Artist Ella Walker (b.1993, Manchester, UK) will create two new site-specific commissions for the Courtauld Gallery. Opening 3 September 2026, the new artworks will be presented in The John Browne Entrance Hall and the Ticketing Hall of the Courtauld Gallery and will be free to visit.
This is the second Courtauld Commission, a series of annual commissions by contemporary artists for the Courtauld Gallery, which launched in 2025 with new works by artist Rachel Jones.
Ella Walker creates monumental canvases that act like dream-like stages. They are dominated by female figures whose gestures and interactions are both familiar and confounding, eschewing expected behaviour and transcending fixed roles.
The new artworks continue the artist’s dialogue with traditional techniques and subjects from the Renaissance period, richly represented at the Courtauld Gallery. Walker is particularly drawn to the Blavatnik Fine Rooms on the second floor of the Courtauld, including The Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist altarpiece (around 1491-94) by Sandro Botticelli (around 1445-1510).
Ella Walker, said: “The Courtauld Commission is an opportunity to think deeply about the surface of my paintings, the method of applying pigment to an absorbent ground, a ground that is rich with marble and chalk, and is very absorbent and textured. I hope the colours will glow, have transparency and movement within the collection of particles.”
Walker lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art and The Royal Drawing School. Recent solo exhibitions include Idolâtrie, Le Château – Centre for Contemporary Art and Heritage of Aubenas, France (2025); The Romance of the Rose, Pilar Corrias, London (2024); After great pain, a formal feeling comes, Casey Kaplan, New York (2024); and Chorus, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany (2023).
This is the second in a series of annual commissions by contemporary artists that will be displayed in The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall at the Courtauld Gallery. Since the transformation of its Gallery in 2021, the Courtauld has significantly expanded its offering of contemporary art, including major exhibitions by Peter Doig and Claudette Johnson, and a major commission by Cecily Brown. The first European solo exhibition of acclaimed New York painter Salman Toor will open on 2 October 2026. In January, the Courtauld also announced it will be creating two new galleries dedicated to contemporary art, set to open in 2029 as part of the development of its new world-class campus at Somerset House
Ella Walker: Courtauld Commission 2026
Opening 3 September 2026
The John Browne Entrance Hall and Ticketing Hall
Free display
