Things to do in London today

Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big name celebrity curator leading the charge. And excitingly, the 2025 edition will have singer songwriter Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem) in the hot seat, in a festival that runs from Tuesday October 21 - Sunday November 2. She'll be joined by Dolly Alderton for an event to launch her debut book, A Complicated Woman, followed by a night of music and poetry alongside multi-disciplinary artists Tom Rasmussen, Marged, Travis Alabanza, Seraphina Simone and Pam Ayres.  Elsewhere in the festival, there'll be appearances from massive literary and cultural figures including Sebastian Faulks, Jimi Famurewa, Zadie Smith, Adam Buxton, Malala Yousafzai, Claire-Louise Bennett and Reese Witherspoon & Harlan Coben. There'll also be a focus on international women's voices, with celebrations of new work from Sayaka Murata, Chris Kraus, Alexis Wright, Bora Chung and Olga Ravn. And the poetry line-up will Pfeature Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Out-Spoken, Rachael Boast and the National Poetry Library open day. As ever, there'll be plenty of opportunities for kids to get involved too, with events with the children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce and a run of Mog the Forgetful Cat. Visit the Southbank Centre's official website for full details. 

Following a successful debut last year, the producers of Kew Gardens’ beloved Christmas trail are bringing back their Halloween trail through the iconic botanical gardens. It’s a light trail, basically, but a souped up one: we’re promised eerie illuminated trees, ghoulish installations, fire performers and more, with a troupe of actors on hand to stoke up our horrors (in a family friendly way, of course). There are three timeslots: Daylight sessions run during the daytime and are intended for younger audiences who want an absolute minimum of spookiness (or simply not be hoe too late); Twlight slots are between 6pm and 7.30pm and things are definitely getting a bit scarier (ie darker); finally the Moonlight slots run after 7.30pm when it should be fully dark. It’s worth stressing that the trail is suitable for all ages at all times, but certainly there are ways a means of managing the spook factor and fitting it around the bedtime of younger audiences. If none of that’s your bag, there will be a host of activities themed around beloved Julia Donaldson children’s book Zog-themed running at Kew until November 3. Halloween at Kew opening dates Halloween at Kew 2025 begins Friday October 17 and runs until Sunday November 2.  Tickets and pricing Tickets for Halloween at Kew cost £18.50 for adults during off-peak times, or £22 during peak times. Members’ tickets are discounted by £2. Children (aged 4-15) cost £13 off-peak, or £16 peak and under fours go free, but still have to...

What do an Enigma machine, an Apple AirTag and Lady Mountbatten’s silk underwear all have in common? Well, they’re all currently on display at the British Library’s riveting Secret Maps exhibition. Why are they all together? Because they all tell stories about how information is created, concealed, disseminated and controlled, via mapping. And that’s exactly what Secret Maps is all about.  Through more than 100 items, from hand-drawn naval charts gifted to Henry VIII, to Soviet Cold War-era cartographies, and modern-day satellite tracking technology (TL;DR: a whole lotta maps), the British Library illuminates how maps can be powerful political tools, create communities, and act as a form of protest.  It’s a dense, information-packed display with plenty of granular detail to get stuck into, so if you’re not, like, really into maps, then it may not be for you. But it’s sort of what you’d expect for an exhibition dedicated to maps hosted by the British Library. There are a few fun and interactive elements, too; visitors are invited to peer through secret spy holes, place their phones on a futuristic screen that tells them exactly how the tech overlords are mapping and harvesting their data (gulp), and find Wally in an original drawing from the children’s book.  For £20 you are guaranteed to see a lot of cool old shit The most compelling aspect of the exhibition is its anti-colonialist streak (other London museums could do with taking a leaf out of the British Library’s...

Ghouls, skeletons and creepy critters will be lurking the grounds of Kenwood House this October half term. Winding through the brand new light trail, you’ll have to navigate your way through a spider tunnel, brave a slime web, wander down a warped laser garden and brace yourself for a fair few frights and eerie surprises. Hot toddies, hot chocolate and a banquet of street food options will be on sale to keep you warm and full. Spooky costumes are, of course, strongly encouraged.

Built on an old railway line, Dalston East Curve Garden is a welcoming green oasis for the local community all summer. And that doesn't change once autumn leaves start to fall. Head there during the weekend of Oct 25-26 to help fill this pretty spot with gorgeously carved gourds at its family-friendly carving sessions. The garden will provide pumpkins and equipment on a first-come-first-serve basis for a suggested donation of £3-5. Or, turn up to the ‘light up nights’ the following week, where you can see the urban green space looking extra-atmospheric as hundreds of pumpkins are filled with candles and placed around the garden. Previous years have seen over 1,000 pumpkins fill up the garden, so it really is a sight to see. 

