Exhibition
Luke Jerram, the artist who hung that model of the moon in the Natural History Museum in 2019 and has done the Earth at the Old Royal Naval College and the Kensington & Chelsea Festival, is back showing Gaia at the Landmark Arts Centre, as part of the new Arts & Ideas Festival in Richmond. The illuminated 3D installation, measuring seven metres in diameter, features detailed NASA imagery of the planet’s surface accompanied by surround sound from composer Dan Jones.
CHILA KUMARI SINGH BURMAN AT RICH MIX
Chila Kumari Singh Burman, who was responsible for that epic Diwali installation at Tate Britain in 2020, is bringing her famous neons to Rich Mix. She’ll be taking over the venue’s Streetside Space for the free show, which’ll feature pieces that reference her Punjabi heritage, her childhood memories of growing up in the north, Hindu mythology, and British iconography, including ‘3k Heart’, ‘Bindi and Neons’, ‘Standing Krishna with Flute’ and ‘Punjabi Rockers’.
THE MISSING THREAD | UNTOLD STORIES OF BLACK BRITISH FASHION
The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion at Somerset House will explore the profound – and largely under-appreciated – impact of Black creativity on the UK’s fashion landscape. Expect to be taken on a journey from the 1970s to the present day, charting the undeniable influence of Black music, photography, art and design on fashion along the way. The first theme, Home, will look at the intercontinental roots of Black British style and how safety is found in community. The second will explore how Tailoring has been used by Black Britons in establishing their own identity. The third, Performance, will spotlight Black performers and examine the effects and power of ‘being seen’. And the final will centre around Nightlife and the freedom of expression afforded by its spaces. In a fifth part of the exhibition, visitors will be told the story of the late Joe Casely-Hayford OBE, a fashion designer, cult icon and favourite of Lou Reed, The Clash, U2 and more. With exclusive access to the Casely-Hayford archive, the exhibition will close with a wide selection of unseen studio material and items from the designer’s most renowned collections.
In honour of Mental Health Awareness Month, Nick Williams is exhibiting his latest series of paintings that showcase the impact of art on the mind at 54 The Gallery in Shepherd Market. Having suffered mental breakdowns himself, painting is a saviour for him and this exhibition is one full of colour and hope. Williams uses the architecture and interiors he saw on a trip to Cuba; a lush subtropical garden, which he first imagined and then recreated at home; and the pair of snakes he looked after and the shedding of their skins as inspiration for his work, where he explores the theme of escape.
MONOLITH AT OUTERNET
ADOT Foundation, Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and artist Jack Dartford are teaming up on immersive artwork Monolith, to be displayed on the wraparound screens at Outernet London to raise awareness around mental health and anxiety. The piece, created by Jack and featuring audio from sound designer Halina Rice, reacts in real time as the viewing crowds grow, with the millions of digital particles that make up the monolith shape rapidly change colour, move and accelerate in an increasingly frantic fashion, with the accompanying soundtrack becoming more frenetic. It’s designed to explore the feelings of anxiety by simulating complete sensory overload, creating empathy for those who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks.
LUXURY AND POWER | PERSIA TO GREECE
The British Museum is exploring the relationship between luxury and power in the Middle East and southeast Europe from 550-30 BC, a period when the Persian empire clashed with ancient Greece before Alexander the Great conquered the region. Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece will feature a range of objects – including the Panagyurishte Treasure consisting of nine gold vessels, a Persian silver griffin-shaped rhyton, a Greek pottery rhyton in the shape of a lion’s head, and gold oak wreaths from Turkey – that explore the contrasting approaches to luxury in Persia and Athens, and how Alexander fused eastern and western styles of luxury together.
The Colors Festival, which has already had successful runs in Manchester and Paris, brings together paintings, photography and illustrations by more than 40 street artists from around the world at Camden’s Hawley Wharf. The exhibition will feature a mix of up-and-coming and established street artists, including the likes of Angry Dan, Kekli, Remi Cierco, Hazard One, Lisa Lloyd, Dale Grimshaw, One Mizer and more. Not only is each piece very large (the official term is ‘XXL’, according to the website) but, as the name suggests, they are strikingly bright and colourful.
After hitting Tokyo and LA, Veuve Clicquot’s 250th anniversary exhibition Solaire Culture is landing in London. The free immersive experience takes you on a journey through the house’s heritage, with historical documents and an original bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the 1840s on display. There will also be original artworks inspired by Madame Clicquot and the power of the sun (a reference to the bottle’s famous yellow label) from nine renowned female artists, including Yayoi Kusama, Shelia Hicks and Moyoco Anno, on show. And after popping up in Soho last year, The Sunny Side Up Café is back, this time with a food menu from Andi Oliver – dishes include Andi’s braised short rib burger, dippy eggs with Marmite soldiers, green shakshuka and sweet plantain waffles – paired with plenty of bubbles.
