It’s summer in London, and as usual, the capital is absolutely packed with things to do – whether that’s exhibitions, events, theatre or music.
But of course, it can all get a bit pricey. So if you want to have a great weekend seeing some of London’s best culture, but also want to save a few quid, look no further than this guide to the best art shows to see in the city, which are all absolutely free.
From August 22, all eyes will turn to the newest gallery on the block. Cole-Levi Klimt, founded in December 2023 by Chelsey Chase with a focus on bolstering lesser known artists, presents its debut exhibition “Extensions of the Soul,” curated by multidisciplinary artist Pia MYrvoLD. Taking over the Copeland Gallery, Peckham, is a week-long show that, excitingly, includes work from Paul Freud, the son of Lucian Freud and artist on his own merit who is a rare figure on the exhibition circuit. He is joined by the upcoming Royal College of Art graduate Eva Yates, as well as the more established talent Meryl Donoghue. In the sprawling, South London space, Cole-Levi Klimt promises to delve “deep into the themes of chaos, hope, and the human psyche.” See for yourself if the fresh gallery can deliver. RSVP for Private View on August 22 here.
Cole-Levi Klimt, August 22 to August 29, Copeland Gallery, Peckham, SE15; cole-leviklimt.com
© Chris Ofili. Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Thierry Bal
In this moving commission, Turner Prize-winning British artist Chris Ofili has created a giant art work across Tate Britain’s Northern Staircase to pay tribute to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. The dream-like, brightly-coloured mural gives a special nod to fellow artist Khadija Saye who was killed in the 2017 tragedy.
Eleven rooms of the Tate are dedicated to this visual exploration of the varied materials that artists have used over the decades. Expect to see works such as Doris Salcedos famous metal structures, Marcel Duchamp’s toilet seat and Sarah Sze’s installations.
Keith Piper & Rex Whistler: Viva Voce
© Tate (Joe Humphrys)
Rex Whistler’s 1927 mural, the backdrop of a Tate Britain restaurant for decades, was sealed off in 2020 after being deemed ‘unequivocally offensive’ by the Tate’s ethics committee. The mural, titled The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meat, features caricatures of Chinese people and a black child in chains being dragged behind a carriage.
Now, the room is to be reopened, with a film installation from British artist Keith Piper, a founding member of the BLK Art Group, filling the space. The plan was to contextualise the earlier work and provide a counterpoint.
The idea is to open up a conversation about engaging with historical works: “I know there is an argument among young people now that these images retraumatise, but I think we either look or forget,” said Piper. “To keep a clear sense of history we need to see these things. We need to recognise the importance throughout black struggles, the importance of difficult images.”
Jodie Carey, Guard (detail), 2024. Photo: Dor Even Chen
Courtesy of the artist and Edel Assanti
Jodie Carey’s extraordinary sculptural installations often ask questions about material memory and the environment. Here, she continues her exploration of these themes in 150 sculptures, which reflect on evolution, the stubbornness of the natural world, and the way human beings imbue plants with meaning.
Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland
Beryl Cook, Elvira’s Café, 1997
Courtesy of the Beryl Cook Estate, John Cook 2023
The works of cultural icons Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland are displayed in the same space for the first time: the British artist’s comical scenes next to the Finnish artist’s homoerotic figures, the works playful and political. With the inclusion of archival materials, the survey explores their interconnected ideas concerning gender, sexuality, taste and class.
Oscar Murillo: The Flooded Garden
Oscar Murillo, The flooded garden, Tate Modern
Photo by Tim Bowditch and Reinis Lismanis, courtesy the artist. Copyright © Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo is transforming the Tate’s enormous Turbine Hall into a painted garden, inspired by Claude Monet. The delightful twist is that visitors of all ages are invited to add to the piece, with paintbrushes, paint and protective equipment (if you ask for it) provided. When the Columbian artist spoke to the Standard in July he explained: “It’s about unbound freedom and unbound connection to just letting go.”
One for sorrow, two for joy (A video exhibition curated by Lauren Auder and special guests)
Installation view: One for sorrow, two for joy, Emalin. Video still: Live reaction to Life’s beauty, submitted by Emma Burke
Photo by Peter Otto
This exhibition curated by Lauren Auder and Tosia Leniarska consists of anonymous videos submitted by dozens of artists including Alvaro Barrington and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Its title a play on the folkloric nursery rhyme, the show is a meditation on the sheer mass of human creative expression and on different ways of bearing witness to the world.
Your Mind is Now an Ocean
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Rachel Rose, North Salem Moon (1993), 2022
Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
In this group exhibition, eight artists including Koo Jeong A, Ragna Bley and Keren Cytter present works that reflect on the ocean as a metaphor of the sublime and the unconscious. Water makes up 60 per cent of the human body, and 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface; no wonder tides, rivers, seas and beaches – beautiful and formidable – hold such a place in the human imagination.
Charles Trevelyan: Vignettes
Photography by Nicky Roding, courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery
Charles Trevelyan’s background in material science and engineering can be seen in his stunning creations: inspired by structures in the natural world, the Australian designer often goes through an intensive process of experimentation to create his conceptual sculptural works. Here, pieces from two recent series, Gyre and Fuse, are shown together.
