The February 2026 art diary begins with the contrasts of light (Lakwena Maciver) and dark (Tracey Emin), before highlighting exhibitions at the National Gallery, Auckland Castle, St Andrew’s Wickford, St Peter’s Nottingham, and Elizabeth Xi Bauer that explore these themes in relation to spirituality. A further series of exhibitions featuring the Quilters of Gee’s Bend, Titus Kaphar, and Yinka Shonibare explores aspects of black culture and heritage. Exhibitions at Studio Voltaire, Wimbledon Museum, Dorchester Museum & Art Gallery and Chappel Galleries examine the poetics of everyday actions, while exhibitions featuring work by Sean Scully, Leiko Ikemura, Yona Verwer, Brian Whelan, and Hady Boraey explore the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
Lakwena Maciver is headlining Art of London’s ‘Art After Dark’ with a new public artwork at Piccadilly Circus. ‘Rise and Shine’ is a 7-metre-tall tower of stacked disco lightboxes, drawing on the energy of classic sound systems and London’s influential music culture. Installed in one of the world’s most iconic public spaces, the work transforms Piccadilly Circus into a stage and gathering point. Evoking the spectacle and collective exhilaration of a live music festival, Maciver’s installation channels the energy of classic sound systems and London’s influential music scene for 2026.
The soaring installation reimagines the site’s analogue heritage through kaleidoscopic colour, illuminated form, and a bespoke soundtrack inspired by community-led music culture. Its acid-bright palette and luminous surfaces reference the nightlife of the 1980s and 1990s—a formative era that shaped genres from hip-hop to drum and bass—and celebrates the social power of music as a unifying force.
Tracey Emin, I Am Protected 2025
By contrast, ‘Crossing Into Darkness’ brings together a group of artists whose works confront the darkness inherent in human experience, not as something to be feared but as a necessary threshold toward renewal. In times marked by upheaval and uncertainty, this is a journey that feels both universal and deeply personal. Curator, Dame Tracey Emin, says: ‘The title of the show is very self- explanatory, especially for the times we are living in. But even so, we have always had our own journeys. And I feel that we have to cross into darkness to find light. I’d like this show to be very emotionally immersive and people to feel the strength and vibrations within the works. I want people to know that art isn’t just something that you look at. That it has a deeper purpose and can penetrate all souls. I love the idea of people coming to Margate on the greyest of winter days with gale force winds and crashing waves to make the pilgrimage to see the show.’
The contrasts and movement between darkness and light inform much thinking, creating an experience of spirituality. ‘Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua’, a film by the National Gallery’s 2025 Artist in Residence, Ming Wong, engages with both. Drawing on paintings of Saint Sebastian and the landmark film ‘Sebastiane’ (1976) by British filmmaker Derek Jarman, while setting the story within the National Gallery itself, ‘Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua’ powerfully asserts the resonance of stories of martyrs today.
Saint Sebastian is a figure who has inspired artists across generations. A Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity, he was persecuted for his faith by being shot with arrows. There are 14 depictions of Saint Sebastian in the National Gallery’s collection, by artists from the Pollaiuolo brothers to Gerrit van Honthorst. Wong continues this tradition with his new short film and installation based on the story of Sebastian’s martyrdom. Like Jarman, Wong brings together objects and ideas from different periods of history. Witty, experimental, and visually exquisite, the film draws on references from the Renaissance to the present to reimagine the life of this iconic saint.
More Christian imagery features in ‘The Seeds of Eternity’, an exhibition of Roger Wagner’s work at the Bishop Trevor Galleries, Auckland Castle. This exhibition includes several of Wagner’s most iconic works including ‘Ash Wednesday’, ‘Menorah’, ‘The Harvest is the End of the World and the Reapers are Angels’, and his ‘Out of the Whirlwind’ series of illustrations to the Book of Job. Bradley Petitgas has noted that Wagner’s “deeply Christian paintings are founded on iconographical orthodoxy, each one a balanced expression of quiet beauty and accessible humanity – ‘heaven in ordinary’, to cite George Herbert.”
