As the city twinkles this winter, so too do London’s galleries and museums with some of the best art exhibitions in London to see this season. There is much to marvel at, including big-names such as Frans Hals, David Hockney and, of course, Marina Abramović at Royal Academy. But don’t overlook the smaller galleries too – from Antony Gormley at White Cube and Richard Prince at Gagosian to Annie Morris and Idris Khan’s When Loss Makes Melodies at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, these are the must-catch exhibitions in London right now.
The Glossary Edit
London Art Exhibitions for Winter 2023/2024
Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize
National Portrait Gallery
Until 25 February 2024
The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize is one of the most prestigious photography awards in the world, a celebration of contemporary portraiture that is surely one of the best new art exhibitions to see in London this winter. 58 portraits from 51 photographers will be on display, including Serena Brown who has been shortlisted for the prize for her work me nana fie featuring her younger sister visiting her grandma’s home in Ghana for the first time.
Rubens & Women
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Until 28 January 2024
This show promises to show another side to Peter Paul Rubens, by shining a light on the powerful women who inspired him. Over 40 paintings and drawings (many from international and private collections) have been collated for Rubens & Women, portraying how the Flemish artist’s relationship with females – whether the loves of his life, patrons or family members – played an integral role in his oeuvre.
Richard Prince: Early Photography
Gagosian
Until 22 December
American painter and photographer Richard Prince blazed a trail in the 1970s and 80s for photography that explored appropriation and identity. Known for collecting and repurposing examples of mainstream humour, alongside images from mass media, Early Photography celebrates Prince’s career from 1977 to 1987. Over 100 photographs are on display across Gagosian’s Davies Street and Grosvenor Hill galleries, with the former solely featuring his Entertainers series (1982-83) and the latter other images from the period. The exhibition features many of Prince’s iconic cowboy, girlfriend and advertising photographs, some of which have never been exhibited before in London.
The Fabric Of Democracy
Fashion & Textile Museum
Until 3 March
The Fabric of Democracy is an exploration of how fabrics have been used as a political medium over the years, whether through furnishing or fashion. Curated by design historian Amber Butchart, it looks at how fabric designers respond to political upheaval and how, from the mid-18th century onwards, leading bodies used the power of print for their own purposes, whether wartime slogans or revolutionary ideals.
Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical
Garden Museum
Until 25 February 2024
Antiguan artist, writer and environmentalist Frank Walter largely worked in seclusion in his middle age, in a self-built house without water or electricity, perched on a hilltop looking out towards the ocean. Here he created prolifically – when he died, he left behind some 5,000 paintings, 1,000 drawings, 2,000 photographs, 600 hand-carved wooden sculptures and 25,000 pages of writing. Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical brings together 100 of these creations, displayed against the backdrop of a newly commissioned immersive set design, to explore Walter’s relationship with the island, environmentalism, Caribbean and Black identity and nature.
Avery Singer. Free Fall
Hauser & Wirth
Until 22 December
In Free Fall, Avery Singer’s first UK solo exhibition, she reflects on her personal experience of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. An installation – part stage set, part sculpture – replicates the interior of the WTC offices, and within this are a series of new paintings, both a memorial to a moment of terror and survival and an exploration of the wider societal impact of collective trauma.
The Mother & The Weaver
Foundling Museum
Until 18 February 2024
40 works, all of them by female artists and most of them from the unparalleled Ursula Hauser Collection, have been collated for The Mother & The Weaver to explore ideas around motherhood and childhood, love and loss, sexuality and identity. These are displayed in dialogue with historic objects and artworks from the Foundling Museum, inviting visitors to reconsider what it means to be a ‘good’ mother or woman in surely one of the best exhibitions to see in London this winter.
Antony Gormley: Body Politic
White Cube Bermondsey
Until 28 January 2024
Widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public pieces that investigate the relationship of the human body to space, Antony Gormley’s latest exhibition Body Politic turns its attention to our species’ connection to its industrially made habitat, a topic he is passionate about. Five new bodies of work are on display through which Gormley sets out to test and question the flux between sanctuary and control, freedom and discipline.
Christine Ay Tjoe
White Cube Mason’s Yard
Until 13 January 2024
Lesser Numerator is a solo show of new, never-before-seen paintings by acclaimed Indonesian artist Christine Ay Tjoe. Focusing on the human condition and emotions, Ay Tjoe’s expressive canvases address themes of philosophy and spirituality through her own subjective experiences and feelings. Although visually pleasing, seducing the viewer with their intricate details and colours, they also reveal darker elements beneath, created to connect with our most powerful sentiments and deepest psychological fears.
Cute
Somerset House
25 January - 14 April 2024
Whether memes and emojis, squishy toys or loveable robotic design, cuteness is all around us. Somerset House looks at ‘cute’ within modern day culture, asking how something so charming has gained such traction. Contemporary artworks, new commissions and cultural phenomena have been brought together to unravel cuteness’ emotive charge. CUTE also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the queen of cute aka Hello Kitty, with a dedicated plushie space, immersive disco and display of HK products from her five decades.
