Any artist aged 16 to 25 can now hang at Tate Modern — beside Warhol, Dalí, and Abramović

The walls of Tate Modern carry a specific weight. Not mere surface — argument. A young artist entering Bankside’s former power station passes through rooms where Warhol’s silkscreens, Dalí’s disintegrations, and Abramović’s endurance works have defined what contemporary art can propose. Tate Collective’s latest open call places that same wall within reach of any person aged 16 to 25 who holds a membership.

The brief carries a deliberate formal lineage. Mural-making is one of art’s most civic gestures — a practice that tells stories on public surfaces, calls for collective witness, imagines what a shared space could mean. Tate Collective’s past open calls have shown young artists’ work across London and Liverpool; most recently, six artists under 25 painted large-scale public murals across Bankside in conversation with Frida Kahlo’s work. This commission moves that activity inside the institution itself, responding to the history of the form on the gallery’s own walls.

The invitation marks a wider moment. Tate Collective — free to join for anyone between 16 and 25 — has reached 200,000 members, making it the world’s most widely-joined arts membership scheme for young people. The scheme offers £5 exhibition tickets and access to exclusive events, but what the open call proposes is of a different order: not access to the gallery’s programme, but a place within it.

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The autumn also marks a decade of Tate Modern Lates, the gallery’s evening programme that has brought 870,000 people through the Bankside building since its launch. The series has consistently tested what a gallery can be after hours: live sets from Joy Crookes and Celeste, a guest-curated evening from Little Simz that drew a record 18,500 visitors in a single night, and performance from the Trisha Brown Dance Company alongside the London Symphony Orchestra. What the Lates have insisted on, across ten years, is that art and music and performance do not belong to separate rooms.

The 10th anniversary Late, on Friday 30 October, centres on Shygirl — London’s boundary-crossing musician and visual artist, whose forthcoming record Swallow! extends her practice into new territory. She will programme the South Tank as Club Shy, with DJs performing against visuals drawn from the album; Warp Records takes the Terrace Bar, and visual artist Lakwena leads a colourful collaborative workshop. The Late sits within Tate Modern’s autumn programme — running alongside the current Frida Kahlo survey, Ana Mendieta, Tarek Atoui’s Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall, and Julio Le Parc’s survey of colour and light.

Tate Collective members may submit work for the open call commission via tate.org.uk until 14 October. The selected piece will be displayed at Tate Modern from March 2027. Tate Modern Lates are free evening events running from 18.00 to 22.00.

What links the open call and the anniversary is the same institutional wager: that a gallery’s walls are not simply for looking at. For the next month, any young person with a Tate Collective membership has the chance to make the case.

Tags: Tate Modern, Tate Collective, warp records, mural commissions, Shygirl, Tate Modern Lates

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