Exhibition
ICONS IN DENIM - A QUEER PERSPECTIVE
Levi’s is digging into the archive this autumn and bringing out a selection of pieces that have graced the wardrobes of denim-clad legends from the LGBTQ+ community throughout the years. Icons in Denim – A Queer Perspective will show at Queer Britain this September, becoming the first exhibition to occupy the venue’s new South Gallery. Among the items on display will be highlights such as a pair of Levi’s 501 Jeans worn by Freddie Mercury in 1980 (fresh off the heels of the divisive exhibition and auction by Sotheby’s), a pair of Levi Strauss Signature Jeans and a t-shirt worn by Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and a pair of 70s-era Levi’s 501 Jeans and a t-shirt owned and worn by California’s first openly gay elected official Harvey Milk.
THE MOONWALKERS | A JOURNEY WITH TOM HANKS
Immersive gallery Lightroom is following David Hockney with Tom Hanks. The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks, which tells the story of humankind’s exploration of the moon, is being 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 will feature 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 gonna be projected using Lightroom’s cutting-edge tech.
Travel back to Ancient Egypt with new VR expedition experience Horizon of Khufu at Westfield Stratford City. The experience, which has been a hit in France and China, has been developed by a leading Egyptology team from Harvard University in partnership with VR studio Excurio to realistically recreate the civilisation from 4,500 years ago. Over 45 minutes you’ll explore ancient burial chambers, witness mummification ceremonies, travel down the Nile by boat to attend the funeral of King Khufu, and climb to the top of the 146-metre high Great Pyramid of Giza to take in the 360° views as the sun sets.
OUT OF THE MARGINS
Good Chance Theatre is auctioning off a range of annotated first and special editions of play texts and musical scripts in support of refugee artists in the UK, and before the lots get sold, you can have a look at them at a special Out of the Margins exhibition at Christie’s. The 60 texts include an annotated script of Love Actually from Richard Curtis alongside his play Mr and Mrs Smith, which has never been read by anyone; an annotated first edition of Jerusalem from Jez Butterworth with some props from the play’s original run; a rare and heavily annotated script that belonged to Mark Rylance when he starred in Antony & Cleopatra in 1999; a heavily annotated boxed first edition of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt; and a signed copy of the 2021 Matilda: The Musical script alongside writer Dennis Kelly’s very first original script written entirely by hand.
DELIGHT
A slice of Seoul is landing in London with Delight, an exhibition about the city’s heritage and culture. The show has been produced by Seoul-based artist Gyoungtae Hong and director Younsook Im, and curated by Daehyung Lee, as a way for Londoners to experience Seoul in a new way – or for the first time. The exhibition is designed to be fully immersive and is presented as a series of multimedia installations. Expect to see 12 large-scale pieces that represent Korean deities, distinctive landmarks (such as Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Gyeongbok Palace), and contemporary cultural hubs. The works exhibited include major digital displays, including one comprising 631 glowing lights, but there are also excerpts from works of literature that tell stories of the city’s history, life, and identity.
THE BUTTERFLY TRAIL AT OUTERNET
Hold a butterfly on the tip of your finger at this immersive botanical garden at Outernet London. Created in collaboration with Pixel Artworks, The Butterfly Trail is the world’s first mixed reality experience and it’s running on Outernet’s four-storey high, 16k wraparound screen. Using cutting-edge exhibition tech, The Butterfly Trail will take you through explorer Professor Peter Pelgrin’s Botanical workshop and inside his Glass House where you can interact with the space, release AR butterflies and trigger real-time animations using your smartphone.
RUBENS & WOMEN
This exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is showing another side to Peter Paul Rubens and the women he painted. Primarily known for his depictions of voluptuous women, he also painted many portraits of his wives and children, as well as religious and mythological figures. This show, featuring many masterpieces being displayed in the UK for the first time, will explore his different relationships with women and how they impacted his career.
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY | DOORS
After creating a 24-hour film installation featuring clips of clocks and watches in chronological order, Christian Marclay is now taking us through doors with his new exhibition. Aptly titled Doors, this piece features clips of opening or closing doors edited together to give the impression of people endlessly wandering through a labyrinthine space. As Marclay says, “The door is of course very symbolic, but I see it more as sculptural. My video is a sort of mental architecture that the viewer might or might not follow and get lost in.”
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
After being rescheduled twice due to the pandemic, the Royal Academy is finally presenting the first major UK survey of Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović. Known for her pushing her mental and physical endurance to the limit during with her work, such as living in a three-room home inside a NYC gallery for twelve days while fasting, Abramović is a performance art pioneer. This exhibition will showcase pieces from across the past 50 years, including video, sculpture, installation and performance – four of her performance pieces, ‘Nude with Skeleton’, ‘Imponderabilia’, ‘Luminosity’ and ‘The House with the Ocean View’, will be staged during the run by performance artists trained in the Marina Abramović method.
