB-commiTTee

The Finance Sub-Committee meets quarterly and is responsible for audit, finance, operations and remuneration. Salaries, including those of the Executive team, are reviewed annually and any increases take effect from 1 April of the following financial year. Increases are based on benchmarking of average pay awards in the UK combined with the Trust’s ability to pay. The Trust is committed to ensuring that salaries are market competitive and fair, offering the London Living Wage as a minimum to all staff.

The Committee members are:

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman The Hon Felicity Waley-Cohen CBE Co-Vice Chairman Marcus Boyle Treasurer Jonathan Wood

operaTing commiTTee

The Operating Committee usually meets every fortnight and is responsible for monitoring finances and operations.

The Committee members are:

Barry Townsley CBE Co-Vice Chairman Marcus Boyle Treasurer Jonathan Wood

eThicS commiTTee

The Ethics Committee meets quarterly and is responsible for developing and promoting Serpentine’s ethical principles. It safeguards and oversees the overall ethical health of the organisation, as well as the embedding equality, inclusion and relevance values. The committee ensures that all corporate policies, practices and decisions reflect the mission of the Serpentine and adhere to the highest ethical standards. It also promotes the debate and resolution of ethical situations that may arise. Additionally, it is responsible for the organisation's ethical fundraising practices.

The Committee members are:

Jonathan Wood Chair Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Marcus Boyle Treasurer Andrew Cohen Ruth Mackenzie CBE Amanda Sharp OBE

recruiTmenT and Training of TruSTeeS

The Serpentine Trust periodically reviews its Board of Trustees to ensure that the range of skills required by the organisation is assessed and provided for. The recruitment process is an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the Board, which provides invaluable expertise to Serpentine members of staff, who, at a senior level, are in contact with the Trustees on a regular basis. This collaborative working relationship is of immeasurable value to the organisation and ensures a transparent model of governance.

Each Trustee undertakes an induction programme that includes meetings with the Chair, the Chief Executive Officer and members of the executive team as appropriate. Trustees do not exercise a management function but are encouraged to engage with areas of particular interest through close involvement with management and staff. Trustees give their time freely and no remuneration is paid, except for direct reimbursement of travel expenses.

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puBlic BenefiT STaTemenT

The Trustees believe that all the Serpentine Trust’s charitable service delivery is for public benefit and note that the great majority is made available to the public without charge. This includes its world-renowned Exhibitions and Education programmes, as well as its architectural commission.

The Trustees confirm that they have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charity Act 2011 to have due regard to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit, ‘Charities and Public Benefit’.

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environmenTal SuSTainaBiliTy and ecologieS aT SerpenTine

These documents and organisational structures lay out and implement the principles and protocols of Serpentine’s integrated, holistic approach to ecological responsibility throughout the organisation. Steered by Serpentine Ecologies and colleagues across all teams, Serpentine’s Environmental Sustainability Statement lays out an approach which is artist-led, adaptive and committed to reparative and long-term responsibility, and reflects its commitment to embedding environmental action and thought leadership throughout our infrastructure, buildings, programming and network.

SerpenTine ecologieS STraTegy

Serpentine’s Ecologies Strategy is a three-year plan which includes a long-term vision, as well as short-term aims, implementation strategies, stakeholder mapping, risks and mitigation strategies. Serpentine’s Ecologies Strategy also lays out the principles for an innovative approach to the Green Team.

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ecologieS and environmenTal SuSTainaBiliTy STaTemenT

We recognise our responsibility to help protect the planet. We are committed to minimising the impact our galleries and operations have on the environment and supporting those who are working to improve global environmental sustainability.

Serpentine acknowledges the climate emergency and recognises it as the most urgent issue of our time. We are a public institution committed to supporting artists and their visions of the future; we pledge ourselves to new ways of thinking and acting.

As a central pillar of our programming, we have embedded environmental and ecological concerns across the galleries’ programmes, infrastructure and networks. We aim via our main activities to contribute positively to cultural, behavioural and systemic shifts towards environmental sustainability and thriving.

We are actively reducing our environmental impact. Serpentine was part of the Arts Council England Sustainability Spotlight Programme 2018-2023 delivered by Julie’s Bicycle, striving to reduce the environmental impacts of Band 3 National Portfolio Organisations to achieve measurable carbon reductions through the development of environmental management practice. From this work, we have developed and are implementing our Environmental Sustainability Action Plan.

Our Environmental Sustainability Statement informs all of our operations, from procurement and travel to cleaning products and energy and water consumption. This includes using a renewable electricity supplier, Green IT, waste recycling, using recycled and environmentally friendly products where possible and moving towards ‘paperless’. We are collaborating with all suppliers to obtain better data on our consumption of resources, with a view to monitoring and reducing usage in future and are developing alternative sustainable sources where possible.

Serpentine is also committed to pooling knowledge and convening its networks to share best practices for taking action against the climate emergency through Julie's Bicycle.

Through its networks of artists and organisations, Serpentine seeks to develop and prototype new infrastructures and new protocols for positive and reparative environmental action through art and culture. We aim to move beyond the principle of 'do less harm' and towards that of 'leave things better'.

