Don’t believe your eyes: Ralph Rugoff on Anish Kapoor

Celebrated around the world Anish Kapoor is an artist who constantly challenges our conventional ways of seeing things.

In this video, our outgoing Hayward Gallery Director, Ralph Rugoff introduces several of such sculptures, beginning with the largest sculpture ever to be presented in the gallery. All of Nothing (2026) is a work so vast that only portions of the piece can be seen at a time, helping it to retain a sense of mystery.

All of Nothing isn’t the only new sculpture to feature in the exhibition; Rugoff also offers an introduction to the red pigment covered Ha Makom (2026), an installation which presents a tension between landscape and architecture. And there’s the visceral series Ritual Expiation (2025 – 2026), the works of which suggest the remains of some kind of gory sacrificial rite or ritual.

The video also takes in Mount Moriah (2022), a sombre piece with an element of play, which reflects Kapoor’s desire to make us see things differently, and Descent into Limbo (1992), a series of voids built into the fabric of the gallery which play with your perception of depth and which Kapoor describes as ‘not an empty hole but a hole filled with darkness’.

Rugoff wraps up his tour outside the gallery with Tsunami (2025), a curved sculpture which reflects the world around it in unpredictable ways, playing, like many of Kapoor’s works, with our idea that seeing is believing.