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Hello Kitty installation. Photo credit : David Parry/PA Wire.
Hello Kitty installation. Photo credit : David Parry/PA Wire.

Top 10 art exhibitions in London

Check out our critics’ picks of the ten best art shows coming up in the capital at some of the world’s best art galleries

Eddy Frankel
Written by
Eddy Frankel
&
Time Out London Art
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This city is absolutely rammed full of amazing art galleries and museums. Want to see a priceless Monet? A Rothko masterpiece? An installation of little crumpled bits of paper? A video piece about the evils of capitalism? You can find it all right here in this city. London’s museums are all huge and amazing, and the city’s independents are tiny and fascinating. So we’ve got your next art outing sorted with the ten best exhibitions you absolutely can’t miss. 

The ten best art exhibitions in London

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Mayfair
  • Recommended

What is working-class England if not grey, sullen, broken, monochrome, damp and sad? That’s the classic vision of this crumbling nation presented to us by photography, film and TV. But in the early 1990s, photographer Nick Waplington rocked the metaphorical boat by showing another side of England; one filled with colour, laughter, love and happiness.

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Spitalfields
  • Recommended

The story goes that modernism ripped everything up and started again; and nowhere did more of that mid-century aesthetic shredding than Brazil. Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Ivan Serpa et al forged a brand new path towards minimalism, shrugging off the weight of figuration and gesturalism in favour of geometry, colour and simplicity. But Raven Row’s incredible new show is challenging that oversimplified narrative, showing how figuration, traditional aesthetics and ritual symbolism were an integral part of experimental Brazilian art from 1950-1980.

 

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • South Bank
  • Recommended

Can stone flow? Can metal ooze? Can hardness be rendered soft? I mean, generally, no. But artists are alchemists at heart, always trying to enact some kind of magical transformation, so they’re not going to let something like solidity stand in their way. 

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Millbank
  • Recommended

If anger is an energy, there’s enough here to power the Tate for decades. The gallery is buzzing with the violent ire and shrieking fury of second-wave feminism, because after all the freedom and liberation promised by the Swinging Sixties, British women in the 1970s had to deal with the reality: that not much had changed. And they were furious. This is an exhibition of 100 feminist artists and collectives kicking violently against the system.

 

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Aldwych
  • Recommended

Imagine coming up with the most important technological innovation in modern history – the internet – and then seeing it used almost exclusively for ordering McDonald’s at 3am, arguing with strangers and sharing funny pictures of cats. This exhibition ignores the burgers and yelling in favour of the kittens, because cute, it turns out, is powerful. 

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