{"id":613332,"date":"2026-09-27T12:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/613332\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T12:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:02:09","slug":"im-an-everythingist-how-es-devlin-became-the-go-to-for-beyonce-gigs-fashion-runways-and-the-olympics-es-devlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/613332\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m an everythingist\u2019: How Es Devlin became the go-to for Beyonc\u00e9 gigs, fashion runways and the Olympics | Es Devlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years ago, the V&A East Storehouse in east London got in touch with Es Devlin<\/a>. The museum\u2019s curators wanted to invite the British artist and designer to respond to a 100-year-old theatrical backdrop by the Russian artist and designer Natalia Goncharova. For a 1926 London production of The Firebird by the Ballets Russes, Goncharova had painted a fortified Muscovite cityscape festooned with onion domes and spires, rust-red and golden against a deep-blue sky. Devlin didn\u2019t know much about Goncharova. But alighting on the term she had favoured for describing her kaleidoscopic approach to art-making, Devlin realised she\u2019d found a kindred spirit. \u201cShe called herself an \u2018everythingist\u2019,\u201d Devlin says, a smile in her eyes.<\/p>\n

Trawl through Devlin\u2019s own outsized CV and you\u2019ll see immediately why she felt the label\u00a0fit her too, and why she chose The Everythingists as the title of the large-scale sculptural work she made in response.<\/p>\n

In the 30 years since she won the Linbury prize for stage design in 1995, Devlin has established herself as a go-to set designer for highbrow theatre, international opera, global pop (Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, Beyonc\u00e9), official celebrations (two Super Bowl half-time shows, two Olympic ceremonies), fashion runways and public sculpture. She has three honorary doctorates, multiple Oliviers, Tonys, Emmys and Critics\u2019 Circle awards, the London Design<\/a> Medal, an OBE and a CBE. Much of this has been for services to design. But Devlin\u2019s ability to pair drawing and intricate handicraft with arena-level spectacle and sociopolitical relevance has also routinely caught the eye of contemporary art curators (Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ekow Eshun) and theoretical physicists alike (Carlo Rovelli is a fan).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been like this since I was very young,\u201d Devlin says from her garden in south London, where we meet ahead of her forthcoming retrospective, Es Devlin: Other Worlds at the Design Museum in London. \u201cWhen I was at school, the teachers used to say: \u2018You\u2019re a jack of all trades and master of none,\u2019 and it\u2019s only recently that I learned that phrase actually has another couplet, which is, \u2018But oftentimes better than a master of one.\u2019\u201d To her mind, \u201cit\u2019s an injustice to the condition of being alive to seek only depth at the expense of breadth. I\u00a0think you actually achieve greater depth if you expand your line of inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devlin wears a Barbie pink T-shirt under a knitted vest of a slightly different bright pink, workers\u2019 blue trousers, bright coral-red Crocs and sculptural pendants on long silver chains. Two floor-to-ceiling mirror doors separate her studio rooms from her home, with a light-filled open-plan kitchen and living area beyond them. Two ginger cats mosey about between giant vessels of turned wood on wide marble surfaces and a pair of even bigger sculpted hands, roughly the height of a person. These are maquettes for the floating 25 metre-tall set Devlin designed for Carmen at the Bregenz Festspiele in 2017. The right hand stands guard by the sofas. The left perches in one of the studio rooms out front, surrounded by a sea of materials, works and models. \u201cI\u2019m actually quite excited about moving everything from that studio into the Design Museum because I\u2019ll have every space clear and nothing on the walls. And then I just need to sit in there and make stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The retrospective maps out 30 years of Devlin\u2019s practice in sculpture, film and installation, with an expansive display of archival drawings, paintings, collages, diaries and prints that give an insight into how she gets things done. At the show\u2019s core is a large circular piece that combines several milestone projects including the 2021 mirror-maze piece Forest of Us; the rotating glass box-based set designed in 2018 for The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Sam Mendes; and the union jack stadium-floor covering designed for the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Devlin published a monograph titled An Atlas of Es Devlin, which comprised a double fold-out list, detailing more than 120 projects she had worked on over 30-plus years. A revised edition now adds 30 new projects to the list, evidence of an unrelenting workflow. Recent collaborations have included the set for a production of Rajiv Joseph\u2019s Archduke at London\u2019s Royal Court theatre; a retrospective at Futura Seoul, South Korea; and London Oratorio, a one-night production at the South Bank, in collaboration with musician Jacob Collier, composer Kieran Brunt and scores of the capital\u2019s choristers. She is designing Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s forthcoming arena tour. She\u2019s writing a book, planning a ball, setting up a new studio in Sussex. When does she sleep? \u201cI get plenty of sleep. But I do have quite a lot of things \u2026\u201d She gestures to the tree above her. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be able to do what I\u2019m doing today if I hadn\u2019t done what I did yesterday. It\u2019s an accumulation. It\u2019s a tree that\u2019s growing.\u201d The most important thing is to keep feeding the trunk of it, she says, \u201cto be alone in the studio\u201d.<\/p>\n