Embraced: A Lived Experience
Peter Doyle, Inkwell
Courtesy of the artist and Rhodes Gallery
This group exhibition of 13 contemporary artists aims to re-examine the way that identity is depicted in portraiture. Featuring exciting new names including Pace Taylor, Adelisa Selimbašić, Caroline Walls, the works reflect on bodily experiences, vulnerability and self-expression.
Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States
Yinka Shonibare CBE, Decolonised Structures, 2022-23.
Yinka Shonibare, Serpentine South Gallery
Described as “beautiful, alluring and disquieting” and “classic Yinka”, Suspended States, Yinka Shonibare’s first London solo exhibition in more than two decades is a series of illuminating installations made since 2017. Expect statues of Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill wrapped head to toe in bright fabrics; models of buildings that have housed the vulnerable; and his harrowing war library.
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Al Held, Four and One Third, 1995
Courtesy of the artist and White Cube
This survey of paintings from trailblazing American artist Al Held, who died in 2005 aged 76, spans an extraordinary five-decade career. Although varied, the works have a through-line: they tend to be colourful, abstract and used geometric shapes to explore versions of space – depth, illusion and infinity.
Polly Braden: Leaving Ukraine
In this moving series of photographs and short films, visual artist Polly Braden documents stories of women – mothers, daughters, teenagers and babies in arms – who have been forced to leave their homes because of the war.
Judy Chicago: Revelations
Judy Chicago, Revelations
Judy Chicago/Serpentine Gallery
Judy Chicago, the celebrated artist, author and feminist, returns to London with her largest-ever solo presentation in the city.
The show, which focuses on the 84-year-old’s drawings, offers a radical retelling of history: “Chicago advocates for changing the patriarchal paradigm with a vision of the world where equality is the norm, change is the goal, and working together toward this end is the purpose of life,” said the Standard.
The Future is Now Part II: Re/Form~ation
Asiko, Behind it All
Image courtesy CasildART Contemporary
In this group exhibition of painting, sculpture, photography, textile and glass works, artists including Àsìkò, Donald Baugh, Christopher Day and Othello De’ Souza-Hartley transform everyday objects, asking questions about colonialism, creativity, beauty and connection. CasildART Contemporary was founded by Sukai Eccleston to create a space for Black artists, still often underrepresented in fine art institutions, commercial galleries, and museums.
Rheim Alkadhi: Templates for Liberation
Rheim Alkadhi, Harvest of Flames
Courtesy of the artist and ICA
Iraqi-American artist Rheim Alkadhi, whose family moved to the US in 1980 at the advent of the Iran-Iraq War, explores colonialism and the consequences of conflict in present day Iraq and its wider region. Using sculptures and archival documentation, she asks questions about environmental and sociopolitical violence, imperialism, displacement and rebellion.
ICA, to September 8, free on Tuesdays; ica.art
Firelei Báez: Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream)
How to slip out of your body quietly, 2018
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Dominican Republic-born, New York City-based artist Firelei Báez’s first solo exhibition in the UK is a series of installations, paintings and sculptures which ask questions about ecology, power and resistance. “My works are propositions, meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture,” said Báez.
Courtesy of the artist and Saatchi Gallery
In old and new works, Azerbaijani artist Aida Mahmudova explores solitude, nostalgia and longing in 70 pieces that respond in some way to Forugh Farrokhzad’s poem The Window: “One window is sufficient / One window for beholding / One window for hearing / One window,” it begins.
Dominique White: Deadweight
Dominique White, ineligible for Death, 2024
Whitechapel Gallery, London © Above Ground Studio (Matt Greenwood)
In this new body of work, award-winning British-based artist Dominique White presents a series of sculptures that look like shipwrecks and sea monsters in a dimly-lit gallery space. The effect is haunting and transportive as reviewers are made to feel submerged in a dark sea.
In doing so, White continues to weave together her long-time themes of rebellion, transformation, destruction and nautical myths, with an exploration of African diaspora culture, science and technology. White reminds us of a terrible truth: our vast sea is inextricably culpable in the history of enslaved people.
Beyond The Matrix: A Sculptural Exhibition by Jodie Carey
Beyond The Matrix: A Sculptural Exhibition by Jodie Carey
AWITA x Brookfield Properties, Beyond the Matrix
British artist Jodie Carey’s large-scale installations extend across the giant glass foyer of this east London office, inviting viewers to contemplate the anthropocene, material memory, and the relationship between objects and their environment.
Cedric Christie: Oblivious to Your Own Career
Installation view, Cedric Christie
Rocket Gallery
London-based artist Cedric Christie’s training as a welder is evident in his minimalist sculptures made of industrial materials, covered in car paint. In this survey exhibition, he continues his exploration of the “aesthetic of reduction”.