Gray M.C.A is hosting Styled By Design, an exhibition of framed 20th-century modernist textiles, featuring rare and limited edition pieces by artists like Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elizabeth Frink, and Patrick Heron. The show will explore the role of textiles in the modern art movement and how they managed to bring contemporary art into the home in a new way.
ALL THE FLOWERS ARE FOR ME AND PLANTS OF THE QUR'AN
The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens is hosting two exhibitions exploring faith, cultural exchanges and art inspired by the natural world. Pakistani-American contemporary artist Anila Quayyum Agha is showing two pieces as part of this joint exhibition. There’s All the Flowers Are for Me, a laser-cut steel cube that fills the space with shadow patterns used in Islamic art and architecture, and the UK premiere of Stealing Moments (After Morris and Dürer), I and II, a mirrored steel piece inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s watercolour Great Piece of Turf. Running alongside that exhibition is the world premiere of Plants of the Qur’ān by Sue Wickison, which features botanical paintings of plants referenced in the Qur’ān, including garlic, pomegranate, date palms, henna and flowering desert species.
LEWISHAM | ABOUT FACE
The Migration Museum in Lewisham is hosting an installation by multidisciplinary visual artist EVEWRIGHT as part of this year’s Windrush 75th anniversary celebrations. Lewisham: About Face explores his own experiences of growing up in Lewisham with parents from the Windrush generation, nods to the forgotten heroes of Lewisham’s past and present, and investigates what it means to be Black and British. With Lewisham having the highest proportion of residents identifying as Black British Caribbean in any local authority in England and Wales, the Migration Museum is the perfect site for this installation.
THE UGLY DUCHESS | THE NATIONAL GALLERY
Renaissance-era art has a clear standard of beauty for women – just one of the reasons why the central piece of The National Gallery’s new exhibition is so fascinating. ‘An Old Woman’ (also known as ‘The Ugly Duchess’) by Flemish painter Quinten Massys has long been considered a cruel joke at the expense of the woman in the picture, but The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance seeks to examine the intent behind the artwork a bit more. In the exhibition, The Ugly Duchess is reunited with her companion, The Old Man (on rare loan from a private collection), so we can see Massys’ original parody of the traditional marriage portrait. We also see that the marriage portrait roles have been switched and that the Duchess is “subversive, fierce, and defiant – brazenly flouting the conventions of her day”. The 16th-century painting will appear alongside other artworks to explore how women, old age and appearance were satirised and demonised in the Renaissance.
SPAGHETTI BLOCKCHAIN
NYC-based artist Mika Rottenberg is showing her immersive video installation Spaghetti Blockchain at Outernet for eight Sundays this spring. The piece highlights our obsession with the production, distribution and consumption of products through the juxtaposition of different manufacturing systems and constant, overwhelming sound and movement. Prepare to jump from CERN to an American potato farm harvest to Siberian Tuvan throat singers – just stand there and try to take in as much as you can.
AFTER IMPRESSIONISM | INVENTING MODERN ART
The National Gallery is hosting a major exhibition exploring the origins of modern art across Europe. After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art will feature around 100 paintings and sculptures by artists like Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Klimt, Käthe Kollwitz, Sonia Delaunay, Kandinsky and Mondrian, and will show how, during a period of great upheaval, they broke away from tradition and created a new style of art, including Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction.
MILK
The Wellcome Collection is exploring the history of milk with its latest exhibition, aptly named Milk. This marks the first museum survey of our relationship with the seemingly everyday substance and its place in global politics, society and culture. Through over 100 items including historical objects (some of which date back to the 3rd century), artworks and new commissions, the exhibition will retrace the rise of milk to become a staple of diets in the UK as well as ask what the future of milk will look like.
BBC EARTH EXPERIENCE
Immerse yourself in the BBC series Seven Worlds, One Planet and explore the wonders of the natural world at this BBC Earth Experience. Hosted at the purpose-built Daikin Centre in Earl’s Court Footage will be projected across multiple multi-angle screens, with bespoke narration from Sir David Attenborough, giving you a 360-degree view of the different environments of the seven continents, from a firefly light show in North America to snub-nosed monkeys huddling for warmth in Asia.
PORTRAITS OF DOGS | FROM GAINSBOROUGH TO HOCKNEY
Dogs have been mused upon since ancient times and now they’re finally getting the recognition they deserve with a dedicated exhibition at the Wallace Collection. Portraits of Dogs will bring 50 artworks together to explore how dog portraiture developed as a genre, specifically from the 18th century onwards. Expect paintings, sculptures, drawings and taxidermy all depicting various four-legged friends. Leave your cat at home.
WHAT YOU SEE HERE / WHAT YOU HEAR HERE
This year’s Young Artist Commission at NOW Gallery is What You See Here / What You Hear Here, by filmmaker Darryl Daley. The gallery will be transformed into a chasm of memory, with the four film works making up the exhibition exploring the concept of home in response to physically moving locations, the idea of identity as memory, and the collision of archive and imagination, forming an ode to his mother and grandmother.