Exhibition
DIRECT FROM GRACELAND | ELVIS
Immersive events space Arches London Bridge has debuted its latest major exhibition – and this one’s all about Elvis. Direct From Graceland boasts more than 400 artefacts, many of which (as the name suggests) have been shipped to London straight from Elvis’ Memphis home and over half are being displayed in the UK for the first time. Expect to see some of the most recognisable objects from the legendary singer’s career, including his gold lamé suit, Las Vegas-era jumpsuits and aviator sunglasses, alongside more personal pieces such as a gold-plated telephone, his wallet and go-to cologne. Plus, mega fans can even select the ‘White Glove Experience’ when booking for the chance to hold Elvis’ international belt and gold microphone used in Las Vegas in 1969. If you’ve always wanted to make that trip to Graceland but never quite got round to it, this is the next best thing.
Forget gingerbread houses, there’s an actual gingerbread city at Westfield London. Created by the Museum of Architecture, this is the seventh year of the project and this time, the theme for the exhibition is ‘Water in Cities’. The aim is to explore how cities could be designed to be more water resilient (something that’s becoming more and more pressing each year), only doing it through the mediums of biscuits, sweets, cakes, and icing. Not only is this a sweet way to help get the public excited about architecture and innovative, sustainable design, but a little holiday cheer never hurt anybody.
ACCIDENTALLY WES ANDERSON | THE EXHIBITION
Accidentally Wes Anderson is coming back to London IRL with an exhibition featuring over 200 photos of buildings and landscapes from around the world that look as though they could be backdrops in a Wes Anderson flick. The show will be spread out across seven themed rooms, including ‘Classic Facades’ ‘Transport’, ‘Maritime’ and ‘Hotels/Motels’, each filled with photographs that evoke Wes Anderson’s distinct style in different ways, whether through Art Nouveau exteriors, pastel hues, vintage modes of transportation or an abundance of symmetry. The second to last room – ‘The London Room’ – will centre around Accidentally Wes Anderson photos of the city and guests will be able to submit their own photos for the chance to be featured.
YOKO ONO | MUSIC FOR THE MIND
Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind will be the UK’s largest-ever exhibition dedicated to the artist and activist. Bringing together more than 200 artworks (spanning multiple decades and mediums) the show will explore Ono’s distinctive poetic and humorous style, and the lasting impact it has had on contemporary culture. Expect to see a selection of Ono’s ‘instruction pieces’, which are written instructions for the viewer – ranging from ‘Fly’ or ‘Touch’, to ‘Listen to a heartbeat’ or ‘Step in all the puddles in the city’ – to imagine, experience, make or complete the work. These will appear alongside scores, installations, films, music and photography, with Ono’s radical, activist work at the heart of the exhibition. The gallery’s windows that overlook the River Thames will display ‘Peace is Power’, first shown 2017, translated into multiple languages. Meanwhile, at the entrance to the Tate Modern, the 1996 interactive artwork ‘Wish Tree’ will invite passers-by to contribute their own wishes for peace.
DAVID HOCKNEY | DRAWING FROM LIFE
After a smash hit retrospective at Tate Britain in 2017, another major Hockney exhibition is finally coming to town. David Hockney: Drawing From Life initially opened in February 2020 but only managed a few weeks before the pandemic shuttered the gallery. Now the exhibition is being restaged with portraits of his mother, his friend Celia Birtwell, curator Gregory Evans, and printer Maurice Payne, as well as a series of self-portraits, done in a variety of mediums from pencil to acrylic to digital. These will hang alongside thirty new pieces – including the viral one of Harry Styles – Hockney produced during and after the pandemic, depicting visitors to his Normandy studio across 2021 and 2022.
WOMEN IN REVOLT! ART & ACTIVISM IN THE UK 1970 - 1990
Tate Britain is hosting a major survey of feminist art, featuring pieces by over 100 women artists working in the UK, with the Women in Revolt! exhibition. Featuring a range of mediums from painting and sculpture to film and performance, the exhibition explores how women used radical ideas and rebellious action to fight for women’s liberation and change British culture. Issues and events like punk, the visibility of Black and South Asian women artists, Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic, and Greenham Common and the peace movement are reflected in the artworks on show, many of which – including Bobby Baker’s ‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’ – are being presented for the first time since the 70s.
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has been a hit in the States and in Europe and now it has come to Spitalfields. The exhibition sees more than 300 of Van Gogh’s works projected across a floor-to-ceiling two-storey space so you’ll be able to soak up the art from all angles. There’s also a drawing studio and a VR experience that takes you through a day in the life of the artist and explores the inspiration behind some of his most iconic paintings.
GET TICKETSThe London Transport Museum is opening its Global Poster Gallery, its first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of poster art and design, with the How to Make a Poster exhibition. The inaugural display will explore poster commissioning and creativity in the pre-digital age, with more than 110 pieces on show. The Underground’s first ever pictorial poster, John Hassall’s 1908 work ‘No need to ask a p’liceman’ by John Hassall alongside posters by designers and artists like Edward McKnight Kauffer, Man Ray, Hans Unger, Abram Games, Tom Eckersley, Paul Catherall, and Dora M Batty. The various techniques used in poster production will also be showcased in the exhibition as well as the way the posters were displayed and the reception they received from both London travellers and the art world.
