Free things to do in London this week

Once again you can expect to see remarkable feats of astrophotography at the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. It’s a chance to see magical views of both our own night sky and of galaxies far, far away. The winning spacey visions come from dozens of professional and amateur snappers in various categories including ‘Planets, Comets and Asteroids’, ‘Stars and Nebulae’, ‘Galaxies’ and ‘Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year’ for under-16s. Soar down to Greenwich to see the winners from 2025's competition on display. 

The Barbican is celebrating 20 years of comissioning artists for The Curve in 2026. Chicago-based artist Julia Phillips will be the first to exhibit in the free space this year, with her first UK solo exhibition Inside, Before They Speak. Showing new sculptures that combine glazed ceramics sculpted on her body with metal hardware, Phillips explores ideas about the body, conception, technology and human connection. 

This year’s New Contemporaries exhibition, a showcase of 26 of the UK’s finest emerging artists, opened at the South London Gallery at the end of January. The show includes themes of - and you may want to take a breath here - dystopian futures, the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification, displacement, critical approaches to systems of power, digital technologies, mourning, remembrance, and loss. Among others! Highlights include a striking photographic work by Timon Benson depicting a group of young people congregating in an intimate, cramped party setting, a series of brutalist sculptures by William Braitwaithe, and a number of satisfying works on canvas by a collection of plainly virtuosic painters. The absolute stars of the show, however, are located across the street in the gallery’s Fire Station building. On the first floor are two remarkable films. The first, by Chinese artist River Yuhao Cao, explores mourning in regional Chinese folk traditions. It’s a quiet, beautifully shot meditation that centres on a moving stage vehicle, which parks up in the middle of a forest at night. The curtains are drawn to reveal a lone dancer who performs for an audience of just one, presumably grieving, man who sits on the ground, transfixed by her movements. This moving film has a graceful, hypnotic quality to it, and it makes great use of minimal lighting to pierce through the dark, twilight hours during which it was shot. What this exhibition lacks in cohesion, it makes...

Want to gawp at some of the masterpieces in the National Gallery but can’t face schlepping to central London? Croydon will be taken over with life-sized reproductions of some of the gallery’s biggest bangers in this free outdoor art exhibition. From Van Gogh, to Monet and Turner, CR0’s town centre will be awash with artwork. Locations to spot the paintings include the Queen’s Gardens, Croydon Minster, Whitgift Shopping Centre and Park Hill Park. Pieces will also be installed in Coulsdon, New Addington, Purley, Thornton Heath and Upper Norwood.

A new free photography exhibition illustrates the beauty and fragility of the Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Over 60 images, captured by two of Brazil’s leading documentary photographers, will be displayed. Visitors will discover the Pantanal’s wonderful biodiversity – which includes jaguars, howler monkeys, caiman and marsh deer – alongside the ravages of wildfires and deforestation.