Es Devlin is opening her first major UK retrospective, Es Devlin: Other Worlds, at the Design Museum in London on October 2, 2026, running until April 4, 2027. The exhibition maps 30 years of her multidisciplinary practice across theatre, sculpture and public art, cementing her status as a set designer big names turn to for eye-popping spectacle.
The Bottom Line
- The Milestone: The Design Museum retrospective spans three decades of Devlin’s career, compiling more than 120 projects into an expansive survey.
- The Creative Philosophy: Embracing Natalia Goncharova’s century-old term, Devlin operates as an “everythingist,” refusing to silo her work between highbrow opera, pop spectacles for Beyoncé and Bad Bunny, and public art.
- The Pipeline: Alongside the museum exhibition, Devlin is designing Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming arena tour, prepping a new book, and establishing a new studio space in Sussex.
From Ballets Russes to the Design Museum
Four years ago, curators at the V&A East Storehouse approached British artist and designer Es Devlin with an unusual challenge. They wanted her to respond to a 100-year-old theatrical backdrop painted by Russian artist Natalia Goncharova for a 1926 London production of The Firebird by the Ballets Russes. Goncharova’s original work depicted a fortified Muscovite cityscape festooned with onion domes and spires, rendered in rust-red and gold against a deep-blue sky. While researching Goncharova, Devlin discovered a kindred spirit who described her kaleidoscopic approach to art-making with a single, defining label: “everythingist.”
That encounter directly inspired Devlin’s large-scale sculptural work, The Everythingists. It also provided a fitting title for her worldview. In the three decades since she won the Linbury Prize for stage design in 1995, Devlin has built an outsized CV that regularly bridges worlds. Her practice moves from highbrow theatre and international opera to global pop tours for Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé, alongside official celebrations including two Super Bowl half-time shows and two Olympic ceremonies.
The Anatomy of an Everythingist Workshop
Operating out of her south London home and studio, surrounded by ginger cats and towering wood-turned vessels, Devlin’s workflow is relentless. Among the items in her workspace sit giant sculpted hands—maquettes for the floating 25-metre-tall set she designed for Carmen at the Bregenz Festspiele in 2017. These physical models sit alongside an archive of drawings, paintings, collages, and diaries that trace how her ideas scale from intimate hand-drawn concepts to arena-level spectacles.
Her childhood in Kingston upon Thames and later in Rye on the East Sussex coast fostered this resourcefulness. Raised by a journalist father and a teacher mother in a household that temporarily squeezed seven children into a three-bedroom house, Devlin was encouraged to invent and make rather than buy. Formative memories include the theatricality of local church services, pagan bonfire pageants, and the Rye Town Model next door—a son et lumière recreation where miniature buildings illuminated in sync with recorded history. That early fascination with scale—the sensation of holding a miniature house while simultaneously being held by it—underpins her later work.
| Year | Project / Milestone | Discipline |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Won the Linbury Prize for stage design | Theatre |
| 2012 | London Olympics Closing Ceremony (Union Jack stadium-floor covering) | Official Ceremonies |
| 2017 | Carmen at the Bregenz Festspiele (25m floating set) | International Opera |
| 2018 | The Lehman Trilogy (Directed by Sam Mendes; rotating glass box set) | Highbrow Theatre |
| 2021 | Forest of Us mirror-maze installation | Contemporary Sculpture |
| 2023 | Published monograph An Atlas of Es Devlin (detailing 120+ projects) | Publishing / Retrospective |
| 2026 | Es Devlin: Other Worlds opens at the Design Museum | Museum Retrospective |
Bridging Art, Pop Music, and Theoretical Physics
Devlin’s refusal to compartmentalize her output has earned her recognition far beyond traditional theatre circles. She holds three honorary doctorates, multiple Olivier, Tony, Emmy, and Critics’ Circle awards, the London Design Medal, an OBE, and a CBE. Her ability to pair meticulous handcraft with sociopolitical engagement attracts contemporary art curators like Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ekow Eshun, as well as theoretical physicists such as Carlo Rovelli.
Reflecting on her school days, when teachers cautioned that she was a “jack of all trades and master of none,” Devlin notes that she only recently learned the full couplet: “But oftentimes better than a master of one.” In her view, seeking depth at the expense of breadth limits artistic inquiry. A revised edition of her 2023 monograph, An Atlas of Es Devlin, adds 30 new projects to a list already exceeding 120 works, proving that her creative tree continues to branch out across live music, theatre, and museum spaces worldwide.