Mat Collishaw is exploring the relationship between the natural world and art history with the Petrichor exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens. The show includes the UK premieres of his ‘Alluvion’ series of AI artworks inspired by Dutch Old Masters and his video installation ‘Even to the End’, a piece inspired by the transportation of plant specimens around the world, as well as the gallery premiere of ‘Heterosis’, a flower hybridisation experience inspired by the tulip mania of the 17th century. You’ll also be able to see his animations ‘The Centrifugal Soul’ and ‘Albion’, which feature courtship displays of birds of paradise and the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest respectively.
CUTE
Somerset House will be all about cuteness at the start of 2024 with its latest major exhibition. Aptly named CUTE, the show will explore the complex power and potential of chubby-cheeked babies, doe-eyed animals and pastel-coloured motifs through a collection of contemporary artworks, new commissions and cultural phenomena. The exhibition will open with an ode to cats, retracing their path to newsfeed domination starting with a shift in the late 19th century that came with the work of artists such as Harry Pointer Louis Wain. CUTE will also spotlight kawaii culture through artefacts rarely exhibited in the UK, such as printed materials, figurines, illustrated handkerchiefs and sketchbooks, from the archive of the Yayoi Museum in Tokyo. And the show will touch on the darker side of cute imagery, looking at how the tone was changed by musicians and bands such as Jun Togowa, Hole and Babes in Toyland. Marking half a decade of global influence, CUTE will have a section dedicated entirely to Hello Kitty. This immersive environment will have a plushie space (made with the help of super fan Amy-Louise Allen’s personal collection), as well as a Hello Kitty disco, complete with a mirror ball and curated playlist of 60s, 70s and 80s pop and disco hits
Luke Jerram’s touring artwork Museum of the Moon, a six-metre model featuring incredibly detailed NASA imagery of the moon with ambient moonlight and soundscape from Dan Jones, is popping up at Southwark Cathedral. You can visit the installation in the day, but the Lunar Lates, where the gothic cathedral will be extra atmospheric thanks to the darkness outside will be particularly impressive. There’ll also be a number of events held under the moon, including an organ recital, a candlelight concert and a talk with Tim Peake.
SKATEBOARD
All you skaters will wanna roll down to the Design Museum to catch Skateboard, the first major UK exhibition to explore the history of skateboard design from the 50s to today. Author, designer and skater Jonathan Olivares is curating the show, which’ll chart the evolution of the skateboard from its homemade beginnings to professional advancements and its acceptance into wider culture. Over 90 rare and unique boards will be on display, including Laura Thornhill’s Logan Earth Ski 1970s pro model, Tony Hawk’s first ever professional model skateboard, and Sky Brown’s first pro model, alongside hardware, safety equipment, VHS tapes, mags and DVDs.
THE CULT OF BEAUTY
The Wellcome Collection is exploring notions of beauty across different time periods and different cultures with major exhibition The Cult of Beauty. The display explores the influence of morality, health, age, status, race and gender on the evolution of established norms of beauty, by looking at the ideals of beauty over time, the relationship between medicine and cosmetics, and how beauty can be used to subvert social constructs. Over 200 items will be on show, including an ancient Egyptian mirror, products by Rihanna’s Fenty brand, a powder compact designed by Salvador Dali, photographs of hair traditions in Nigeria and an AI-generated installation of a morphing human body created from a range of datasets from different bodies.
PHILIP GUSTON
The Tate Modern is presenting the first major survey of Philip Guston’s work in the UK for more than 20 years. The exhibition showcases Guston’s work over five decades, during which he created paintings and drawings that responded to the social and political upheavals of the late 20th century, exploring how his work encompassed both the personal and political, the funny and the tragic, and the abstract and the figurative. The show includes his large-scale paintings that feature hooded Ku Klux Klan figures in an examination of evil and racism, his poem-pictures, and dream-inspired late works.
HIROSHI SUGIMOTO | TIME MACHINE
The Hayward Gallery is presenting the largest retrospective to date of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work with the Time Machine exhibition. Sugimoto is known for his enigmatic photographs and this display will feature pieces from all his major series, including ‘Diorama’, ‘Theaters’, ‘Seascapes’, ‘Architecture’, ‘Portraits’, ‘Sea of Buddha’, ‘Lightning Fields’ and ‘Opticks’. The exhibition will showcase his philosophical yet playful exploration of time and memory; his interest in the history of photography, maths and optical science; and his use of 19th century photographic practices such as the use of dioramas and wax figures.
RE/SISTERS | A LENS ON GENDER AND ECOLOGY
With RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, the Barbican is exploring the relationship between gender and ecology, environmental and social justice, and the links between the oppression of women and the destruction of the planet. The show includes photography, film and installations from almost 50 international female and non-binary artists, including Laura Aguilar, Judy Chicago, Minerva Cuevas, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Otobong Nkanga, Ingrid Pollard, Pamela Singh, and Taloi Havini, whose work engages with and protests against the current ecological crisis.
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
The 59th Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is being hosted at the Natural History Museum. The display features awarded images selected around 50,000 entries and it showcases the beauty and diversity of the natural world, with everything from snow leopards hunting in China to seals in Greece to snow bisons in the US depicted in the photographs.
GUCCI COSMOS
Gucci’s travelling archival exhibition is making a stop in London as it’s taking over 180 Studios for just shy of three months this autumn/winter. Gucci Cosmos premiered in Shanghai back in spring with a collection of the fashion house’s most legendary pieces, including looks from Tom Ford, Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele, many of which are being viewed outside of the archive for the first time. The exhibition, which retraces 102 years of history, has been designed by contemporary artist Es Devlin and curated by Italian fashion theorist and critic Maria Luisa Frisa. Gucci Cosmos is a must-see for fashion history fans and/or anyone already experiencing London Fashion Week withdrawal.