Installation View, Yoi
Courtesy of the artists and Saatchi Gallery
This joyful exhibition, featuring the paintings of nine Munupi artists, is a collaboration with the Munupi Arts & Crafts Association, an art centre situated on one of Australia’s tiny northern Tiwi Islands (a group of 11 islands with a total population of about 3,000 – 90 per cent of whom are the Aboriginal people, Tiwi). Yoi, which means dancing, plays a crucial role on the island, with narrative dances an important way of sharing stories, memories, and knowledge. This show delves into the mark-making techniques of Tiwi Art and explores Yoi.
Art Without Heroes: Mingei
From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts
Mingei, meaning ‘the art of the people’, is an early 20th century Japanese folk-craft style which encompassed ceramics, woodwork, paper, toys, textiles, photography and film. In this wide-ranging, illuminating show, unseen pieces, museum loans and archival footage tell the story of the influential movement.
Monumental: Tipping The Scales of Historical Design
Joaqium Tenreiro, Credenza
Photography by David Brook, courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery
This group exhibition presents the works of nine pioneering designers, including Le Corbusier, Serge Mouille, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, Sergio Rodrigues and Joaquim Tenreiro, and explores questions about scale and perception.
Dono: Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom & Harun Morrison
Photographer Jules Lister, Courtesy of the artist and Somerset House Studios
Somerset House Studios resident artists Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Harun Morrison present new works that delve into the limitations of language, looking at alternative forms of communication. The result is a show comprising sculptures and a sound installation that asks questions about surveillance, documentation and the regulation of bodies.
Serpentine Pavilion: Archipelagic Void
Matt Writtle
A London tradition, every year a different celebrated architect who has never built a structure in England before, designs the Serpentine’s summer pavilion. And every year, Londoners flock to Hyde Park to hang out in the new space and compare it to previous iterations. This year’s architect is South Korea’s Minsuk Cho with his practice Mass Studies. Together they have made a star-shaped pavilion, which the Standard described as having “a welcome conviction in its architectural noir”.
Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look
My Parents, David Hockney (born 1937), 1977
© David Hockney. Photo: Tate, London
David Hockney and Piero della Francesca’s works, painted 550 years apart, are unlikely gallery companions. Yet in this lovely small exhibition, Hockney’s My Parents and Looking at Pictures on a Screen are displayed alongside Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. If you look carefully, the 1439 panel ties the paintings together, featuring in the background of both of Hockney’s works. Part of the gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations, the exhibition is about slowing down – a reminder to look a little closer and find inspiration in art across the centuries.
Art Now: Steph Huang: See, See, Sea
© Steph Huang. Photo © Marc Doradzillo
Tate Modern’s series Art Now highlights the work of exciting emerging artists. Now it’s Taiwanese Steph Huang’s time to shine. Presenting an installation of sculptures, film and sound, Huang uses a range of techniques such as glass blowing and casting to explore mass production and consumer culture.
Frederic, Lord Leighton PRA, Flaming June, c. 1895.
Museo de Arte de Ponce. Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.
Frederic Leighton’s most famous painting, the exquisite Flaming June, was originally part of the British artist’s submission to the RA’s Summer Exhibition in 1895. Now, 128 years later, it’s on show at the institution again (on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico), being shown alongside work from both Leighton and his contemporaries.
Goshka Macuga: Born From Stone
Goshka Macuga, Born From Stone, 2024
Photo: Jason Alden
Bloomberg’s £1bn Foster and Partners London office sits directly above the London Mithraeum – the remains of a Roman temple, which they have turned into a museum and art space. Turner Prize-nominated Polish artist Goshka Macuga is its latest contemporary art commission. She will transform the space into a cave-like installation, drawing on its phenomenal history.
Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings
Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings
Photo: Gareth Gardner
This collaborative exhibition between artist Lina Iris Viktor and the Museum is an exploration of time and historic traditions. Viktor, inspired by art from around the world and across the centuries, presents a show of mixed media (such as sculpture, painting, photography) that asks questions about objects and their ability to hold memories and generate connections.
Sir John Soane’s Museum, to January 19, 2025; soane.org
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent
A/POLITICAL
Peter Kennard has spent his influential five-decade career making punchy, striking images of resistance and dissent, responding to the biggest conflicts taking place in his lifetime – from the Vietnam War and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, to Gaza and Ukraine. Here the London-based artist, activist and Royal College of Art professor takes over three galleries, with a survey of works that comprises installations, posters, photomontages and books.
Alvaro Barrington, Wete Fete, Bathers, for Myself 2023
© Alvaro Barrington
In this major installation, Venezuela-born, London-based painter Alvaro Barrington honours the women who shaped him: his grandmother, sister and mother. A “constant reimagining of Black culture”, the lively show consists of paintings and sculptures inspired by his memories.
Colin Davidson: Silent Testimony
Walter, Colin Davidson: Silent Testimony
Courtesy of the artist and National Portrait Gallery
Quiet, thought-provoking and moving, the exhibition displays 18 large-scale portraits by the Belfast-born artist Colin Davidson. He’s painted individuals who have experienced loss due to The Troubles, Ireland’s 30-year sectarian conflict.
National Portrait Gallery, to February 23, 2025; npg.org.uk
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