Areas of current focus include:

Ensuring our governance framework is used to help embed environmental responsibility and sustainability throughout our operations, with staff responsible for these key areas in all departments and at all levels across the organisation;
Continuing to programme in an environmentally conscious and sustainable way, embedding environmental and ecological concerns across the galleries' programmes, infrastructure and networks;
Communicating our environmental commitment and action to our visitors and stakeholders and taking an active role in supporting other social initiatives and networks which can support our approach to environmental sustainability;
Continuing to monitor and minimise the energy use of our buildings and the technologies that we use;
Monitoring and minimising the environmental impacts of our business travel and encouraging staff to consider low emission commuting options. As a gallery with an international reach we welcome dialogue with our artists and partners to monitor and justify all of our journeys and foster sustainable change;
Continuing to hold ourselves to account through our collaboration with Julie's Bicycle and other cultural networks, by monitoring and sharing data on our consumption of resources;

We seek to take the long view. As an organisation, we acknowledge that we belong to this planet and share responsibility for its thriving. Through our actions and advocacy, we act in the best interest of future generations of humans and more-than-human beings.

Reducing the production of waste from our offices and exhibition and event production processes by continually improving the sustainability of the products we procure, ensuring they can be reused or recycled, adopting circular models where possible.

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environmenTal SuSTainaBiliTy acTion plan

Our Environmental Sustainability Action Plan has been developed to deliver the vision laid out in our Environmental Sustainability Statement, by breaking down our ambitions into manageable time-bound tasks that can be delegated across Serpentine's team.

Durational key objectives detailed in the plan are drawn out below:

Staff Engagement

Continue to increase staff awareness of the environmental work at staff meetings, in regular communications with staff and through the Green Team, encouraging suggestions and improvements from all departments.

Programming

Solidify our department of Ecologies, dedicated to integrating ecological efforts, bringing cultural, behavioural and systematic shifts across infrastructure and networks through programming and advocacy.
Develop an integrated approach to programming and sustainability by actively promoting exchange and mutual learning between Serpentine's different areas of activities and strategic aims.

Energy

Continue to work with our energy management consultant to measure and report on energy and water consumption using the online Carbon Calculator.
Compile statistics to discuss and implement ongoing improvements that can be made with the Facilities team.

Travel and Transport

Monitor the impact of our new travel policy and explore further ways to reduce staff, artist and audience and travel emissions.

Recycling and Waste

Promote environmentally-friendly office practices – switching off computers, lights and fans when not in use and economising where possible on printing and use of paper and other office materials.

SerpenTine green Team

Serpentine’s Green Team is a cross-departmental group of individuals who meet regularly to review Serpentine’s progress along its sustainability pathways. The team meets in two formats:

As an advisory and reviewing body, reviewing current protocols, KPIs and achievements, and making recommendations towards further action;
As part of a wider work-culture and environmental literacy initiative, through artist-led workshops aimed at fostering a sense of environmental belonging, beyond the principles of sustainability.

The Green Team’s terms of reference outline the Team’s responsibilities, frequency of meeting, and advisory agency within the wider organisation.

To support Serpentine in delivery of the Action Plan, the Green Team shall:

Promote environmental justice and environmental action literacy across the organisation;
Research and propose positive and reparative interventions across all levels of the organisations;
Champion positive change for environmental responsibility across the Serpentine;
Embed environmental and ecological concerns across the galleries' programmes, infrastructure, operations and networks;
Strive to make Serpentine a leading example of effective environmental stewardship, from harm reduction to a meaningful sense of purpose and to serve as a source of information and convening for others with similar aspirations;
Work with colleagues across the organisation to implement measures as outlined in the Environmental Sustainability Action Plan;
Monitor the galleries' activities to better understand how we impact the environment;
Identify, investigate and gather best practices to ensure that Serpentine activities promote environmental wellbeing;
Log environmentally positive activity to serve as a record of progress;
Increase staff and artist engagement with environmental issues as active participants in reducing impact on the environment; and
Serve as a source of information regarding environmental responsibility for Serpentine staff, trustees, artists and audiences.

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Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: The Loophole at Outernet Arts, London, 2023. Image courtesy of Outernet Arts.

financial STaTemenTS

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STaTemenT of TruSTeeS’ reSponSiBiliTieS

The Trustees, who are also Directors of the Serpentine Trust for the purposes of company law, are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (United Kingdom Accounting Standards).

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under company law, the Trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure of the charitable company for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;

Insofar as each of the Trustees of the company at the date of approval of this report is aware, there is no relevant audit information (information needed by the company’s auditor in connection with preparing the audit report) of which the company’s auditor is unaware. Each Trustee has taken all the steps that he/she should have taken as a Trustee in order to make himself/herself aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the company’s auditor is aware of that information.

Crowe U.K. LLP has indicated its willingness to be reappointed as statutory auditor. The Trustees’ Report, including the Strategic Report, was approved by the Trustees at their meeting on 8 October 2024 and signed on their behalf by:

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman, Board of Trustees 8 October 2024

Observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP;
Make judgments and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
State whether applicable UK accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements; and
Prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in business.

The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charitable company’s transactions, disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006 and the provisions of the charity’s constitution. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

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independenT audiTor’S reporT To The memBerS of The SerpenTine TruST

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of The Serpentine Trust (‘the charitable company’) and its subsidiary (‘the group’) for the year ended 31 March 2024 which comprise the Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities, the Group and Charity Balance Sheets, the Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion the financial statements:

give a true and fair view of the state of the group’s and the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2024 and of the group’s income and expenditure, for the year then ended;
have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and
• have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.