Esmeralda Devlin was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1971. Her father was a journalist and her mother a teacher \u2013 to Devlin\u2019s mind, both artists. When she and her three siblings were all under 10 years old (she\u2019s one of the middle kids), her parents took in three of their cousins for a year, seven children fitting into a three-bedroom house. \u201cAny time there was a Christmas or a birthday, you know, my mum would just say: \u2018Well, you can\u2019t buy anything. Make something,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Beyond gifts, Devlin would invent systems, follow instructions in craft books to make a periscope, say, with her mother\u2019s makeup mirror, and devise complicated games. \u201cMy dad, who\u2019d always take us quite seriously, would say: \u2018You know, maybe we should send this to Waddingtons. Maybe this could become a game.\u2019\u201d Every Tuesday night there was a mad rush to find and return the library books they\u2019d each got out for the week. \u201cMine were always under a pile of yoghurt pots, and cardboard boxes and toilet rolls because I\u2019d be making some elaborate run for the gerbils.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markI think I was insufficiently intimidated early on … there was a\u00a0lot I\u00a0wanted to\u00a0express<\/p>\n

While she was still little, her family moved to Rye, on the East Sussex coast. She recalls the theatricality of church services there, where she would help to set out the wafers and wine for holy communion and ring the bell during the Kyrie Eleison, plus the altogether more pagan celebrations of the town\u2019s bonfire pageants. She remembers routinely taking any visitors down from London to see the Rye Town Model next door, a son et lumi\u00e8re recreation of the town and its history, replete with lighting and a recorded narration. Nearly 50 years on, Devlin can tell you exactly what was in it: \u201cThere was a story about a monk and a nun who got bricked up in the walls for having an affair. There was a story about a butcher murdering somebody.\u201d What really stuck in her mind, though, was that each house would light up as it spoke. Hers told of a wool merchant and a writer, the daughter of a poet. She found it mesmerising that \u201ca building that I lived in was small enough for me to hold. I could look down on my house and think: \u2018Oh, I can pick it up.\u2019 But also, I would go next door and I\u2019d be in my house and my house would be holding me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the power and presence of objects, music has woven a golden thread through Devlin\u2019s life. She took all her grades in violin, clarinet and piano before realising, as a teenager, that her path would be, as she puts it, \u201csomething that fused my knowledge of music and my practice of music, with other things\u201d. After a BA in English literature, a foundation course at Central Saint Martins and a year on the Motley theatre design course at Theatre<\/a> Royal Drury Lane, that path lit up. She won a job to design Marlowe\u2019s Edward II at the Octagon theatre in Bolton. That led to a piece at London\u2019s Bush theatre, which was seen by Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal National Theatre, who promptly hired her for a production of Harold Pinter\u2019s Betrayal. Then came the Rambert Dance Company\u2019s Four Scenes, the show with which the new Sadler\u2019s Wells was inaugurated in 1998. Devlin had just turned 27. \u201cIt was a very rapid baptism of fire,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Was she intimidated, working at that level with established directors so early on in her career? \u201cI think I was insufficiently intimidated,\u201d she says. \u201cBy then, I had been in education a long time and there was a lot I wanted to express.\u201d<\/p>\n

