Exhibition
Travel Back in Time to Pompeii at This Immersive Exhibition
The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition is promising to take visitors on a journey through the ancient city through the use of cutting-edge tech, interactive experiences and original artefacts. The exhibition will showcase daily life in the city with recreations of Roman architecture and displays of artefacts and replicas, including bronze utensils and marble sculptures, before moving onto the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD that destroyed the city. There’ll be casts of Pompeii’s citizens shown in the way they were found after being preserved by calcified ash; eight-metre high projections featuring the sights and sounds of Pompeii; a 360-degree virtual reality sequence inside a Roman amphitheatre, including gladiatorial combat and a naval battle; and a free-roaming Metaverse experience where you can move through a recreation of the Villa of the Mysteries.
Over 250 Banksy Pieces Are on Show at This Exhibition
If you didn’t catch Banksy’s mural on the Royal Courts of Justice before it was scrubbed away, don’t fret as Banksy Limitless London in South Kensington has over 250 Banksy works on display – one of the most expansive retrospectives of the artist to date. Curated by Sorina Burlacu, the display brings together his certified originals, rare pieces, digital works and sculptures under one roof. Highlights of the exhibition include an exclusive holographic experience create exclusively for the London edition, installations from the 2015 Dismaland “bemusement park, certified prints of iconic works like ‘Flower Thrower’ and ‘Kissing Coppers’, the large-scale Phone Booth sculpture, more recent pieces exploring themes of immigration, and original art from the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem. The exhibition also promises to delve into Banksy’s process, featuring recreated stencil works and a mural installation capturing the essence of his street art.
Tate Modern is hosting an exhibition on Picasso that showcases his works in a way you haven’t seen before. Theatre Picasso, curated by artist Wu Tsang and author and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca, centres around Picasso’s fascination with performers, the way he borrowed from them to create his persona of Picasso the artist, and his painting ‘The Three Dancers’, which is celebrating its 100th birthday. The pair have turned the exhibition space into a theatre, displaying more than 45 of Picasso’s works across painting, sculpture, textiles and paper pieces, some of which have never been seen in the UK before. There’ll also be an accompanying programme of events alongside the exhibition, including dance and flamenco.
The Biggest Ever Tracey Emin Exhibition Has Come to Tate Modern
Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the biggest show of Emin’s career, will look back over her 40-year career. Over 90 works will be on display, including paintings, videos, neons, sculptures and textiles, showcasing the way she uses art and the female body to explore love, passion, trauma and healing. Many pieces connected to Margate, where she now lives and has free studio-based art school, will feature in the exhibition, alongside works that address her experience of sexual assault and abortion. Her quilt ‘The Last of the Gold’, emblazoned with an ‘A to Z of abortion’ will be displayed publicly for the first time. Her seminal installations, ‘Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made’ and the Turner-Prize nominated ‘My Bed’, act as a bridge from Emin’s first life to her post-illness and surgery second life. This second life is represented with her large-scale paintings, and pieces that explore her experiences of cancer, surgery and disability, including her 2024 bronze sculpture ‘Ascension’ and a new documentary showing the stoma she now lives with.
Head to Regent's Park for Frieze Sculpture
Frieze Sculpture is back in Regent’s Park this autumn to coincide with the return of Frieze London. The free display has been curated by Fatoş Üstek and this time there’s the overarching theme of ‘In the Shadows’. Pieces from 14 international artists, including Andy Holden, Henrique Oliveira, Grace Schwindt, Timur Si-Qin, Simon Hitchens and Reena Saini Kallat, that engage with the idea of shadows, both literally and thematically, will be on display. Frieze Sculpture is also working with Sculpture in the City, The Line and the Mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Programme to form London Sculpture Week, a city-wide celebration of public art.
Dive Into the Fashion of Marie Antoinette
The V&A is hosting Marie Antoinette Style, the first ever UK exhibition on the fashionable and ill-fated French queen. As well as showing how she was a fashion icon in her own time, the display will examine Marie Antoinette’s influence on design, fashion, film and decorative arts more than 200 years after she was put to the guillotine. Over 250 objects will be on show, including pieces loaned from the Chateau De Versailles as well as contemporary fashion from the likes of Moschino, Dior, Chanel and Vivienne Westwood, and costumes from Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning Marie Antoinette.
