London is home to some of the world’s best art galleries, with collections that span centuries housed in buildings that are often masterpieces in their own right. From classical to contemporary works by era-defining artists and movement-making revolutionaries to high-tech immersive experiences with visual effects and virtualrealities, these are the shows inspiring the next generation and helping the city’s creative scene to flourish. We update this piece weekly with everything you need to know about London’s best upcoming exhibitions so you can stay in-the-know about culture in the capital.
Donavon SmallwoodTaylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021, National Portrait GalleryNow in its 28th year, the National Portrait Gallery’s annual Portrait Prize exhibition will take place at Cromwell Place in South Kensington in 2021, as the National Portrait Gallery is undergoing renovations until 2023. The exhibition showcases the best new and established talent worldwide. Highlights include a photo of Mohamed Lappia from Todd Anthony’s series Flying Stars – the Amputee Footballers of Sierra Leone, and pictures from Donavon Smallwood’s series Languor,pictured above.ADVERTISINGAddress: 4 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, London SW7 2JE
Website: npg.org.uk
Dates: Until Sunday 2 January 2022
Price: £8- Courtesy of Charles Moriarty / Iconic ImagesAmy: Beyond the Stage, Design MuseumExplore Amy Winehouse’s career at this new exhibition, curated in partnership with The Estate of Amy Winehouse. Get a glimpse at the woman behind the music with Amy’s notebooks, early recordings, personal items and handwritten lyrics. Also on display are outfits from her most-celebrated performances, as well as her guitar. The Estate of Amy Winehouse will waive its right to royalties in favour of the Amy Winehouse Foundation.Address: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG
Website: designmuseum.org
Dates: Friday 26 November–Sunday 10 April 2022
Price: £16 - Changing Lanes, Maddox GalleryA range of Scottish photographer David Yarrow’s shots are on display at the Notting Hill outpost of the Maddox Gallery – from his most well-known and celebrated pictures to new photographs taken during the pandemic, including a new image Catwalk (pictured above). Much of Yarrow’s work plays with cultural iconography, shooting famous faces such as Cindy Crawford and Cara Delevigne. And Yarrow will be giving talks at the gallery on Saturday 20 November at 11.30am, 1pm and 2.30pm. Address: Changing Lanes, Maddox Gallery, 112 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RU
Website: maddoxgallery.com
Dates: Friday 19 November–Friday 10 December 2021
Price: Free entry
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- Sebastião SALGADO/nbpicturesAmazônia by Sebastião Salgado, Science Museum‘What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures,’ Sebastião Salgado once said, having founded Instituto Terra, a non-profit organisation that has turned 17,000 acres of Amazon rainforest into a nature reserve and focuses on reforestation, conservation and environmental education. Returning to London for the first time since 2013, the photojournalist’s 200 black and white prints at the Science Museum demonstrate both the delicacy and urgency of the Amazon’s existence. From the communities most affected by the climate crisis to the indigenousleaders whose voices Salgado aims to amplify, it’s a moving, provocative and challenging collection that was seven years in the making and involved working closely with 12 different communities.Address: Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD
Telephone: +44 330 058 0058
Website: sciencemuseum.org.uk
Price: £10 - A.A. Murakami, Silent Fall, 2021. Installation view of Superblue London, 12 Oct 2021 – Summer 2022. © A.A. Murakami. Courtesy of Superblue. Photo: Alessandra KilaSuperblue London, Burlington GardensBringing yet another impressive feat of engineering, technology, art and multisensory design from Miami to Mayfair, creative duo A.A. Murakami quietly arrived in London just a couple of weeks before climate change conference COP26 launched in Glasgow. Playing with the idea of the concrete jungle by breaking down the boundaries between living things and artificial structures, inviting audiences to question and contemplate their relationship with nature and how they respond to an unfamiliar environment, Superblue London’s Silent Fall is an immersive experience in which an ethereal forest of mechanical trees stimulates sight, smell, sound and touch with ephemeral scented bubbles and a unique soundtrack.Address: Superblue London, 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3ET
Website: superblue.com
Dates: booking available until January 2022; open until summer 2022
Price: From £8.50 - Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery. © 2020. a’strict. All rights reserved.LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art, 180 The StrandTwelve artists including Es Devlin, Hito Steyerl and Julian Knxx are part of this series of computer-generated installations. It’s all in collaboration with Korean curators SUUM, who have pulled together video exhibits that range from an immersive pink tunnel to an ocean of digital waves that wash over the viewer.Address: LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art, 180 The Strand, Temple, London WC2R 1EA
Website: 180thestrand.com
Dates: Wednesday 13 October–Saturday 18 December 2021