Similarly, ‘Fear not, for I am with you: An exhibition of religious paintings by David Sowerby’, the latest exhibition I have organised at St Andrew’s Church in Wickford, features a range of religious-based images, bespoke paintings reflecting the history and story of Christianity. These focus particularly on scenes from the life of Christ. David Sowerby, who worked as a freelance illustrator and teacher throughout his life and eventually retired as a Principal Lecturer at The University of the Arts London, has worked on the series for the past two years.
Jean Lamb, ‘An Urban Passion’ – ‘1 In the beginning – Condemnation’
Jean Lamb’s ‘AN URBAN PASSION’ at St Peter’s Church in Nottingham features 15 meditations on a city church from 2022-2024. As commercial buildings overtake our skylines and edge out the sacred images which reach out to the Divine, Jean Lamb’s eye constantly looked for the remnants of St Stephen’s tower in Sneinton, Nottingham, as the constructed blocks around continued to grow and overtake this once- sacred edifice. These fifteen images are referenced as Stations of the Cross, and viewers are invited to imagine their own journey through these works, together with the verses of Scripture, imaginative contextualisation, and prayer. This set of Stations is not a simple urban Passion but instead is much more complex and involved. What we see depicted here is the crucifixion of communities — whether the local community in Sneinton or the community of the Church (local and national).
‘Two Shores’, a new exhibition at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, brings together works by the late Ivan Moraes and emerging talent Saint Takyi. This exhibition marks the gallery’s first presentation of work by either artist, and the first time their practices are shown in dialogue. Placing Moraes’ historical perspective alongside Takyi’s contemporary vision highlights the enduring influence of spirituality and identity as driving conceptual catalysts.
Opening a vital dialogue on duality and ambiguity, the exhibition explores African-origin cultural expression as a site of encounter, transformation, and syncretic identity. Through portraiture and layered visual languages, Ivan Moraes and Saint Takyi draw on Christian, Candomblé, and Asante traditions: Moraes embeds Afro-Brazilian ritual aesthetics within everyday scenes, while Takyi weaves Christian heritage and Asante mythologies into dreamlike narratives that probe the fluidity of identity.
Themes of identity are explored through Global majority cultural expression in several other shows, including ‘Kith & Kin | The Quilts of Gee’s Bend’ at the American Museum & Gardens in Bath. With skills and traditions passed down primarily from mother to daughter, the women of Gee’s Bend have created quilts renowned for their improvisational style, bold colours, and abstract designs, often compared to modernist art movements such as abstract expressionism.
Focusing on the quilts of mothers and daughters Mary Lee Bendolph (b.1935) and Essie Bendolph Pettway (b.1956), Rita Mae Pettway (b.1941) and Louisiana P. Bendolph (b.1960), Qunnie Pettway (1943–2010) and Loretta Pettway Bennett (b.1960) and Qunnie Pettway’s sister Sally Mae Pettway Mixon (b.1965), this exhibition highlights their connections and intergenerational relationships as seen through the distinct styles, patterns and colours.
The quilt-making undertaken at Gee’s Bend is often done to haunting gospel harmonies and ecstatic, spontaneous prayers amidst the ongoing rhythms of stitching, with the ‘call and response’ element of gospel worship also being intrinsic to the target-like push and pull among elements of their designs. The quilts serve as both a celebration of African American heritage and a testament to the strength and creativity of women in the face of systemic oppression.
Titus Kaphar’s first exhibition in Paris, ‘The Fire This Time’, features new paintings and hand-carved wood sculptures that extend the artist’s engagement with how history and representation impact collective memory. The exhibition title refers to James Baldwin’s civil-rights-era masterpiece, ‘The Fire Next Time’ from1963, which charts the author’s struggle with—and ultimate rejection of—the racial politics of America. In relocating to Paris, Baldwin joined a community of American expatriate artists and thinkers, including Miles Davis, Nina Simone, and Richard Wright—figures who refused what Baldwin called “the American madness.” Jesmyn Ward’s anthology ‘The Fire This Time’ from 2017 carried those concerns into contemporary America, more than fifty years later.