Basis for Opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the group in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company's or the group’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other Information

The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

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Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion based on the work undertaken in the course of our audit

the information given in the trustees’ report, which includes the directors’ report and the strategic report prepared for the purposes of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and
the strategic report and the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report have been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In light of the knowledge and understanding of the group and charitable company and their environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the strategic report or the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

adequate and proper accounting records have not been kept; or
the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or
certain disclosures of trustees' remuneration specified by law are not made; or
we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

Responsibilities of Trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out on page 208, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Details of the extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations are set out on the opposite page.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations. We identified and assessed the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements from irregularities, whether due to fraud or error, and discussed these between our audit team members. We then designed and performed audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the charitable company and group operates, focusing on those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the determination of material amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, together with the Charities SORP (FRS 102). We assessed the required compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our audit procedures on the related financial statement items.

In addition, we considered provisions of other laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which might be fundamental to the charitable company’s and the group’s ability to operate or to avoid a material penalty. We also considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the charitable company and the group for fraud. The laws and regulations we considered in this context for the UK operations were General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Taxation legislation, and Employment legislation.

Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the Trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

We identified the greatest risk of material impact on the financial statements from irregularities, including fraud, to be within the timing of recognition of income and the override of controls by management. Our audit procedures to respond to these risks included enquiries of management, and the Finance Sub-Committee about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities, sample testing on the posting of journals, reviewing accounting estimates for biases, reviewing regulatory correspondence with the Charity Commission, and reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of irregularities, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance and cannot be expected to detect noncompliance with all laws and regulations.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Jayne Rowe Senior Statutory Auditor For and on behalf of Crowe U.K. LLP Statutory Auditor London

1 November 2024

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conSolidaTed STaTemenT of financial acTiviTieS

For the year ended 31 March 2024

(including income and expenditure accounts)

----- Start of picture text -----
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment Total Total
General Fund Fund Fund 2024 2023
Income and Endowments from: Note £’000 £’000 £’000 £’000 £’000
Donations and Legacies
Grants 3 708 – – 708 1,216
Donations & Support 4 5,578 _ – 5,578 5,576
Total Donations and Legacies 6,286 _ – 6,286 6,792
Fundraising Trading Activities
Merchandise 832 – – 832 663
Special Fundraising Events 465 – – 465 1,097
Gallery Hire and Other Commercial Activities 353 – – 353 285
Interest 57 – – 57 31
Total Fundraising Trading Activities 1,707 – – 1,707 2,076
Income from Charitable Activities
Exhibitions 5 – 3,190 – 3,190 1,312
Education 5 – 901 – 901 305
Architectural Commission 5 1,100 400 – 1,500 1,466
Total Income from Charitable Activities 1,100 4,491 – 5,591 3,083
Other Income – – – – –
Total Income 9,093 4,491 – 13,584 11,951
Expenditure on:
Raising Funds 6 2,208 – – 2,208 1,999
Fundraising Trading Costs
Merchandise 336 – – 336 399
Special Fundraising Events 469 – – 469 578
Gallery Hire 24 – – 24 25
Total Fundraising Trading Costs 829 – – 829 1,002
Total Costs of Raising Funds 3,037 – – 3,037 3,001
Net Income Available for Charitable Activities 6,056 4,491 – 10,547 8,950
Charitable Activities
Exhibitions 7 4,860 3,197 692 8,749 7,428
Education 7 710 431 – 1,141 1,189
Architectural Commission 7 1,238 400 – 1,638 1,931
Total Expenditure on Charitable Activities 6,808 4,028 692 11,528 10,548
Total Expenditure 9,845 4,028 692 14,565 13,549
Net (Expenditure) / Income (752) 463 (692) (981) (1,598)
Transfers Between Funds 2,000 – (2,000) – –
NET MOVEMENT IN FUNDS 1,248 463 (2,692) (981) (1,598)
Reconciliation of Funds:
Fund Balances Brought Forward at 1 April 2023 2,592 116 9,518 12,226 13,824
Fund Balances Carried Forward at 31 March 2024 3,840 579 6,826 11,245 12,226
----- End of picture text -----

Balance SheeT

For the year ended 31 March 2024

----- Start of picture text -----
Group Charity
2024 2023 2024 2023
Fixed Assets Note £’000 £’000 £’000 £’000
Intangible assets 13 8 42 8 42
Tangible assets 14 7,908 8,124 7,878 8,124
Heritage assets 15 – – – –
Investment 16 323 2,281 323 2,281
Total Fixed Assets 8,239 10,447 8,209 10,447
Current Assets
Stock 17 48 37 – –
Debtors and Prepayments 18 3,177 1,889 4,076 2,760
Cash at Bank and In-hand 1,924 3,038 1,026 2,068
Total Current Assets 5,149 4,964 5,102 4,828
Liabilities
Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within 1 Year 19 (2,143) (3,185) (2,006) (3,049)
Net Current Assets 3,006 1,779 3,036 1,779
Total Assets Less Current Liabilities 11,245 12,226 11,245 12,226
TOTAL NET ASSETS 11,245 12,226 11,245 12,226
The Funds of the Charity:
Unrestricted Funds 3,840 2,592 2,890 2,592
Restricted Income Funds 579 116 1,529 116
4,419 2,708 4,419 2,708
Endowment Funds 6,826 9,518 6,826 9,518
20 & 21 11,245 12,226 11,245 12,226
----- End of picture text -----

The unconsolidated deficit of The Serpentine Trust for the year ending 31 March 2024 was £1,744k (2023: £2,036k deficit). The notes on pages 217 to 230 form part of these financial statements.