Opening in time for Spooky Season and running through to May 2026, ‘Dark Secrets’ is a massive new exhibition of esoteric artefacts in Waterloo’s appropriately dingy Vaults – and a cracking day out for anyone into the occult, macabre or bizarre. A sprawling labyrinth of 27 rooms, ‘Dark Secrets’ is fundamentally an exhibition of stuff: more than 1,000 individual artefacts, many of them (apparently) displayed for the first time outside of private collections. Ritual masks, cursed dolls, leather-bound Renaissance books on witchcraft, a fragment of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema temple… if your idea of fun is gawping at weird and creepy shit (and mine certainly is), there’s a lot of it here – and it’s a refreshing change from the wave of immersive ‘exhibitions’ which often don’t amount to much more than a blank room with some projectors in. There is a vaguely chronological structure, running from Celtic druids through to the influence of the esoteric on Hollywood and comics. Horror-movie fans, look out for the original screenplay of Suspiria signed by Dario Argento. Along the way there are rooms dedicated to folkloric creatures, shamanism, voodoo, zombies, satanism, spiritualism, witch trials, Freemasonry, curses, miracles, divination, astrology, tarot… it’s like an occult bookshop brought to life. My favourite item in the show was an (ostensibly genuine) Victorian vampire-hunting kit. But I was also fascinated by a room about the collision of technology and science with the...

It’s the perfect time of year to explore the grand, gloomy corridors and courtyards of Henry VIII’s haunted palace. In contrast to previous editions of Hampton Court Halloween, where the action has mostly been inside, this October 2025 half term the main focus will be the gardens, where we’re promised ‘atmospheric projections and creepy sound effects’ in a new outdoor trail, that will also incorporate ‘spirits roaming the grounds’.  Although it sounds like the inside of the palace will be less ‘halloweeny’ than it has been in previous years, there still be wnadering ghosts sharing their stories, plus spooky storytime sessions. 

Pumpkin patches, UV discos and marshmallow-toasting stations will be joining the furry inhabitants at London Zoo for the return of its Boo at the Zoo Halloween programme. Pick and paint the perfect orange ​​gourd, make a ‘flapping bat’ in craft workshops and join a silent disco. Or, find out more about the Zoo’s nocturnal animals by prowling around its darkened The Cassons area and hear about the mysterious lives of nighttime creatures in special expert talks. 

Doc’n Roll Film Festival shines a spotlight on some of the movers and shakers who’ve lit up the music world with intriguing and eclectic sounds. This year, the programme covers a wealth of genres and scenes, and takes over the capital’s cinema staples like the Barbican, BFI Southbank, Dalston's Rio and more. Some screenings come accompanied by Q&As with the artists documented and/or filmmakers, or live performances.  The fest kicks off with I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, punk legend Glen Matlock’s cinematic memoir. The subversive mood continues with How Tanita Tikaram Became A Liar, an anti-documentary directed by filmmaker Natacha Horn, who is also this maverick music icon's wife. Rockers Don't Stop plunges us into the world of 1980s dance pioneers, Not Indian Enough is an exploration of King Khan's roots in indigenous Canada and the devastating impacts of colonialism, and Boy George & Culture Club is a new look back at a storied London scene. 

This Halloween, why stop at a scary movie night or mildly creepy ghost tour? If you want to really face your fears, take on The Hunting Grounds, a ‘horror maze like no other’. For 40 hair-raising minutes, you’ll be wondering down the pitch-black corridors and disorienting rooms of an eery abandoned industrial site overtaken by hunters. Not much else has been revealed about the experience, but we do know that you’ll need to psych yourself up to face sinister live performers and plenty of horrifying jump scares. It’s in a secret location in the east of the city – you’ll only find out the exact venue after booking. 