Kaphar’s new paintings and sculptures reflect on the symbolic role of the American presidency at a moment when that “madness” is again centre stage. As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – alongside national “No Kings” protests – Kaphar offers a form of homage and redress by foregrounding faces and voices that have long existed in the shadows of power.
In several new canvases, he revisits the formats and media of the ‘Tar’ and ‘Whitewash’ paintings for which he is particularly well-known, advancing the formal conversations that anchor his practice. These portraits depict people who orbited the founding American presidents, yet who were consigned to the margins of the historical record. By bringing them into the frame, Kaphar emphasises their presence and agency, restoring dignity for individuals whose stories were once erased or obscured. Many of these subjects were enslaved people connected to George Washington: members of his household staff, fighters in the American Revolution, and women who remained enslaved years after his death—many whose histories are only now being recovered.
Partially inspired by Kaphar’s recent work in narrative film, his new ‘Drawer’ paintings conceal inset panels behind the main canvas that reflect on what is suppressed, or omitted from sanctioned records. When opened for the viewer, the hidden component of ‘Celia: Embers, Bone, and Ash’ gradually reveals Celia’s story as a journey from victimisation to empowerment.
The exhibition also debuts a major series of hand-hewn wood sculptures portraying friends and family – “saints” who sustained the artist in his personal life. Influenced by Byzantine and Renaissance Italian art and prompted by a transformative visit to Florence, each sculpture is charred to seal the wood and to ornament the surface. Their blackened finish echoes Kaphar’s extended use of tar in paintings such as ‘The Jerome Project’.
Yinka Shonibare,’African Roots of Modernism (Gba gba)’, 2023. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London © Yinka Shonibare
‘Yinka Shonibare: Patterns of Power’ at The Arc, Winchester, features over 40 artworks spanning 20 years of the artist’s career. Prints from his recent woodblock project, ‘Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern’, are on display, along with a new series of screenprints, ‘African Flower Magic’. The exhibition showcases the critical cross-examination of contemporary and historical sensibilities for which he is famed. Shonibare explores and confronts history and identity, often through the lens of art history and its figures of cultural power. In reference to the complex relations between Africa and Europe, the artist reworks his signature motif of Batik fabric, itself a product of coloniality, into gripping, playful mixed-media works.
The centrepiece of this display is ‘The Crowning’, an early, large-scale mixed-media sculpture featuring two life-sized, headless figures reclining in a colourful tableau. The postures of these figures, and their costumes, are modelled on those of a romantic couple in a painting by 18th-century painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, ‘The Progress of Love: The Lover Crowned’. ‘The Crowning’ offers a witty, critical commentary on postcolonial identity as well as the wealth and excesses of contemporary and historic aristocratic society.
Aki Sasamoto’s first solo institutional exhibition in the UK features a major site-specific installation that functions as both a sculptural environment and a performance set. Central to the work at Studio Voltaire is a custom-built, oversized griddle that draws inspiration from both televised cooking shows and street food carts. Sasamoto will directly activate the installation through a new series of performances during the exhibition’s opening and closing weeks, unfolding as live acts of drawing and choreography, in which the manipulation of ingredients across the griddle’s surface suggests a constantly changing composition. Developing from the artist’s observations of incidental activities and daily life, this new work will continue Sasamoto’s exploration of the poetics of everyday actions.
‘Objects of Enchantment’ at Wimbledon Museum encourages visitors to pause, look closely and consider what happens when a simple object – a teacup, a toy, a chair – is lifted from daily life and placed on a museum plinth or turned into a painting. The exhibition asks, ‘What happens to an object when it is put in a museum and what happens when it becomes the subject of a work of art?’
Artist in Residence Alastair Gordon turns his eye to the museum’s collection, reinterpreting familiar objects and inviting viewers to reflect on what makes something worthy of attention. He thereby reveals how context, perception and imagination can turn the mundane into the marvellous. Gordon is an artist who creates meticulously detailed paintings. His practice draws on the 17th-century quodlibet tradition of trompe-l’oeil, challenging viewers’ perceptions of authenticity and artifice.