These Financial Statements were approved by the Trustees, authorised for issue on 8 October 2024 and signed on their behalf by

Michael R. Bloomberg Chairman, Board of Trustees 8 October 2024

All recognised gains and losses are included above and all activities are continuing. * The notes on pages 217 to 230 form part of these financial statements.

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conSolidaTed STaTemenT of caSh floW	conSolidaTed STaTemenT of caSh floW	conSolidaTed STaTemenT of caSh floW
For the year ended 31 March 2024
			2024	2023
Cash fows from operating activities:	Note		£’000	£’000
Net cash provided by operating activities	A		(2,525)	(698)
Cash fows from investing activities: Interest on investments Investment additions Purchase of property, plant and equipment Net cash used in investing activities			57 1,958 (604) 1,411	31 979 (765) 245
Cash fows from fnancing activities: Decrease in borrowing Net cash used in by fnancing activities Change in cash in hand in the reporting period Cash in hand at the beginning of the reporting period Cash in hand at the end of the reporting period	B B		– – (1,114) 3,038 1,924	– – (453) 3,491 3,038
Note A: Reconciliation of cash fows from operating activities			2024	2023
Net (expenditure) / income for the operating period (As per the Statement of Financial Activities) Adjusted for: Interest income Depreciation and amortisation charges Decrease / (Increase) in debtors and stock (Decrease) / Increase in creditors Net cash provided by operating activities			£’000 (981) (57) 853 (1,299) (1,041) (2,525)	£’000 (1,598) (31) 850 (787) 868 (698)
Note B: Notice of cash and cash equivalents	1 April	2023	Cash Flow	31 March 2024
	£’000		£’000	£’000
Cash		3,038	(1,114)	1,924
Net cash and cash equivalents	3,038		(1,114)	1,924
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noTeS To The financial STaTemenTS

c) Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

1 Principal accounting policies

a) Company Information

In the application of the charity’s accounting policies, which are described in this note, Trustees are required to make judgements, estimates, and assumptions about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and underlying assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

The Serpentine Trust is a Public Benefit Entity registered as a charity in England and Wales and a company limited by guarantee. It was incorporated on 24 July 1987 (company number: 2150221) and registered as a charity on 21 March 1988 (charity number: 298809).

The company was established under a Memorandum of Association, which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association.

The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an on-going basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects the current and future periods.

The registered address is Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA.

b) Basis of Accounting

The consolidated financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102), the Companies Act 2006 and the Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) - effective 1 January 2015.

In the view of the Trustees, no assumptions concerning the future or estimation uncertainty affecting assets and liabilities at the balance sheet date are likely to result in a material adjustment to their carrying amounts in the next financial year.

Critical judgments in applying the entity’s accounting policies:

(i) Impairment of debtors

The financial statements have been prepared consolidating the results of the Trust and its subsidiary SG Commerce Limited (company number: 8052071).

The organisation makes an estimate of the recoverable value of trade debtors. When assessing impairment, management considers factors such as the ageing profile of debtors and historical experience.

The functional currency of the Trust and its subsidiary is considered to be GBP because that is the currency of the primary economic environment in which the group operates. The consolidated financial statements are also presented in GBP and rounded to the nearest thousand (£’000).

(ii) Useful life and impairment of assets
Assets are reviewed annually to assess that their useful life and carrying value are still appropriate.

(iii) Stock

Stock is valued at the lower of cost and net realisable value. The organisation makes an estimate of the net realisable value based on edition price on release, and if edition is not currently for sale, based on comparable prices from recent auctions. The net realisable value is reviewed annually.

The Trust has taken exemption from preparing its Statement of Financial Activities under section 408 of the Companies Act 2006. The unconsolidated deficit for the Serpentine Trust in 2024 was £1,744k (2023: £2,036k deficit).

As disclosed in the Trustees’ Annual Report, the Trust is largely dependent on the generosity of supporters therefore there is a level of uncertainty in the longer-term forecasts. However, considering future plans, budgets, cash flows and reserve levels as well as the risks and uncertainties, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Trust has adequate resources and facilities in place to continue its activities for the foreseeable future. This is supported by regular reviews of the organisation's risk register and potential opportunities by the Senior Management Team and the Trustees in order to facilitate timely decision making, and to ensure that the organisation meets its obligations. Accordingly, the Trust continues to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements as outlined in the Trustees’ Report.

The organisation also makes a judgement on whether a provision should be made for slow-moving stock that has not been sold in the past three years.

(iv) Heritage Assets

Heritage Assets are valued at the lower of cost and net realisable value. Heritage assets are reviewed annually to assess whether their carrying value is still appropriate.

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d) Income

All incoming resources are included in the Statement of Financial Activities, in which the Trust is entitled to the income and receipt is probable and the amount can be quantified with reasonable accuracy.

Gifts in Kind

Goods and services received at no costs for which the Serpentine Trust would otherwise have to pay for are recognised in the financial statements at the value to the charity where this can be reasonably quantified.

