Venice preview: performance and Yorke
- Third Space Art Foundation said Wura-Natasha Ogunji will stage “The Dash” in Venice from May 5 to May 9, placing a live performance work into the 2026 Biennale preview week. - Artnet reported Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood are planning a separate Venice exhibition tied to preview-week attention, billed as the pair’s first show outside the United Kingdom. - The announcements land ahead of the Biennale’s May preview, when collateral shows compete for attention around the main exhibition. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com)
Venice’s 2026 Biennale preview is already spilling beyond the main exhibition, with a live work by Wura-Natasha Ogunji and a separate Thom Yorke-Stanley Donwood project drawing early attention. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com) Third Space Art Foundation announced on April 24 that Ogunji will present “The Dash” in “1922 Revisited” from May 5 through May 9 in Venice. The foundation described it as a live piece in its Biennale-week program. (globenewswire.com) A day later, Artnet reported that Yorke and Donwood were preparing a Venice exhibition of their own. Artnet said it would be the longtime collaborators’ first exhibition outside the United Kingdom. (news.artnet.com) That pairing puts two very different kinds of off-site art into the same pre-opening window: Ogunji with performance, Yorke and Donwood with a crossover from music and visual art. Both are using the days before the Biennale’s main opening to reach the same global art audience already converging on Venice. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com) Ogunji’s project is the more concrete of the two announcements so far, with named dates and a presenting foundation. The Yorke-Donwood show, as described by Artnet, was still partly under wraps when the report was published. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com) The contrast says something about how Venice works during preview week. Official national pavilions and the curated Biennale get most of the formal attention, but foundations, private spaces, and parallel exhibitions also use those days to launch projects at full volume. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com) For Yorke and Donwood, Venice also extends a collaboration already familiar to Radiohead followers, with Donwood long tied to the band’s visual identity. Artnet framed the Venice project as an art-world step beyond their previous United Kingdom exhibition history. (news.artnet.com) For Ogunji, the announcement places a live, time-based work inside a week often dominated by objects, pavilions, and market chatter. Her piece is scheduled across five days, which gives it a repeated presence rather than a single opening-night event. (globenewswire.com) By the time the Biennale crowd arrives in early May, Venice will already have two side stories in motion: one built around live performance, the other around a musician-artist partnership keeping some of its details hidden. (globenewswire.com) (news.artnet.com)
