The Barbican has announced that it will mount the first UK solo exhibition by artist, director and BAFTA-nominated producer Liam Young in May 2026. In the world of fashion retail, lifestyle and design businesses, we often make forecasts about the trends we expect in coming seasons. Now a new exhibition scheduled to take place at the Barbican will extend that practice of looking ahead, exploring speculative futures shaped by climate realities and emerging technologies. In Other Worlds, part of the centre’s Summer season, will invite visitors to consider how alternative futures might be imagined and collectively created.
.jpg) |
| Film still from After the End (2024) by Liam Young. Image courtesy of the artist. |
Young, whose work sits between design, fiction and futurism, is known for constructing imagined worlds that serve as test sites for the social and environmental challenges ahead.
“The future doesn't rush over us like water… It's an act of creation,” he said, framing the exhibition as an invitation to collectively reimagine what comes next.
Bringing together film, sound, costumes, props, miniature models, comics and tapestries, the show will immerse visitors in a series of possible futures grounded in real technological and climate-based scenarios.
A major highlight will be the world premiere of World Machine (2026), a Barbican commission blending live-action footage and CGI. The film visualises a near-future Earth transformed into a planetary-scale supercomputer, its landscapes enmeshed in networks driving large-scale AI. Young imagines alternative approaches to technology production, speculating on renewable-powered data centres operating in harmony with rewilded environments. The work simultaneously reflects human ambition and the precarious opportunity to rethink our relationship with nature.
Other moving-image works on display will include Planet City (2021), envisioning the world’s population condensed into a single ultra-dense settlement; The Great Endeavour (2023), which depicts the engineering feats required to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; and After the End (2024), a collaboration with Aboriginal actor and activist Natasha Wanganeen. The latter offers a 50,000-year timelapse tracing First Nations histories, colonisation, resource extraction and a speculative future centred on post-fossil-fuel energy systems and land reclamation.
Sections of a graphic novel and audio narratives created with leading contributors from film, television, science fiction and graphic storytelling will accompany visitors through the exhibition, further expanding the featured worlds.
Luke Kemp, Head of Creative Programming for Barbican Immersive, said the moment feels right “to once again look for new stories, imagine different futures and create the worlds that we want to exist”. In Other Worlds, he added, presents hopeful possibilities shaped by bold environments and innovative storytelling.
Devyani Saltzman, the Barbican’s Director for Arts & Participation, described the exhibition as part of the centre’s commitment to exploring urgent contemporary issues. Young’s practice, she said, demonstrates that imagining alternatives is “essential to understanding today’s world with imagination, rigour and hope”.
Presented by Barbican Immersive—its strand dedicated to contemporary culture, emerging technology and digital creativity—the exhibition will tour internationally after its London run.
Young’s work has been shown at major global platforms including Channel 4 in the UK, Tribeca, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Academy, the Venice Biennale, the BBC and The Guardian. His projects have been acquired by museums such as MoMA, the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago and the V&A. Alongside his creative practice, he is a sought-after futurist, advising clients from NASA and Google to BMW and Microsoft. He also leads the Masters in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.
In Other Worlds - Barbican Centre - 21 May – 6 September 2026