Voluntary income

Donations and grants are accounted for on a receivable basis unless they are given for a future specified period in which case they are deferred.

Grants

Grant income is recognised in the statement of financial activities when received or when the charity becomes entitled to receipt. Grants that have been received will be treated as deferred income where there are specific requirements in the terms of the grant that the income recognition is dependent on certain activities being completed in a future accounting period.

Trading income

Income received from the provision of goods or services is recognised in the year in which the good or service is provided, and so entitlement earned.

e) Expenditure

Charitable activities and support costs comprise direct charitable expenditure including direct staff costs attributable to a particular activity. Where costs cannot be directly attributed, they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources. This has been assessed by using an estimation of staff time spent on each activity as an average throughout the year.

Governance costs are those incurred in compliance with constitutional and statutory requirements and are allocated across charitable activities as a separate component of support costs.

All exhibition costs directly attributable to opening an exhibition are recognised in the year in which the expenditure is incurred. Where appropriate, consideration around whether the expenditure meets the definition of an asset or liability will be made to ensure appropriate accounting treatment has been adopted.

Other costs including the salaries of gallery assistants and similar costs incurred once the exhibition is opened are recognised once a third party has provided a service.

f) Fund Accounting

The General Unrestricted Fund is available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the Gallery. Designated Funds are those unrestricted funds set aside by the Trustees for specific purposes or projects.

Restricted Funds are subject to specific restrictions imposed by donors or by the purpose of the appeal. The Refurbishment Funds are restricted funds. Permanent endowment funds are funds where the donors have stated that the funds are to be held as capital and only the interest may be spent. Expendable endowment funds are held as capital but are able to be converted into expendable income with the authorisation of the Trustees.

g) Depreciation

Depreciation is recognised in the statement of financial activities as part of expenditure and is allocated across the expenditure headings on the same basis as Support and Governance costs.

Capital expenditure in excess of £500 is capitalised and depreciated over its estimated useful life or the length of the lease. Current estimated useful lives for the major categories of fixed assets are:

h) Operating Leases

Rentals under operating leases are charged to the income and expenditure account as incurred.

i) Foreign Currency Translation

Transactions in foreign currencies are translated at the exchange rate on the date of the transaction. Balances held in foreign currencies at the year-end are translated at the exchange rate at the balance sheet date.

j) Financial Instruments

Financial assets and financial liabilities are recognised when the Trust becomes a party to the contractual provisions of the instrument. Additionally, all financial assets and liabilities are classified according to the substance of the contractual arrangements entered into.

Financial assets and liabilities are initially measured at transaction price (including transaction costs) and are subsequently re-measured where applicable at amortised cost. Assets and liabilities held in foreign currency are translated to GBP at the balance sheet date at an appropriate year-end exchange rate.

major categories of fxed assets are:
Systems and Software	4years
Assets in the Course of Construction	Nil
Furniture and Equipment	4years
Computer Related Equipment	3-4years
BuildingImprovements	4-20years
Leasehold Property	20years

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219

2 Liability of the Members

The Company is limited by guarantee. In the event of its winding up due to insufficient funds, the maximum liability of each member is £1. As at 31 March 2024, the company had 14 members, all of whom were Trustees.

3 Revenue Grants

3 Revenue Grants
2024	2023
£’000	£’000
Arts Council England General Fund 708	1,216
708	1,216

4 Donations & Support

All general individual contributions provided to Serpentine are accounted for as unrestricted funds.

2024	2023
£’000	£’000
Funds provided by Serpentine Benefactors 4,475 General Donations to Serpentine 73 American Friends 706 Future Funds endowment – Museum, Galleries and Exhibition Tax Relief 324 Total Donations & Support 5,578	4,743 49 431 – 353 5,576

5 Income from Charitable Activities

----- Start of picture text -----
2024 2023
Unrestricted Grant From: £’000 £’000
Exhibitions:
Tour Income Various – 31
Ticket Income Various – 2
– 33
Education:
Ticket Income Various – 7
– 7
Architectural Commission:
Pavilion Sale Various 1,100 665
1,100 665
Total Unrestricted 1,100 705
Restricted Grant From: £’000 £’000
Exhibitions programme Various Exhibition Patrons 3,190 1,279
Education programme Various Education Patrons 901 298
Architectural Commission Various Architectural Patrons 400 801
Total Restricted 4,491 2,378
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6 Expenditure on Raising Funds

6 Expenditure on Raising Funds
2024	2023
£’000	£’000
Staff Costs 771 Direct Costs 61 Support Costs 1,376	839 39 1,121
2,208	1,999

7 Charitable Activities

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Unrestricted Restricted Fund Expendable 2024 2023
Endowment
£’000 £’000 £’000 £’000 £’000
Exhibition Costs
Installation & Materials 847 556 – 1,403 441
Transport 237 156 – 393 259
Organising Costs 631 415 – 1,046 1,985
Insurance Costs – – – – 11
Printing Material & Publicity Costs 68 44 – 112 67
Development Costs 49 32 – 81 63
Staff Costs 1,111 728 – 1,839 1,321
Support Costs 1,917 1,266 – 3,183 2,589
Depreciation – – 692 692 692
4,860 3,197 692 8,749 7,428
Education Costs
Education Programme Costs 265 161 – 426 398
Staff Costs 75 45 – 120 307
Support Costs 370 225 – 595 484
710 431 – 1,141 1,189
Architectural Commission
Direct Build Costs 865 280 – 1,145 1,302
Indirect Build Costs 103 33 – 136 331
Staff Costs 16 5 – 21 25
Support Costs 254 82 – 336 273
1,238 400 – 1,638 1,931
Total 6,808 4,028 692 11,528 10,548
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8 Support Costs