Go Inside the Club That Shaped the 80s With This Blitz Exhibition
With the Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s exhibition, the Design Museum is revisiting the iconic Blitz club, which was a launchpad for the careers of its ‘Blitz Kids’, who included Boy George, Spandau Ballet, Sade and Princess Julia, among others. The club has become famous for its impact on 80s music, fashion and design, and the exhibition will explore that influence through garments, drawings, photographs, flyers, magazines, records, instruments and film (curated in collaboration with some of the leading Blitz Kids) – much of which has never been on public display before.
Following the success of her solo exhibition In Catfood and Wine, London-based contemporary artist Louise Howard is back with a new show that showcases her blend of realism and abstraction. Leonard & Co, on display at The Ministry for one night only, is a tribute to Louise’s cat Leonard Cohen, who makes several appearances throughout the collection, alongside dogs, mice and other animals. It’s free registration for the exhibition and 10% of all sales on the night will be donated to Jai Dog Rescue, a UK-registered charity working to improve the lives of street dogs in Thailand.
The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks, which tells the story of humankind’s exploration of the moon, is back at Lightroom in King’s Cross. The immersive experience is narrated by the Oscar-winning actor, with an original score by Anne Nikitin. Hanks, who is a big space fan (pretty fitting that he starred in Apollo 13 then) has co-written the script with BAFTA-nominated writer-director Christopher Riley. As well as footage from the previous Apollo missions, the experience features interviews with Hanks and astronauts on the Artemis programme, which is preparing for the return of crewed surface missions to the moon. And all of that is projected using Lightroom’s cutting-edge tech.
This Exhibition Celebrates the People Transforming the Transport Network Through Gardening
The National Trust, TfL and Seed130 have teamed up for the In Bloom exhibition, which showcases the people, staff and local communities that are nurturing gardens across London’s transport network, how they are creating green spaces in unexpected places, and how gardening supports wellbeing and communal belonging. The display features the winners of Transport for London’s 2024 In Bloom competition, something that has been happening for over a century, captured by British-Congolese artist Bernice Mulenga. Station gardens at Edgware Road, Hainault, Northwick Park, South Tottenham, Upminster and Wembley are among those featured, as well as the people who tend to them. The exhibition also includes two short films commissioned by the National Trust and some rarely-seen archival photographs from the London Transport Museum documenting the history of the gardening competition.
An Open-Air Oasis Exhibition Has Landed in Wembley
To celebrate the Oasis reunion tour, which includes seven shows at Wembley Stadium across July, August and September, an open-air exhibition of Oasis photographs has landed in Wembley Park. Brothers: Liam and Noel Through the Lens of Kevin Cummins features over 20 large-format images taken by music photographer Kevin Cummins in 1994 just before the release of Definitely Maybe. The exhibition, which includes photos taken at the band’s first-ever studio session at Sly Street Studio, the Gallaghers jumping on a London bus, and Noel and Liam wearing Manchester City shirts emblazoned with the word ‘brother’, hones in on the relationship between the two siblings in the year that would dramatically change their lives.
Rare Blondie Photographs Are Going on Show at the Barbican
The Barbican Music Library is on a roll with its exhibitions; following popular displays on emo music and Black British music, a show featuring rare backstage photographs of Blondie will be taking over the space. Blondie in Camera 1978 features 50 images taken by photographer Martyn Goddard, capturing the band in concert, backstage, in the studio and during photo sessions, in the year they released the Parallel Lines album. Though the Debbie Harry-fronted band formed in 1974, they achieved real breakthrough success in 1978 with Parallel Lines, going on to hit number one with ‘Heart of Glass’ in 1979. You can look back at the band’s early days at this exhibition, which will also feature poster prints, album covers, concert memorabilia, and items from the private collection of Alan Edwards, who’s done Blondie’s PR since 1978.