Price: From £13 - Helen LevittHelen Levitt’s Landmark Retrospective, The Photographers’ GalleryIt isn’t often that a late-photographer dominates a gallery with such an extensive body of work, but the late Helen Levitt’s rich photographic practice — charting her journey from street reportage to documentary filmmaker and pioneer of colour photography — does just that. Spanning two floors and encompassing more than 130 works, observers are privy to a palpable sense of the quiet desolation felt by many Americans in the mid-nineties. Chronicling New York’s local communities, recording the theatrics and flow of the everyday in the Lower East Side, the Bronx, and Spanish Harlem, Helen’s work encapsulates a visceral sense of bleakness which played out on the stoops and streets of the city. Address: The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW
Website: nhm.ac.uk
Dates: Friday 15 October 2021-Sunday 13 February 2022
Price: From £15.50
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- Kyle MorlandYoko Ono: MEND PIECE for London, Whitechapel GalleryAn interactive display encouraging us to make do and mendIn 1966, Yoko Ono first presented her work Mending Piece I at London’s Indica Gallery, a counterculture space in the basement of a bookshop in St James’s. It was part of an exhibition that featured works intended to be completed by those visiting the display – including John Lennon, who first met Ono at a show preview. The Whitechapel Gallery continues the theme 55 years later, with two galleries inviting visitors to mend broken cups and saucers, drawing on the ancient Japanese tradition of kintsugi (repairing ceramics with gold or silver lacquer). ‘Mend carefully,’ an instruction from Ono in the exhibition reads. ‘Think of mending the world at the same time.’Address: Yoko Ono: MEND PIECE for London, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Website: whitechapelgallery.org
Dates: Until Sunday 2 January 2022
Price: Free - Gagana Mendis Wickramasinghe, Wildlife Photographer of the YearWildlife Photographer of the Year, Natural History MuseumGet up close and personal with natureThe Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will be back this autumn for the 57th time, with an eye-opening display of highly commended entries. This year, the 100 photographs, chosen from 50,000 entries by some of the world’s best wildlife photographers, reflect the planet’s increasing threat from climate change and are displayed alongside commentary providing greater insight from the museum’s scientists. See a lynx prowling past the open door of an abandoned farm building in Spain, an aerial shot of a technicolour lake in the Geamana Valley that was created by a toxic spillage, and more pictures that shine a light on the problems nature faces today.Address: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London SW7 5BD
Website: nhm.ac.uk
Dates: Friday 15 October 2021-Sunday 5 June 2022
Price: £15.50 - Isamu Noguchi tests Slide Mantra at “Isamu Noguchi: What is Sculpture?”, 1986 Venice BiennalePhotograph by Michio NoguchiThe Noguchi Museum Archives, 144398©INFGM / ARS – DACSNoguchi, The BarbicanA celebration of the pioneering Japanese-American sculptorIsamu Noguchi once said that ‘Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture’ – and this latest Barbican exhibition will certainly have you seeing the art form through a fresh lens. Opening in September 2021, Noguchi is his first touring retrospective in Europefor 20 years and explores his risk-taking approach to sculpture as a living environment. By Anya MeyerowitzAddress: Noguchi, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Telephone: +44 20 7638 8891
Website: barbican.org.uk
Dates: Thursday 30 September 2021–Sunday 9 January 2022
Price: £18 - Wedding gown of Diana, Princess of Wales (front view) © Royal Collection Trust All Rights ReservedRoyal Style in the Making, Kensington PalaceSee Princess Diana’s wedding dress up closeIt might be the most famous wedding dress in the world – the puffy-sleeved gown that Princess Diana wore 40 years ago on her wedding day, when millions watched her trail the 25ft train down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral before marrying Prince Charles. Created by David and Elizabeth Emanuel in 1981, the gown will go on display at her former home of Kensington Palace, loaned by her sons Prince William and Prince Harry. The exhibition takes over the palace’s Orangery and also explores designers who have dressed the Queen, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother – make sure to see British designer Norman Hartnell’s original sketches for the Queen’s wedding dress, as well as an extravagant 18th-century themed gown that Princess Margaret wore at a 1960’s Mansion House charity ball.Address: Royal Style in the Making, Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX
Website: hrp.org.uk
Dates: until Sunday 2 January 2022
Price: Included when booking a tour of the palace (£17)
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- Sheila Legge as Surrealist ‘Phantom’, Trafalgar Square, London, 11 June 1936 Photograph attributed to Claude Cahun Courtesy Jersey Heritage CollectionsPhantoms of Surrealism, The Whitechapel GalleryGain an insight into the role of women in British Surrealism in the 1930sAn archive exhibition that revolves around one puzzling image: the photograph of a woman dressed in a bridal gown, her head completely enveloped in roses, walking through Trafalgar Square almost 100 years ago. At the time, the event made the newspaper headlines and rippled through society. It marked the launch of a major London Surrealist show and the work of the woman in the picture, Sheila Legge, is explored in depth at the Whitechapel Gallery this summer. Focusing on Legge and other pioneering females, the exhibition will include works by Claude Cahun, Ithell Colquhoun and Diana Brinton Lee who pushed the zeitgeist and whose influence is still witnessed in the creative world to this day.Address: Phantoms of Surrealism, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Website: whitechapelgallery.org
