Top 10 art exhibitions in London

A vast engine spins, spilling noxious, viscous liquid onto the floor of the Turbine Hall. Mire Lee’s machine is draped in tentacles which ooze and flop around, drenching the cavernous space.

There’s a limit to how much you can say about Francis Bacon; to how many times you can talk about viscerality, the anguish of existence, the torment of love, etc etc etc, over and over. But we’ve apparently not reached that limit yet, because the National Portrait Gallery’s put on a big show of Frankie’s portraiture, and someone’s got to tell you if it’s worth 23 quid.

If you like GDPR training, you’re in for a treat at the Serpentine. Tech experimenters Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s series of mediaeval church altars and choral compositions is actually a deep dive into the intricacies and legal frameworks of AI modelling. The quasi-historical approach helps to make you feel safe in the uncomfortable, scary waters of new technology.

You know how you get all tongue-tied and stupid, blushing and awkward, in front of someone way too beautiful? Monet will do that to you too. There are 21 views of the Thames here, 21 paintings almost too gorgeous to be real. 

Why go: These are staggering paintings of foggy old London by the impressionist master of haze and light.

How much light can you pack into a painting? How much love, despair, hope, anxiety? In the case of Vincent Van Gogh, the answer is: infinite. This mesmerising show of kaleidoscopic, emotional art brings together work from the last two years of his life, years spent in Provence turning painting inside out and mentally falling apart in the process.

Why go: It's a dazzling, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these hugely important works.

Chaos, noise, torture, lies, laughter and trauma. Mike Kelley’s show at Tate Modern is not an easy or comfortable place to be, and that’s how he would've wanted it. The hugely influential American punk-performer-poet-conceptual-weirdo died in 2012 after dedicating his life to a long, unstoppable process of constant, ceaseless subversion. This exhibition is room after room of conventions and expectations being undermined, twisted and destroyed.

Why go: This maelstrom of ideas is a brilliant, shocking guide to how to live more freely.

What do you do when your world is falling apart? When regimes are oppressing, corporations are exploiting, society is crumbling and economies are collapsing? Well, you can fight, you can make art, or you can just live. The Indian artists in the Barbican’s big autumn show do all three.

Bodies lie splintered, shattered, in pieces on the floor in Geumhyung Jeong’s installation at the ICA. Skeletal appendages – ribs, femurs, spines and skulls – are abandoned on the concrete, wires and motors and batteries left half connected to tibias and hips.

Why go: This robotic graveyard hides a very human heart.

Tracey Emin continues the slow evisceration of her own body and psyche in her latest show at White Cube. Splayed across the walls is all the blood and torment of a life lived without fear of sadness or pain, but in the full knowledge that it must come. 

Why go: The modern master of emotional torment knowns how to let it all hang out. 

Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy taste. Luckily, Sir Elton John would probably know his art from his elbow even if he hadn’t become one of the world’s biggest, richest megastars. For decades now, he has been building a world class collection of photography with his partner David Furnish. It’s been shown all over the world, even at the Tate in 2017, and now it’s the V&A’s turn. 

Why go: These are some of the best modern photographs by the best modern photographers, it's genuinely great.