A Major Schiaparelli Exhibition Is Coming to the V&A
If you’ve been loving the Schiaparelli designs that Daniel Roseberry has been sending down the catwalk, then you won’t want to miss this – the V&A is hosting the first-ever UK exhibition dedicated to the fashion house is opening at the V&A next spring. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art will trace the history of the brand, founded by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, from its origins to its present-day operation helmed by creative director Daniel Roseberry. The show will explore Schiaparelli’s radical creativity and her connection to the art world through more than 200 objects, including garments, jewellery, accessories, paintings, photographs, furniture and more. The ‘Skeleton’ dress, the ‘Tears’ dress and the hat shaped like an upside-down shoe, all conceived by Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dali, will be pulled from the V&A’s collection for the exhibition, alongside artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.
Kew Gardens Is Hosting a Downton Abbey-Inspired Floral Exhibition
If you’re a Downton Abbey fan then you’ll no doubt be ready and waiting to see the Crawley family and staff for the last time with Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Once you’ve been to the cinema, head down to Kew Gardens for this floral exhibition inspired by the series, which has been on a global tour before arriving in London. At the Fleurs de Villes Downton Abbey show, taking place inside a marquee on the lawns next to Kew Palace, the luxury floral storytelling brand will be displaying fresh floral mannequins inspired by the characters and the period fashion of the show. As well as the mannequins, the exhibition will feature live botanical demonstrations and talks from local florists; an afternoon tea in the Orangery; and a fan favourite contest where you can vote for your fave display.
This Chippy Is Made Entirely Out of Felt
Back in 2021, felt artist Lucy Sparrow took over the Lyndsey Ingram gallery in Mayfair and turned it into a fully-stocked felt pharmacy. This summer she’s returning to the gallery for her first UK show in four years with The Bourdon Street Chippy. For this installation, Lucy is taking on one of the most quintessentially British institutions – the fish & chip shop – and rendering it completely out of felt. There’ll be a counter created in fabric, hand-made banquette seating, and felt menus, shop signs and even a gallery of sewn portraits of famous former patrons on the walls. And when it comes to the chippy tea, there’ll be fish, chips (15 different shapes in varying colours!), scraps, peas, tartare sauce, curry sauce, vinegar, ketchup, mayo and salt, with over 65,000 individually hand-crafted felt pieces in the exhibit.
Find Out What the Future of Food Could Look Like at the Science Museum
With the free Future of Food exhibition, the Science Museum is exploring the ways that science is creating more sustainable ways of producing and consuming food. Over 100 historic and contemporary objects, including 3,500-year-old bread, the first ever Quorn burger, cell-grown salmon and the first beef steak grown outside a cow, will be on display. As well as diving into the way ecological and biotechnological advances will change the future of food, the show will also highlight the people and communities that are creating innovative alternatives to current industrial food systems, such as seed-swapping ceremonies in the Amazon and growing meat from cells at home in Japan.
See How Pictograms Have Become a Global Communication Tool at Japan House London
Japan House London is celebrating Japanese design with the Pictograms: Iconic Japanese Designs exhibition this summer. Developed from a long history of visual communication stretching back to cave paintings, pictograms have transformed global travel and international communication, featuring on everything from maps to street signs to text messages. Japan has played a pivotal role in this visual language, from the creation of a full set of sporting pictograms for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games to the development of emojis. As well as looking at the history of visual communication and pictograms, this exhibition will bring pictograms to life with interactive sections, where you can devise your own pictogram and become part of one yourself with 3D models. Winning designs by schoolchildren who were asked to create something to represent ‘their London’ will also be on display.
Each year, the City of London works with artists and partners to curate a new trail of artworks that forms the annual sculpture park, Sculpture in the City. This summer marks the 14th edition of the sculpture park and features the work of 11 world-class artists and spans the Square Mile. New pieces, like a cast iron root sculpture by Ai Weiwei, an ink drawing-based piece based on scans of ancient oak trees from Jane and Louise Wilson, and a looping sculpture from Andrew Sabin, will be joining works retained from previous editions of the trail by the likes of Julian Opie, Maya Rose Edwards, and Richard Mackness. The nature of the sculpture park means that it’s 100% free and open 24/7, so you can stroll up and view the art any time you like.