8 Support Costs
	Fundraising	Exhibitions	Education	Architecture	2024	2023
	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
MarketingStaff Costs	93	215	37	26	371	279
Support Staff Costs	349	810	154	84	1,397	1,047
General Marketing	92	213	37	26	368	294
General Overheads	822	1,906	361	197	3,286	2,780
Governance Costs:
Audit Costs	11	25	5	3	44	35
Staff Costs	7	7	–	–	14	15
Support Staff Costs	3 1,377	6 3,182	1 595	1 337	11 5,491	17 4,467

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221

9 Net Income

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|||| |---|---|---| |2024|2023| |Net Income is stated after:|£’000|£’000| |Auditor’s remuneration:| |Statutory audit|44|35| |Tax & advisory services|2|2| |Depreciation and amortisation|854|838| |Operating Lease Charges:| |Land and Buildings|967|794| |Other|–|7|

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10 Remuneration of Trustees

No Trustees received any reimbursed expenses or remuneration during the year (2023: £0).

12 Operating Lease Commitments

During the next year, the Trust is committed to making the following annual payments on leasehold properties and plant and equipment under operating leases which expire:

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2024 2023
Land and Buildings £’000 £’000
Within one year 967 805
Within two to five years 4,027 3,361
After five years 3,478 3,776
8,472 7,942
Plant and Equipment £’000 £’000
Within one year – 6,985
– –
Within two to five years
– –
After five years
– –
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11 Staff Costs

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2024 2023
£’000 £’000
Wages and Salaries 3,979 3,371
Social Security Costs 430 380
Pension Contributions 135 98
4,544 3,849
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The following number of employees earned more than £60,000 during the year:

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|||| |---|---|---| |2024|2023| |Number|Number| |Employees earning £60,001 – £70,000|3|2| |Employees earning £70,001 – £80,000|1|3| |Employees earning £80,001 – £90,000|–|1| |Employees earning £90,001 – £100,000|2|–| |Employees earning £100,001 – £110,000|–|1| |Employees earning £110,001 – £120,000|1|–| |Employees earning £120,001 – £130,000|1|2| |Employees earning £190,001 – £200,000|1|–|

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13 Intangible Fixed Assets

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Systems and Software
£’000
Cost at 1 April 2023 405
Additions -
At 31 March 2024 405
Depreciation at 1 April 2023 364
Charge for the year 33
At 31 March 2024 397
Net Book Value at 31 March 2024 8
At 31 March 2023 42
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Pension contributions of £47k (2023: £23k) were made in respect of employees paid over £60,000.

Average monthly number of full-time equivalent employees, analysed by function:

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|||| |---|---|---| |2024|2023| |Number|Number| |Exhibitions|44|29| |Education|5|7| |Fundraising|21|17| |Support|30|19| |Marketing|10|5| |Total|110|77|

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Average number of employees during the year was 100 (2023: 83).

The total aggregate cost of key management employee considerations for 2024 was £389k (2023: £458k). Key management personnel were the CEO, Artistic Director and COFO. Redundancy costs during the year were £109k (2023: £0).

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223

14 Tangible Fixed Assets

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Furniture and Building Leasehold Trust - Total
Equipment Improvements Buildings
£’000 £’000 £’000 £’000
Cost at 1 April 2023 659 5,552 13,833 20,044
Additions – 573 – 573
Disposals (3) – – (3)
At 31 March 2024 656 6,125 13,833 20,614
Depreciation at 1 April 2023 537 4,812 6,571 11,920
Charge for the year 52 72 692 816
– – – –
Disposals
At 31 March 2024 589 4,884 7,263 12,736
Net Book Value at 31 March 2024 67 1,241 6,570 7,878
At 31 March 2023 122 740 7,262 8,124
----- End of picture text -----

Building	Group Total
Improvements -
SG Commerce
£’000	£’000
Cost at 1 April 2023 – Additions 31	20,044 604
Disposals – At 31 March 2024 31 Depreciation at 1 April 2023 – Charge for theyear 1	(3) 20,645 11,920 817
Disposals – At 31 March 2024 1 Net Book Value at 31 March 2024 30 At 31 March 2023 –	– 12,737 7,908 8,124

16 Investments

16 Investments
2024	2023
£’000	£’000
At start of the year 2,281 Additions – Disposals (1,958) Net gains/losses –	3,260 – (979) –
At end of the year 323	2,281

All investments are held in short term cash deposits.

17 Stock

17 Stock	17 Stock
Group		Charity
2024	2023	2024	2023
£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Trading stock 57	71	–	–
Slow moving stock (9) Total 48	(34) 37	– –	– –

Trading stock relates to limited edition prints for resale. Stock is valued at the lower of cost and net realisable value.

