London events in February 2024

Fancy eating your sad office sarnies in a cacoon of bamboo? Somerset House is turning its bombastic neoclassical courtyard into a garden full of the panda food which you can frolic about in for free to enjoy a quick picnic, a moment of calm in your busy work day, or an inevitable photo-op. The immersive installation is a new large-scale commission from Hong-Kong based artist Zheng Bo that ‘invites visitors to temporarily disconnect from their fast-paced, hyper-connected everyday lives by immersing themselves in the biosphere’. 

Ono’s fame is so huge, her name so ubiquitous, that it has almost totally eclipsed the fact that she’s a leading experimental artist in her field. She’s worked in performance, film and drawing, she was part of Fluxus, she’s made music and she’s fought for peace. She is, in other words, totally legit and totally overlooked. Her work is always radical, always earnest, and often quite silly. What more could you want? 

The mighty St John is set to become the first ever restaurant to be in residence at the fabulous Fortnum & Mason. From February 2 to 22, the 317-year-old department store on Piccadilly will give over its in-house Field restaurant space to St John while its actual St John restaurant in Smithfield is closed and refitted. The wooden chairs and tables from the original restaurant will be taken to Fortnum & Mason, and the whitewashed walls and coat pegs of the dining room will be recreated, alongside a steel-clad bar for wines, beers and St John’s famously potent Negronis. Head Chef Steve Darou will be cooking up the plates. 

Frank Auerbach, a head honcho of the ‘School of London’ movement alongside folk like Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, is considered one of the most important artists of twentieth century Britain – and he’s still alive today, pumping out gorgeous, vital art. His small show of new self-portraits at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert last year proved that he’s still got it, but this Courtauld exhibition will look back at some charcoal portraits from the 1950s and ’60s which are considered ‘some of his early masterpieces.’

Guess what: it’s somehow half-term again. It might seem like mere days since the end of the Christmas hols, but the kids are getting a whole week off, which means it’s only a matter of time before somebody complains that they’re bored and you’re racking your brains for something to do besides plonk them in front of the telly. Luckily, London has plenty of brilliant kid-friendly museums and galleries that really come into their own when school is out. And February half-term is a particularly good one, with plenty of family-friendly exhibitions just getting started, plus the return of the redoubtable Imagine Children’s Festival to the Southbank Centre. 

Life in the Roman empire was as mundane as life in 2024. ‘Legion’ tells the story of a single Roman soldier, recounting a life of hard work, ambition, disappointment and unreachable goals. This show is full of stunning symbols of everyday life for Roman soldiers from across the empire. Red wool socks to protect against the rub of hobnailed leather sandals, purses holding a handful of silver coins, dice for gambling, letters home pleading for a new tunic. It’s just the drudgery of normal existence, same in 60AD as it is now. This powerfully atmospheric exhibition manages to transport you to the past: it’s all brutal, bloody, violent, but somehow totally mundane too.

Wales’s most beloved man of the twenty-first century Michael Sheen playing Wales’s most beloved man of the twentieth century Aneurin Bevan is so obvious it almost feels a bit on the nose – especially as Sheen has already been very public about his idolisation of the politician affectionately still widely know as Nye. But don’t expect a cosy hagiography from playwright Tim Price: his new drama is being billed as ‘an epic Welsh fantasia’ that sees a dying Bevan look back trippily on his life, from working as a miner to founding the NHS. 

Wibbly, wobbly, lumpy and bumpy; the Hayward’s first show of the year will be all about organic forms in sculpture. We’re talking fluidity, curviness, blobbiness and tactility in the work of artists like Franz West, Phyllida Barlow, Holly Hendry and Eva Fàbregas. This big, ultra-focused group show approach is often what the Hayward does best. Prepare for ‘promiscuously proliferating’ sculptures about ‘the poetics of gravity’, whatever that means. 

Whether you’re flying solo, newly coupled up, or have been with your other half for decades, London is a great place to be on Valentine’s Day. There’s something for everyone on February 14 no matter what your relationship status: eccentrically themed speed-dating nights, ironic drag show, galentine’s parties or warm, fuzzy date spots for all those loved-up couples out there. Here’s our pick of the best. 

As a playwright, Jez Butterworth has become an almost legendary figure. We don’t know a huge amount about his latest, ‘The Hills of California’, but it’s definitely not set in California. Rather the place is Blackpool and the time is the sweltering summer of ’76, as the Webb sisters return to the family guesthouse to see their dying mother one last time. As with 2017’s enormo-smash ‘The Ferryman’, it’ll be directed by the great Sam Mendes and will be produced by Sonia Friedman, alongside Mendes’s own Neal Street Productions. There’s a typically heavyweight cast of Laura Donnelly, Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond and Helena Wilson.