This unflappable nature, this gung-ho \u201cyes, please!\u201d attitude, has since taken her everywhere \u2013 Compton, the Louvre, Morocco\u2019s Agafay Desert, Malawi \u2013 collaborating with everyone from Rosal\u00eda and Kendrick Lamar to Max Richter. In 2013, she told the Guardian<\/a> that a low point of her career had been sending groundplans to Shakira while in labour. Young artists, in particular, often ask how she holds on to her identity\u00a0when collaborating with powerful people. \u201cThe best answer I\u2019ve given to this question is: I actually am not too afraid to lose my identity. By being prepared to lose it, you encounter other aspects that are probably more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Clockwise from top left) Devlin\u2019s 2026 installation Sou o Outro do Outro in S\u00e3o Paolo; Library of Light in Milan from 2025; Congregation at St Mary le Strand in London from 2024; The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre, London from 2018<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that she ever actually loses herself in someone else\u2019s world, which, you sense, is exactly why these big names seek her out. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve observed about powerful people is, it\u2019s unfortunate, but a bit like barnacles on a great whale, there are peripheral structures that accumulate around power and fame. And to the powerful person and the famous person, those structures are really uninteresting.\u201d She looms, instead, like an octopus, tentacles in every direction, drawing the world in an indelible ink that is hers alone. Viewers at the Design Museum will note the coherence, the very Es Devlinness, of her work, regardless of whom it is for. Leitmotivs (the line of light, the glowing box, the map, the tree-lung, the egg that opens) recur. Her conceptual imperatives are clear, too. She has no interest in decoration, everything has to have meaning. The audience must have agency. Materiality matters. And portraiture is fundamental. \u201cEverything is both a portrait of the collaborator and a self-portrait at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

My second visit, two days later, is to Devlin\u2019s other studio in Peckham, south London, where design associates sit at computers rendering 2D and 3D visualisations for set designs: Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s forthcoming arena tour; the Design Museum show floorplan. The latter will contain multiple maquettes of previous large-scale works. Downstairs, a model-maker is adding finishing touches to a tiny maquette of Devlin\u2019s installation Library of Light, an 18-metre revolving cylindrical bookshelf containing 3,200 books, designed for the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2025. Beside her are reused takeaway boxes filled with tiny fake books: she reckons she\u2019s made about 1,800.<\/p>\n

Devlin appears in bright yellow and bright white. Sitting down to lunch, she says: \u201cI was speaking with William Kentridge about the way he labels his projects, and he has \u2018urgent\u2019, \u2018desperate\u2019, \u2018emergency\u2019 and \u2018SOS\u2019. That\u2019s definitely how we could label our projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is SOS right now? \u201cThe Design Museum is SOS,\u201d she says. So too, the 2026 British Museum Ball in October, for which she is the artistic director. She and a member of her team went on a tour of the museum and met \u201csix people who\u2019ve worked there, a combined number of 137 years; profound knowledge, profound understanding of objects which tell our history and explain who we are\u201d. What she wants her design to communicate, she says, is the museum\u2019s staff, all 1,000 of them. She sees them as protagonists, much like the 50 refugees of whom she did portraits for her UNHCR installation Congregation in 2024, or the 55 million adults invited to take part in her A National Portrait project for London\u2019s National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n

That people and real lives are central to what Devlin does is tangible in the way she includes her team in our chat. She wants their perspectives. She clearly treasures their work. One associate tells me she trained as an architect but, on graduating, thought: \u201cThere\u2019s got to be something else out there. This is surely not it.\u201d Devlin\u2019s studio is a haven for like-minded seekers, who are interested in everything and want more.<\/p>\n

Over coffee and dark chocolate, Devlin shows me her rings. She is testing intriguing prototypes of kinetic silver with her designs: an iris, a spinning cube, a minute Venus of Willendorf, an egg that opens up to reveal a tree or a lung. \u201cI\u2019m writing a book called The Compass of Es Devlin,\u201d she says, \u201cwhich is sort of elucidating various practices that have helped me. And these are to help me remember them. It\u2019s almost like they\u2019re little cues.\u201d<\/p>\n

To watch her manipulate these tiny sculptures, or draw her signature into a book, is to see what she must have been like as a small child \u2013 utterly engrossed in the creative task at hand: Es Devlin, the everythingist.<\/p>\n

Es Devlin: Other Worlds<\/a> is at the Design Museum, London, from 2 October to 4 April. Other images courtesy of Es Devlin and Daniel Devlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years ago, the V&A East Storehouse in east London got in touch with Es Devlin. The museum\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-613332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}