Nicola Walker is a brilliant TV actor: her sullen, sarcastic charisma brings an edge to sundry MOR terrestrial Brit dramas – we’re talking Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax, River, The Split, Annika – in which her career has flourished. But even though she has done some great stuff on stage – notably her excellent turn in Ivo van Hove’s landmark production of A View from the Bridge – I’m not sure Nicola Walker has ever truly successfully brought her innate Nicola Walkerness to bear in a theatre role. Until now.  Nick Payne’s new Royal Court play The Unbelievers isn’t the instant classic his last one (2012’s Constellations) was. But its star gives a turn that is absolutely, magnificently, unfettered Nicola Walker. Her unique gift for proper nuanced acting filtered via an unshakeable deadpan grumpiness is harnessed to perfection as she plays a grieving mother whose sorrow and grief at the unexplained disappearance of her son has curdled into something darker and more disturbing. The play is set in three timelines, albeit heavily jumbled up and somewhat blurred. There’s the immediate aftermath of Oscar’s disappearance, when Walker’s Miriam is terse and snappy but fundamentally reasonable in both her grief and her burning desire to make progress on the case. There’s one year on, where things are beginning to slip with her. The play opens with a scene from this timeline in which a somewhat out of it Miriam is tending to a wounded hand which has arisen from a complicated series of...

  At the National Theatre last Christmas, Max Webster’s vividly queer take on Oscar Wilde’s magnum opus felt quite a lot like The Ncuti Gatwa Show. Back on stage for the first time since he hit the big time, the Doctor Who actor’s stupendously arch take on dashing young protagonist Algernon Montcrieff had an ultra-knowing quality that defined the production. It’s very, very obvious that in Webster’s take, Algenon and his cousin-slash-BFF Jack are meant to be closeted gay men (it begins with a dragged up Algie writhing away at a grand piano, and doesn’t get noticiably straighter). But whereas Gatwa’s sardonically adult interpretation of Algernon seemed very aware of his own sexuality, that’s not necessarily the case in the West End cast. Gatwa’s replacement is fellow Russell T Davies alumnus Ollie Alexander, and he plays Algie with a waspish dandyishness that feels childish, not adult, a little boy roleplaying his whirlwind romance with Jessica Whitehurst’s bolshy Cicily. Likewise, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett‘s Jack is basically a gigantic overgrown puppy, wagging his tail in delight at the attentions of Kitty Hawthorn’s Gwendolyn, but with zero sexual intent.  All four ‘lovers’ go about their relationships with the breezy silliness of a group of primary schoolers playing mummies and daddies. Webster’s interpretation amps up Wilde’s wit by unburdening it of any need for us to believe in the romance. Indeed, the contrived plotting – Bunburying, the women only being into guys...

This revival of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of race and jealousy won’t get a fraction of the attention that the 2025 Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal production received, but there’s every hope it’ll be the better Othello. Certainly it doesn’t have $3,000 tickets, so that’s something. The work of director Tom Morris has been little seen in London since he co-directed War Horse and then went off to run the Bristol Old Vic – but now he’s back with a bang, as this production marks the start of a five year partnership with Chris Harper Productions to direct Shakespeare plays for the West End.  Of course you need names for West End Shakespeare, and Morris’s cast is headed by a fascinating choice of Othello. As a big Black British star, David Harewood is a shoo-in for the role. But what’s most interesting about his casting is that this is his second time doing it: as a young man he was famously the first Black actor to play the role at the National Theatre, in 1997; he’s indicated he’s looking forward to returning to the part without all the cultural baggage and weight of expectations. He’ll be joined by Toby Jones as Iago, looking to shed his saintly Mr Bates vs the Post Office image, while Desdemona will be played by US actor Caitlin FitzGerald, probably best known here for her role as Kendall’s trobled girlfriend Tabitha in Succession.  In terms of clues at to how Morris’s revival will play out, we’re told it’ll be modern dress, and it seems reasonably likely that the...

Although Aussie director Simon Stone has staged only a handful of shows in the UK, it has to be said that you can see a pattern developing. Take a classic play – previously Lorca’s Yerma and Seneca's Phaedra – rewrite the whole thing into aggressively modern English that revolves around long, light hearted stretches of posh people swearing amusingly, season with a bit of Berlin-indebted stage trickery, and finally change tack and wallop us with the tragedy, right in the guts.  The Lady from the Sea is based on Ibsen’s 1888 drama of the same name, and shares its basic plot beats while tinkering with much of the underlying characterisation and motives.  In a starry production. Edward (Andrew Lincoln) is a wealthy neurosurgeon married to his second wife Ellida (Alicia Vikander), a successful writer. They live with Edward’s two pathologically precocious daughters from his first marriage: Asa (Grace Oddie-Jones), who is at university, and Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike), who is at school. Tossed into the mix are Heath (Joe Alwyn), a hot but nerdy distant cousin who has come to Edward to get a diagnosis for a worrying neurological symptoms, and Lyle (John Macmillan), Edward and Ellida’s droll family friend, who is also hot but nerdy. On Lizzie Clachlan’s bougie white thrust set – suggestive of a fancy modern home, without spelling it out – The Lady from the Sea proceeds exactly as you’d expect a Simon Stone play to proceed. There is a lot of very posh banter, that’s very entertaining...