Dates: until Sunday 12 December 2021
- Sheila Legge as Surrealist ‘Phantom’, Trafalgar Square, London, 11 June 1936 Photograph attributed to Claude Cahun Courtesy Jersey Heritage CollectionsPhantoms of Surrealism, The Whitechapel GalleryGain an insight into the role of women in British Surrealism in the 1930sAn archive exhibition that revolves around one puzzling image: the photograph of a woman dressed in a bridal gown, her head completely enveloped in roses, walking through Trafalgar Square almost 100 years ago. At the time, the event made the newspaper headlines and rippled through society. It marked the launch of a major London Surrealist show and the work of the woman in the picture, Sheila Legge, is explored in depth at the Whitechapel Gallery this summer. Focusing on Legge and other pioneering females, the exhibition will include works by Claude Cahun, Ithell Colquhoun and Diana Brinton Lee who pushed the zeitgeist and whose influence is still witnessed in the creative world to this day.Address: Phantoms of Surrealism, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
- Yayoi Kusama Chandelier of Grief 2016/2018 Tate Presented by a private collector, New York 2019 © YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy Ota Fine Arts and Victoria MiroYayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate ModernStep inside the Japanese artist’s most famous installationsTate Modern was due to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a year-long Kusamaexhibition in 2020. The original display was delayed, but this glittery show will finally kick off this week. The centrepiece brings Kusama’s famed Infinity Rooms to the capital, with a rare opportunity to step inside two of her immersive works: Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, one of her largest, and Chandelier of Grief.Address: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Website: tate.org.uk
Dates: until Sunday 22 June 2022
- Yayoi Kusama Chandelier of Grief 2016/2018 Tate Presented by a private collector, New York 2019 © YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy Ota Fine Arts and Victoria MiroYayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate ModernStep inside the Japanese artist’s most famous installationsTate Modern was due to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a year-long Kusamaexhibition in 2020. The original display was delayed, but this glittery show will finally kick off this week. The centrepiece brings Kusama’s famed Infinity Rooms to the capital, with a rare opportunity to step inside two of her immersive works: Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, one of her largest, and Chandelier of Grief.Address: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
- ROH, Johan Persson, 2011Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&AGo down the rabbit hole tracing more than 150 years of Lewis Carroll’s storyThe tale of Alice’s trip to Wonderland has been reinterpreted, restaged and reimagined countless times since Lewis Caroll first published it in 1865. Take an immersive trip through 156 years of retellings: see original illustrations used in the 1951 Disney animation and costumes from the Royal Ballet production, as well as displays that chart the story’s impact on 20th- and 21st-century pop culture, from Japanese Lolita fashion to Salvador Dalí’s art.Address: Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&A, Cromwell Road, Knightsbridge, London SW7 2RL
Website: vam.ac.uk
Dates: until Friday 31 December 2021
- ROH, Johan Persson, 2011Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&AGo down the rabbit hole tracing more than 150 years of Lewis Carroll’s storyThe tale of Alice’s trip to Wonderland has been reinterpreted, restaged and reimagined countless times since Lewis Caroll first published it in 1865. Take an immersive trip through 156 years of retellings: see original illustrations used in the 1951 Disney animation and costumes from the Royal Ballet production, as well as displays that chart the story’s impact on 20th- and 21st-century pop culture, from Japanese Lolita fashion to Salvador Dalí’s art.Address: Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&A, Cromwell Road, Knightsbridge, London SW7 2RL
- Dennis and Gnasher, 1993. Courtesy of Beano.BEANO: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House A nostalgic look at Britain’s favourite comicThe Beano, the UK’s longest-running children’s comic book, is firmly rooted in British culture. And this autumn, Somerset House will curate an exhibition celebrating the 4,000-issue strong comic, its artwork and its history, alongside displays of contemporary artists influenced by Dennis the Menace and his sketched pals.Address: Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
Website: somersethouse.org.uk
Dates: Thursday 21 October 2021 – Sunday 6 March 2022
- Dennis and Gnasher, 1993. Courtesy of Beano.BEANO: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House A nostalgic look at Britain’s favourite comicThe Beano, the UK’s longest-running children’s comic book, is firmly rooted in British culture. And this autumn, Somerset House will curate an exhibition celebrating the 4,000-issue strong comic, its artwork and its history, alongside displays of contemporary artists influenced by Dennis the Menace and his sketched pals.Address: Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
Source: cntraveller.com