18 Debtors

18 Debtors
	Group		Charity
	2024	2023	2024	2023
	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Trade Debtors Amount due from SubsidiaryCompany	1,094 –	719 –	1,018 943	693 865
Sundry Debtors Prepayments Taxation and Social Security	156 825 77	2 775 23	156 825 110	2 775 55
Accrued Income	1,025	370	1,024	370
Total	3,177	1,889	4,076	2,760

15 Heritage Assets

15 Heritage Assets
	2024	2023
	£’000	£’000
At 1 April	–	–
Additions	–	–
At end of the year	–	–

Serpentine has been publishing artists’ editions for more than 30 years. Throughout these years, Serpentine has built an asset library of selected editions which form part of the editions archive. These editions are not for sale; instead, these pieces have been selected to serve as evidence of past activities, to prove provenance and finally, to be used as visual and material reference for any future edition production research.

Serpentine believes that due to the incomparable nature of the heritage assets, that even if valuations could be obtained, the costs would likely exceed the benefits provided by the information. Acquisitions of editions greater than £1,000 are recorded at costs if acquired, or the best estimate of fair value if donated to Serpentine Gallery. Any acquisitions under £1,000 are recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities in the period they are incurred.

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Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

224

19 Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within One Year

19 Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within One Year	19 Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within One Year
Group		Charity
2024	2023	2024	2023
£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Trade Creditors 486 Other Creditors –	858 –	462 –	848 –
Accruals 589 Taxation and Social Security 44 Deferred Income 954	664 106 1,466	573 45 916	594 106 1,410
Provisions 70	91	70	91
Total 2,143	3,185	2,066	3,049

Deferred income relates to annual Individual Giving memberships paid for future years £99k (2023: £125k), sponsorship received for future exhibitions and projects £817k (2023: £1,133k), corporate memberships for next financial year £0k (2023: £0k) and income related to future booked events £37k (2023: £43k).

----- Start of picture text -----
£’000
Deferred Income b/fwd 1,466
Deferred in the year 663
Released to income from prior year (1,175)
Deferred Income c/fwd 954
----- End of picture text -----

20 Funds – Group and Charity

20 Funds – Group and Charity
	General	Designated	Restricted	Permanent	Expendable	Total
	Fund	Fund	Income Fund	Endowment	Endowment
				Fund	Fund
	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Total Fund Balances at 1 April 2023	2,463	129	116	256	9,262	12,226
Income Received	9,093	–	4,491	–	–	13,584
Expenditure Incurred	(9,845)	–	(4,028)	–	(692)	(14,565)
Funds Transferred	2,129	(129)	–	–	(2,000)	–
Total Fund Balances at 31 March 2024	3,840	–	579	256	6,570	11,245

21 Analysis of Net Assets between Funds

21 Analysis of Net Assets between Funds
	Fixed Assets	Investments	Net Current	Net Assets
			Assets /
			(Liabilities)
	£’000	£’000	£’000	£’000
Unrestricted Funds:
General Funds Designated Funds	1,346 – 1,346	323 – 323	2,171 – 2,171	3,840 – 3,840
Restricted Funds	–	–	579	579
Endowment Funds	6,570	–	256	6,826
	7,916	323	3,006	11,245

22 Capital Commitments

23 Related Party Transactions

At 31 March 2024, there were no capital commitments authorised or contracted for.

No related party transactions were entered into during the year to 31 March 2023 with exception of those with regard to SG Commerce, the Trust's subsidiary. At 31 March 2024, SG Commerce Limited owed the Trust a net balance of £947k (2023: £841k) which includes gift aid of £767k (2023: £414k). Management recharges of £155k (2023: £149k) were charged to SG Commerce Limited in the year by the Trust.

The Serpentine Trust received £677k (2023: £764k) of donations from Trustees, a £2,950k (2023: £2,950k) donation from a Trustee's family foundation and a donation of £0k (2023: £15k) from a trust that is related to another Trustee.

Designated Funds

The designated fund was for the replacement of a vital climate-control plant. This project was completed in the year and subsequently moved to the General Fund.

Expendable Endowment

Expendable endowment funds have decreased from £9,262k to £6,570k. Expendable endowment of £2m was moved to General Funds during the year, with the remaining year end balance being the net present value of the North Gallery building (£6.57m).

Restricted Funds

The Restricted balance relates to funds for specific Exhibition and Education projects taking place in 2024/25 onwards. The total of restricted funds at the year end was £579k. There was a brought forward balance of £116k which has been fully expensed in the year.

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

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227

24 Subsidiary Undertaking: SG Commerce Ltd
	2024	2023
	£	£
Income	1,172,732	927,873
Expenditure Operating Surplus Gift Aid to The Serpentine Trust Proft Before and After Tax	(409,735) 762,997 762,997 –	(490,254) 437,619 437,619 –
The Aggregate of the Assets, Liabilities and Funds was:	2023	2023
	£	£
Fixed Assets
Tangible assets	29,953	–
Current Assets
Stock	48,044	36,674
Debtors and Prepayments	76,946	26,039
Cash at Bank and In-Hand	898,818 1,023,808	969,893 1,032,606
Creditors
Amounts Falling Due Within 1 Year	-1,053,661	-1,032,506
Net Current (Liabilities) / Assets Net Assets	100 100	100 100
Shareholders' Funds Share Capital	100	100
Proft & Loss for the year	– 100	– 100
The subsidiary is part of a VAT Group comprising The Serpentine Trust and SG Commerce Limited.
228