While the millennia-old union between planet Earth and humanity might not be the first coupling that springs to mind when you think of unhealthy relationships, there’s no denying it is pretty toxic. The Earth gives! Humanity takes! The Earth had boundaries, and humanity violated ‘em – first digging up the ground to mine for coal and drill for oil, then jetting into space with a wandering eye, pushing the atmosphere to its limits in a bid to see what else was out there.   It’s safe to say we’ve put our hosting planet through the wringer physically, but what if we’ve left it feeling emotionally drained too? Could the climate crisis with its ruinous wild fires and unforgiving floods be a scorned Earth’s way of telling humanity to do one? It’s a theory! Or at least, it’s the premise of this pop musical romcom from Ellie Coote (book) and Jack Godfrey’s (music and lyrics), the duo who scored a hit last year with 42 Balloons. Earth and Humanity (aka Hu) are personified as a couple and under this guise, their entire, increasingly troubling partnership is explored. Over the course of one breathless hour of back-to-back songs, the big breakthroughs of our species are reframed as our rocking what could have been a peaceful, happy relationship.  It’s a kooky concept, but this two-hander holds up surprisingly well in a production which Coote also directs, largely thanks to Danielle Steers (Earth) and Tobias Turley (Humanity) being cracking vocalists with a believable chemistry...

Aussie director Kip Williams made a splash over here last year with his ultra techy, video-centric take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, which used a multitude of crafty camera tricks to create a universe of characters out of one Sarah Snook. Next year, he’ll be doing something similar with a Dracula in which Cynthia Erivo tackles 23 different roles.  Those shows originated in Australia and were part of a specific trilogy of one-woman, camera-based Victorian horror adaptations (there’s a Jekyll & Hyde too). This Donmar adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 classic The Maids is his first original UK production. And the question begged is: are all Kip Williams’s shows ‘like that’, in a visual sense? The answer would seem to be ‘basically, yes’. While there are no camera operators (there’s no room), Williams’s take on The Maids makes copious use of live streaming from iPhones, not to mention an absolute ton of filters. Here, maids and sisters Claire (Lydia Wilson) and Solange (Phia Saban) use them to construct a lurid fantasy world in which they viciously roleplay their similarly filter-addicted Madame (Yerin Ha), who would appear to be some sort of nepo-baby influencer who in turn roleplays a version of her own life for her 24 million online followers. Visually it’s loud, garish and kind of basic. Which is a good thing! Even when Jamie Lloyd does it, live video in theatre tends to have an arthouse vibe. But actually live video is one of the more dominant means of communication on...

Ella Hickson’s Wendy-centric RSC retelling of JM Barrie’s classic tale of lost boys, pirates, a ticking crocodile and perpetual childhood finally lands in London after premiering in Stratford-upon-Avon over a decade ago. However, some clunky characterisation and awkward modernisation mean that it never truly soars. Original director Jonathan Munby’s production is certainly visually sumptuous. From the vintage toy-filled nooks and crannies of the children’s nursery to the colourfully salvaged look of Neverland, Colin Richmond’s set is a playbox spilled delightfully across the stage. And Taiki Ueda’s video design of crashing waves and twinkling stars pattern atmospherically across the theatre as the children fly or fight Captain Hook. There’s also a bold directness to some of the changes that Hickson makes to the story. Here, Wendy and her brothers go with Peter to find the brother they ‘lost’ a year ago. Barrie’s tale of ageless children who had fallen out of their prams was always a ghost story beneath the fairy dust, with mortality haunting everyone from Hook to Wendy, being shot out of the sky. This version sets the emotional stakes high from the start.  It's also refreshing to see Wendy reject the role of ‘mother’ assigned unquestioningly to her by the Lost Boys, paralleled by her mother’s determination to forge her own life as a seamstress in scenes in early twentieth-century London. Unfortunately, Hannah Saxby only really has one note of stressed-out exasperation to...

