Image: Rachel Maclean and Dovecot Studios, 'Goo Gaa', 2024. Photography by Dovecot Studios
Guildhall Art Gallery opens 'Beyond Bayeux: Tapestry Now' on 23 October 2026, running to 21 March 2027, in collaboration with Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh — founded in 1912 and, by The Art Newspaper's account, the longest-running tapestry studio in the UK. The gallery's listing promises more than 20 contemporary tapestries by as many artists, open daily from 10am to 5pm, with admission on a Pay What You Can basis. The City of London Corporation, which runs the gallery, has timed the show to the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, its first return to the UK in almost a thousand years.
The centrepiece is a new commission by the Turner Prize-nominated painter Hurvin Anderson: The Lincoln College 600th Anniversary Tapestry, six metres across, which a team of five weavers took more than seven months to make. Its design turns on a long dining table, a nod to the Oxford college's dining tradition, and after the Guildhall showing it will be permanently installed at Lincoln College next year for its sexcentenary.
The Hockney work on show is the tapestry version of his 1963 painting 'Play within a Play', commissioned by the artist and woven at Dovecot in 1970 as his first collaboration with the studio; it shows his London dealer John Kasmin with palms and nose pressed flat against an imaginary pane of glass. The Corporation's announcement says Hockney died in June 2026, and notes that he lived for many years in Normandy, close to both the Apocalypse tapestries and the Bayeux Tapestry.
Among the other works, Farshid Moussavi's 'The Garden Carpet', made with Dovecot for V&A Dundee in 2025, draws on Persian textile heritage to picture a paradise of Scottish plants and wildlife now at risk. Yinka Shonibare's 'Modern Spiritual (Fang Ngil, Kumbaduba)' interprets traditional African masks through coloured hanging warps, knots and single and double weave. Alberta Whittle's 'Ring Around the Rosy' works with shaped outlines, while Rachel Maclean's 'Goo Gaa' (2024), from her MAMA series and originally oil and acrylic on digitally printed canvas, translates her digital imagery through French Rococo. Tania Kovats also features.
Across the five-month run the gallery plans talks, historical tours and sessions with artists and weavers. Celia Joicey, director of Dovecot Studios, frames the show as a case for commissioning new work and for the skills of British tapestry weavers, while Brendan Barns, chair of the Corporation's Culture, Heritage and Libraries Committee, ties it to the gallery's mission to be "an art gallery about London for London" and to the City's record of commissioning tapestries for Guildhall itself.