SARAH LUCAS | HAPPY GAS
Tate Britain is hosting a major exhibition on Sarah Lucas, featuring over 75 works from across four decades of her career. Lucas, who’s known for her exploration of the human body, gender, sex and class, rose to fame as one of the Young British Artists in the early nineties, and some of her early works from this period will be presented in the exhibition. The display will also include many of her chair and seated sculptures, concrete pieces, large-scale photographs, nude plaster casts, and recent sculptures made between 2019 – 2023, ten of which are being shown for the very first time.
A WORLD IN COMMON | CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY
The Tate Modern is celebrating contemporary African photography with the A World in Common exhibition. Works from a range of African artists across different generations are on show, touching on themes like urbanism, spirituality, identity and climate change. The exhibition explores how photographs have been able to travel across geographies and histories and how the medium has allowed the past and the future to co-exist.
CAPTURING THE MOMENT
This exhibition at the Tate Modern explores the relationship between painting and photography through some of the most iconic artworks of the modern era, looking at how artists capture moments in time using the paintbrush and the camera. As well as paintings by Pablo Picasso and Paula Rego and photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jeff Wall, the display also includes pieces that blur the lines between the two mediums, like Andy Warhol’s silkscreen prints, Pauline Boty’s pop paintings and Andreas Gurksy’s large-scale photographs.
NASA AT OUTERNET
See the wonders of space without having to leave London, let alone Earth, by heading to this immersive NASA exhibition at Outernet. The free show features real footage of the galaxy sourced from NASA, as well as other space agencies, which you’ll be able to watch on the four-storey high, 16K wraparound screens from a space station specially created for the experience. If you’ve always fancied being Tim Peake or Neil Armstrong, you won’t wanna miss this.
MONET | THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
Following in the footsteps of Van Gogh, Klimt, Kahlo, Rivera and Dali, the French impressionist is the latest artist to get the immersive treatment. Monet: The Immersive Experience will feature 360-degree projections of Monet’s masterpieces across a two-storey space, so you’ll really be able to get up close to those brushstrokes, as well as re-creations of his creative atelier and his gardens at Giverny; bridges dripping in flowers that allow you to step inside (and over) his famous ‘Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies’ painting; a VR experience where you can dive into the inspo and explore the landscapes behind some of his most iconic works, like ‘Poppies’ and ‘Haystack at the end of summer’; a space where you can learn all about Monet’s life; and even a chance for you to have a go at creating your very own artwork to be projected onto the walls.
He’s brought us the Moon and the Earth, and now Luke Jerram is showing us Mars in close-up with his seven-metre model of the Red Planet as part of the Kensington and Chelsea Festival. The artwork features incredibly detailed NASA imagery of the Martian surface, including every crater, valley and mountain, at a scale of 1: 1 million. The model will be accompanied by a soundtrack created by BAFTA and Ivor Novello award winning composer Dan Jones, featuring sounds of people marching and distant bombing, inviting viewers to reflect on the notion of war.
FREDDIE MERCURY | A WORLD OF HIS OWN
Get a glimpse at the public and private life of one of the world’s most legendary musicians at this one-of-a-kind exhibition. For just one month, Sotheby’s will open its galleries to the public and the entire 16,000 square-foot space will be full of art, archival clothing, musical instruments, furniture and jewels that belonged to Freddie Mercury – things that he’d collected over a period of more than 50 years. Plus, more than 1,200 items from Garden Lodge (Mercury’s home) will be displayed throughout the exhibition, including some rarely seen pieces that’ll give visitors an insight into the passions of the iconic frontman.
DRAWING DAPHNE
To accompany the release of Daphne Guinness’ latest music video ‘Hip, Neck, Spine’ directed by Nick Knight CBE, SHOWstudio is hosting the Drawing Daphne exhibition. The video features a range of looks from Daphne’s collection, chosen by fashion critic Alexander Fury, to reference Marlene Dietrich and Old Hollywood, including pieces from Alexander McQueen, Tom Ford, John Galliano, Jon Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, Christian Lacroix, Chanel and Philip Treacy. During the shoot Knight had twelve artists drawing Daphne live on set over three days of filming, with another eleven artists producing their own takes on some of the looks worn in the video, and a selection of these works are on display at the exhibition.
REBEL | 30 YEARS OF LONDON FASHION
The Design Museum is teaming up with the British Fashion Council to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its NEWGEN programme by hosting one of the largest surveys of contemporary fashion in the UK. REBEL: 30 Years of London Fashion will showcase the work of young designers, like Molly Goddard, Wales Bonner, Christopher Kane, Simone Rocha, Erdem and JW Anderson, who have changed the fashion landscape in the UK and beyond. Over 100 garments will be on show, including Bjork’s iconic swan dress, a Steven Stokey Daley outfit worn by Harry Styles in his ‘Golden’ video, and a replica of the HARRI inflatable latex suit worn by Sam Smith at this year’s BRIT Awards, alongside films, drawings, memorabilia and archive material from a range of UK-based designers.