Taking place across The Place, Sadler’s Wells, the Barbican and more, the massive annual contemporary dance festival returns to London this October, bringing groundbreaking artists from Colombia, Taiwan, Cyprus, Spain and Brazil. Sadler’s Wells East will stage Bogotá by Andrea Peña & Artists, an intense choreography inspired by Colombia’s political and spiritual heritage; see a bold flamenco duet at Change Tempo at the Barbican Pit; and a day takeover of Brixton House will see DJ sets, workshops led by Jamaal Burkmar and Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy as well as in queer salsa. Plus much more across the month.     

It’s a fine line between the kind of plays in which people talk a lot and nothing really happens and it’s really profound, and the ones where people talk a lot and nothing happens and it’s really boring. The Assembled Parties can’t quite work out which it is. It looks and sounds like one of the good ones, with plenty of literate, sparkling conversation between its clever and conflicted characters, but there’s something ill-fitting about it, something awkward, like it’s wearing the profound kind of play as a costume.Writer Richard Greenberg, who died in July, had a lot of success in America and a little over here. This play, which premiered in New York in 2013, hasn’t been seen in the UK but Blanche McIntyre’s production doesn’t really make a strong enough case for it. A quirky setup has a big New York Jewish family celebrating Christmas at the insistence of gentle, loving matriarch Julie Bascov. It’s 1980. She and husband Ben and their two sons invite sister-in-law Faye, her husband Mort and their lumpen daughter Shelley to their huge Upper West Side apartment for dinner. It seems almost to play out like one of those big meaty American family dramas, so why can’t it escape the feeling that it’s just cosplaying as a good play?Well there are the mannered performances for one thing, particularly for characters who have about ten lines and then just float around pointlessly: Daniel Abelson’s Ben, a blend of Billy Crystal and Christopher Walken, and Julia Kass’s gauche Shelley....

Anna Ziegler’s play The Wanderers makes its UK debut at the Marylebone Theatre after becoming an off-Broadway hit in 2023, starring Katie Holmes. Tracking the lives and loves of two Jewish couples from different generations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it is a crafty, gradually intensifying drama that examines the values we embrace and reject. Directed here by Igor Golyak, it’s staged on two sides of a translucent screen, with the tensions from the separate eras overlapping and reverberating across time. Abe (a wonderfully weary Alex Forsyth) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning prodigy who has known his wife, Sarah (Paksie Vernon) – a less successful writer – practically his whole life. At one of his book readings, he spots the movie star Julia Cheever (Anna Popplewell) in the audience and so begins a lustful email exchange, which sends Abe on a downward spiral; he questions the roots of his marriage, declares his love for Julia, and descends further into his own world. Elsewhere, in the novel Abe is trying to piece together about his family history, his parents Esther (Katerina Tannenbaum) and Schmuli (Eddie Toll) are Hasidic Jews. They’ve met only once before their arranged marriage and are about to embark on a life together. But, with Esther’s desire to push the boundaries of tradition, it’s not long before their union is in tatters. In the hands of Golyak, the play glows in its duality. Using white marker pen, the actors draw out objects, like radios, that are used separately in...

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too. It starts, like any good procession, with a load of geezers with trumpets, parping to herald the arrival of victorious Caesar. As they blare, a Black soldier in gorgeous, gilded armour looks back, leading you to the next panel where statues of gods are paraded on carts. Then come the spoils of war, with mounds of seized weapons and armour piled high, then come vases and sacrificial animals, riders on elephant-back, men struggling to carry the loot that symbolises their victory. The final panel, Caesar himself bringing up the rear, remains in Hampton Court, so there is no conclusion here, just a steady, unstoppable stream of glory and rejoicing.  The paintings are faded and damaged, and have been so badly lit that you can only see them properly from a distance and at an angle. But still, they remain breathtaking in their sweeping, chaotic beauty.  Partly, this massive work is a celebration of the glories of the classical world and its brilliance, seen from the other side of some very dark ages. But along with its rise, you can’t help but also think of Rome's demise, of what would eventually...

You could say that Marie Antoinette was the original celebrity. The last Queen of France worked with personal stylists, had her barnet done by celebrity hairdressers, and set the agenda for the fashion of the day. She had her own personal brand – an elegant ‘MA’ monogram – which she plastered all over her jewellery, furniture, belongings, and even most intimate toiletries. Like many celebs today, the queen’s dodgy reputation, founded on obscene rumours of debauchery, promiscuity and gorging on cake, was created by tabloid sensationalism. So it’s only fitting that a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the style of the world’s most fashionable and infamous monarch should be just as fabulous, bold, sparkly and, at times, salacious. Featuring 250 objects, including loans from Versailles that have never been exhibited outside of France before now, Marie Antoinette Style takes visitors on a journey through the ill-fated queen’s forward-thinking wardrobe, dizzyingly elaborate jewellery, lavish interiors, huge hairstyles and enduring influence on fashion and art today. Alongside the myriad guffaw-inducing riches on display (a replica of the most expensive necklace ever made in France is particularly astonishing), mysteries surrounding the queen are confidently dispelled. Did she really say, ‘Let them eat cake’? (No.) Was the coupette glass actually modelled on her breast? (No, but a very realistic porcelain ‘breast bowl’ commissioned by Antoinette is on display.) What appears...