Designed For Life
London College of Fashion
Until 19 January 2024
The inaugural exhibition at London College of Fashion, UAL’s new single-site campus at East Bank, Designed for Life is a wonderful opportunity to explore the college’s commitment to harnessing fashion, design and creative practice as a force for positive change. Presented across five immersive areas, textiles, design, film, photography and artefacts showcase how creative expression and vision can shape our world.
David Hockney: Drawing From Life
National Portrait Gallery
Until 21 January 2024
We’ve all read about David Hockney’s portrait of Harry Styles. Now you can see the painting, which so vividly captures the singer, IRL. Drawing from Life explores the artist’s practice over the last six decades as seen through five sitters – his mother, Celia Birtwell, Gregory Evans, Maurice Payne, and the artist himself. In addition, there are 30 recent portraits of friends and visitors to his Normandy studio between 2021 and 2022, including Styles.
Women In Revolt!
Tate Britain
Until 7 April 2024
The first-of-its-kind exhibition Women in Revolt! showcases feminist art from 1970 to 1990, a period of extreme social, economic and political change in the UK. The work of over 100 female artists and collectives has been curated to explore how women came together, using radical ideas and rebellious methods to contribute to British culture. Alongside well-knowns such as Sonia Boyce and Susan Hiller, the show will platform female creatives who were overlooked at the time.
Frans Hals
National Gallery
Until 21 January 2024
The first major retrospective of Frans Hals in more than thirty years, this has to be one of the best exhibitions to see in London this winter, bringing together 50 of the Dutch artist’s finest works including the first ever loan of his most famous picture The Laughing Cavalier (1624). From smaller paintings to large group portraits, this blockbuster shows what a remarkably gifted and pioneering painter he was, who depicted his sitters as relaxed, smiling, even laughing – which was unheard of at the time.
Victorian Treasures
Leighton House
Until 25 February 2024
The artist, poet and collector Cecil French (1879 – 1953) amassed a significant collection of paintings and drawings by the Victorian masters, which he bequeathed to the public after his death. Victorian Treasures brings together 21 of these works, notably seven by Edward Burne-Jones, all of which showcase French’s tenacity as a collector at a time when Victorian art was increasingly unfashionable.
Marina Abramović
Royal Academy
Until 1 January 2024
Performance artist Marina Abramović has been stretching the limits of her physical and mental endurance over the past five decades, subjecting herself to exhaustion, pain and even the possibility of death. This show gathers all the highlights from her career, through sculpture, video, installation and performance. While some are re-staged through archive footage, others will be reperformed by next-gen artists, meaning no two visits will be the same.
Nicole Eisenman: What Happened
Whitechapel Gallery
Until 14 January 2024
What Happened brings together highlights from Nicole Eisenman’s three-decade career, not just her monumental canvases and sculptures, but also monoprints, animation and drawings. The display illuminates not just breadth and inventiveness of the French-born American artist’s practice, but also highlights her unique ability to explore some of the most pressing socio-political issues of the day (gender and identity, US governmental turmoil, the impact of technology), often in a humorous way.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Hayward Gallery
Until 7 January 2024
The largest retrospective to date of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose meticulously crafted, meditative images have so enraptured for the past fifty years. This brings together the artist’s major photographic series, which highlight Sugimoto’s ability to unite the real and the abstract, using the median to both document and invent. Lesser-known works are also on display, revealing Sugimoto’s interest in the history of photography, as well as in mathematics and optical sciences.
Idris Khan & Annie Morris: When Loss Makes Melodies
Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
Until 7 January 2024
A couple for more than a decade, Annie Morris and Idris Khan exhibit together in When Loss Makes Melodies. The exhibition in Sir John Soane’s neoclassical Manor draws parallels between the contemporary artists’ practices, encouraging the visitor to consider how they have come to influence each other. More than 30 examples of sculpture, photography, painting and embroidery are on display, touching on the themes of memory, love and loss.
Francesca Dimattio: Wedgwood
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
Until 23 December
For Francesca DiMattio’s fourth solo show, Wedgwood, the New York-based artist continues her practice of deconstructing domestic everyday objects (the likes of pillows, window spray, running shorts, footballs) with sculptural furniture that references 18th-century Sèvres porcelain, alongside chandeliers, Rococo mirrors and Wedgwood-inspired wall sconces, inviting the viewer to consider surface and genre in different ways. The exhibition is all the more eye-catching as it also includes an artist-designed wall-to-wall carpet with a trompe l’oeil mosaic design and hand-painted wallpapers that interact seamlessly with patterns on sculptures and plinths, completely transforming the gallery space.
Georgian Illuminations
Sir John Soane’s Museum
Until 7 January 2024
Georgian Illuminations is a deep dive into the spectacular illuminations which were popular in the Georgian period. The exhibition focuses on specific, well-publicised light shows of the time, and the incredible temporary architectural structures that were erected specially for them, often designed by well-known architects including Sir John Soane. A contemporary piece – a spin on illuminated architecture – has also been commissioned.
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective
The Photographers’ Gallery
Until 11 February 2024
A fascinating insight into Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. The retrospective brings together more than 200 works and large-scale installations – as well as rare photo books and magazines – to showcase the highlights of Moriyama’s prolific career. From his early work and engagement with photorealism through to his self-reflexive period of the 1980s and 90s, and his later exploration of photography and reinvention of his own archive, this is a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in Moriyama’s world.
thephotographersgallery.org.uk