25 Prior Year Comparatives

----- Start of picture text -----
2023 Statement of Financial Activities Unrestricted Restricted Endowment Total
General Fund Fund 2024
Fund
Income and Endowments from: £’000 £’000 £’000 £’000
Donations and Legacies
Grants 1,216 – – 1,216
Donations & Support 5,326 250 – 5,576
Total Donations and Legacies 6,542 250 – 6,792
Fundraising Trading Activities
Merchandise 663 – – 663
Special Fundraising Events 597 500 – 1,097
Gallery Hire and Other Commercial Activities 285 – – 285
Interest 31 – – 31
Total Fundraising Trading Activities 1,576 500 – 2,076
Income from Charitable Activities
Exhibitions 33 1,279 – 1,312
Education 7 298 – 305
Architectural Commission 665 801 – 1,466
Total Income from Charitable Activities 705 2,378 – 3,083
Other Income 1,000 – (1,000) –
Total Income 9,823 3,128 (1,000) 11,951
Expenditure on:
Raising Funds 1,999 – – 1,999
Fundraising Trading Costs
Merchandise 399 – – 399
Special Fundraising Events 211 367 – 578
Gallery Hire 25 – – 25
Total Fundraising Trading Costs 635 367 – 1,002
Total Costs of Raising Funds 2,634 367 – 3,001
Net Income Available for Charitable Activities 7,189 2,761 (1,000) 8,950
Charitable Activities
Exhibitions 5,323 1,413 692 7,428
Education 891 298 – 1,189
Architectural Commission 1,130 801 – 1,931
Total Expenditure on Charitable Activities 7,344 2,512 692 10,548
Total Expenditure 9,978 2,879 692 13,549
Net (Expenditure) / Income (155) 249 (1,692) (1,598)
Transfers Between Funds 73 (133) 60 –
NET MOVEMENT IN FUNDS (82) 116 (1,632) (1,598)
Reconciliation of Funds:
Fund Balances Brought Forward at 1 April 2023 2,674 – 11,150 13,824
Fund Balances Carried Forward at 31 March 2024 2,592 116 9,518 12,226
----- End of picture text -----

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

229

Installation view at Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life , Serpentine, London, 2023. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.


2023 Funds - Group	General	Designated	Restricted	Permanent	Expendable	Total
	Fund	Fund	Income Fund	Endowment	Endowment
				Fund	Fund
Total Fund Balances at 1 April 2022	£’000 2,039	£’000 635	£’000 –	£’000 256	£’000 10,894	£’000 13,824
Income Received	9,823	–	3,128	–	(1,000)	11,951
Expenditure Incurred	(9,978)	–	(2,879)	–	(692)	(13,549)
Funds Transferred Total Fund Balances at 31 March 2023	578 2,462	(505) 130	(133) 116	– 256	60 9,262	– 12,226
2023 Analysis of Net Assets Between Funds				Fixed Assets	Net Current	Net Assets
					Assets
				£’000	£’000	£’000
Unrestricted Funds:
General Funds Designated Funds				904 - 904	1,559 129 1,688	2,463 129 2,592
Restricted Funds				-	116	116
Endowment Funds				7,262 8,166	2,256 4,060	9,518 12,226
230

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

231

Serpentine – Annual Report and Financial Statements 2023 – 2024

232

233

2024-03-31-accounts

The SerpenTine TruST

Annual Report and Financial Statements

conTenTS

referenceS and adminiSTraTion deTailS

Registered Office

Governing Document

Executive Team

Company Secretary

Auditors

Bankers

Solicitors

leTTer from The chair, michael r. BloomBerg

leTTer from The chief execuTive, BeTTina KoreK

Dear Friends,

TruSTeeS’ reporT 2023/24

STraTegic reporT 2023/24

our STory

our viSion

our miSSion

Serpentine commits to:

organiSaTion oBjecTiveS

Key oBjecTiveS

World claSS programming

arTS TechnologieS

ecologieS programme

educaTion and civic projecTS

neW parTnerShipS

Summary of our acTiviTieS, achievemenTS and performance

exhiBiTionS, puBlic arT, live programme, ecologieS, archiTecTure

exhiBiTionS

exhiBiTion

BarBara chaSe-riBoud: infiniTe foldS

11 October 2022 to 10 April 2023

The Guardian

Serpentine North

CNN

exhiBiTion

STeve mcQueen: grenfell

7 April – 10 May 2023

Serpentine South

Steve McQueen

Paul Gilroy, contributor to the exhibition guide

The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian

The Independent

The Observer

The Observer

The Times

The Evening Standard

Financial Times

Frieze

The New Statesman

The Evening Standard

exhiBiTion

TomáS Saraceno: WeB(S) of life

Serpentine South and the Royal Parks

1 June – 10 September 2023

The Art Newspaper

The Observer

BBC

The Times

NY Times

The Times

Evening Standard

exhiBiTion

gaBriel maSSan: Third World - The BoTTom dimenSion

23 June – 26 November 2023

Video Game available globally via Steam, Serpentine North and Outernet

ArtReview

Beyond The gallery WallS

Third World: The BoTTom dimenSion video game

23 June - ongoing

Available to download from Steam

Frieze

conTinuiTy flaWS: The loophole

Outernet Arts

Dazed

The Art Newspaper

BarBara Kruger: ThinKing of you. i mean me. i mean you