If you thought the National Gallery answered every question that could possibly be asked about what came after the impressionists in their huge blockbuster ‘After Impressionism’ show in 2023, you thought wrong. Because they’re coming back for another go with ‘Radical Harmony’, which will feature the work of the neo-impressionists, including pointilist masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. It’s enough to drive you dotty.

If you thought the National Gallery answered every question that could possibly be asked about what came after the impressionists in their huge blockbuster ‘After Impressionism’ show in 2023, you thought wrong. Because they’re coming back for another go with ‘Radical Harmony’, which will feature the work of the neo-impressionists, including pointilist masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. It’s enough to drive you dotty.

Celebrating the centenary of one of Picasso’s most iconic artworks, The Three Dancers, this exhibition explores the Spanish artist’s fascination with performers – including dancers, bullfighters, musicians, acrobats and other entertainers – via more than 45 works ranging from paintings and sculpture to textile and works on paper, some of which are being exhibited in the UK for the first time. They’ll be exhibited in an appropriately theatrical environment too, courtesy of courtesy of contemporary artist and filmmaker Wu Tsang and author and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca, who will transform the Tate Modern’s exhibition rooms into a theatre space that will host a variety of dance and performance pieces throughout the exhibition, including an excerpt from Carmen presented by interdisciplinary arts collective Moved by the Motion, and a site-specific work by flamenco artist Yinka Esi Graves.  Picasso exhibitions might be ten a penny in London these days, but this one sounds like it might stand out.   

‘Wherever conflict erupts, sexual violence is present.’ So it’s surprising that until 2025, the UK has never had a major exhibition on sexual violence in conflict. This year the Imperial War Museum is hoping to shed light on the topic that remains widely under-discussed.  Through first-person testimonies, objects, artwork, propoganda posters and papers, Unsilenced will investigate the different ways in which sexual violence in conflict can manifest. It will span the untold stories of child evacuees, victims of trafficking, prisoners of war, and survivors from the First World War to present-day conflicts, and highlight the ongoing efforts of those fighting for justice and working to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. It’s expected to be a sobering, ground-breaking exhibition.  NB: This exhibition includes cases of rape, sexual humiliation, torture and child abuse in conflict. IWM advises that this exhibition is only suitable for those aged 16 or over.   

Video games are the medium for Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’ - this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities. 

Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting.

Lawrence Lek’s largest UK institutional exhibition is set to take over Goldsmiths CCA later this year, with the artist responding to the gallery’s architecture through both new and existing work. The London-based creative’s work is often dark and playful, and fuelled by his own brand of science-fiction that raises questions around the age of machine consciousness and social change.

The Cosmic House is one of those rare places deserving of the name ‘hidden gem’. A Victorian villa on a residential street near Holland Park station, it’s the former home of revered postmodernist landscape architect Charles Jencks, who renovated the building in the late 1970s with his wife Maggie and the architect Terry Farrell to earn its Grade I-listing. Remodelled into a liveable collage of cosmic references and playful mind-games, it can be interpreted as a mediation on our place in the universe via quantum physics, architecture and philosophy. But it’s also just an extraordinarily beautiful building; a masterpiece of light, shadow and symmetry.  Since 2021, the house has operated as a museum, and each year, the Jencks Foundation commissions an artist to respond to the surroundings. This time round, it’s a video work by Lithuanian-born musician Lina Lapelytė, composed of 12 screens dotted around the house to be hunted down like a game of hide and seek. Created in collaboration with five other artists, each screen shows a video of a musical performance taking place in the home, often right where you’re standing. In one film, singers assemble around the central spiral staircase: a dizzying kaleidoscopic shot of bodies circling a descending, twisting railing. On another screen, in the gallery basement, a performer sings a capella, sitting on the polished jade floor as light reflects in shards like a static disco ball. There is even a screen in the ‘Cosmic Loo’, complete...