People Watching at the Dorchester Museum & Art Gallery is an exhibition featuring images of daily life that seeks to discover what portraits can tell us about the artist and sitter, whether by simply showing what a person looks like, by capturing an idea or emotion, or through representation. With work from over 40 individual artists, including some of the most acclaimed names in modern British art such as Elisabeth Frink, Bridget Riley, Stanley Spencer and Henry Moore, as well as lesser-known artists ready to be re-discovered, the exhibition offers an extensive investigation of British portraiture that will leave visitors more informed about the past and more excited about the future.
A major part of self-portraiture is how the artist portrays themselves and, in doing so, reveals their inner world of personal identity, emotion, and state of mind. On display will be a number of these illuminating works, from classic works to modern selfies. The exhibition also includes portraits of people in professional environments, highlighting the dignity and diversity of the labour market and the interesting skills that enable people to live their lives.
In contrast to work, another section of portraits looks at leisure and play, and how the joy and freedom found in the spontaneity of human life can be captured. Sport and physical activities offer both depictions of the participant and the act of viewing. The locations where people choose to relax can also be seen. A section reflecting the deep bonds between family members features works by celebrated artists depicting their kin. Portraiture also offers the opportunity to capture a subject’s essence in unconventional ways. Exploring the mythic, the imagined and the abstract, and revealing deep truths through imaginative symbology, a selection of works will show the endless possibilities when portraiture meets fantasy.
Ingram Collection Director Jo Baring says: ‘This exhibition is a celebration of the power and versatility of portraiture – how it can reveal, conceal, question and transform. ‘People Watching’ offers a unique opportunity to experience modern British art through the lens of the human face, both familiar and fantastical.’
Peter Rodulfo, ‘Seafront swimming pool’
The alluring mystery of everyday life is also contemplated in the latest exhibition by Peter Rodulfo at Chappel Galleries for which I have written the catalogue introduction: ‘Watching and waiting also characterises the work of the artist in creation. Rodulfo writes of casting a line out and waiting for a bite, not knowing which creature will take the bait, because he suspects that something surprising may be lurking under the surface of his image as it emerges and coheres. Through the patient watching and waiting that the artist undertakes for that emergent something in the work, his images entice, tease and challenge us, as viewers, to pay attention to what is revealed through the interplay between the patterns of form and colour within which our interactions in creation and in community occur. The patterns of shadows, reflections, and echoes seen in these works then evoke memories from different times and places in our own lives. Life is an alluring mystery which changes and passes too quickly for us to apprehend fully. Rodulfo’s images still a moment in time, enabling us to stop, wait, and see by paying attention to the emergent something his art has revealed. What will bite, what will surface, what will emerge, what will you notice, as you watch and wait and see?’
Finally, two exhibitions explore the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Lisson Gallery is showing a selection of multidisciplinary works by Sean Scully and Leiko Ikemura that explore themes of the natural world through a variety of media, from drawings to photographs. The presentation marks Ikemura’s first London showing since a solo booth at Frieze in 2024, following a major retrospective in Vienna. His selection of works, which depict the body and the landscape steadily morphing into one another, intertwined and indivisible, spur thought over the relationship between humans and their environment.
Scully’s works on display encapsulate a salon-style array of drawings, watercolours, photographs and works on paper dating from the 1960s (before the artist attended art school) through to 2025, all rooted in the natural world and reflecting how the artist’s abstraction has always held landscape as a touchstone. They include his classic 2005 ‘Aran’ series of 24 black-and-white photographs taken on the eponymous island off the west coast of Ireland, as well as two large paintings on aluminium that complete the presentation. The ‘Aran’ series of 24 black-and-white photographs makes clear Scully’s affinity with the ancient traditions of layering and stacking present in the rough-hewn piles of rocks, the horizontal bands and tessellating gestures, that his photography reveals.
‘NOAH: A Future Hope’, at The Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion, is an artistic exploration of humanity’s responsibility to care for the earth, inspired by the shared story of Noah and the flood. Featuring three contemporary artists, Yona Verwer, Brian Whelan, and Hady Boraey, each representing one of the major Abrahamic faith traditions, this exhibition brings together diverse perspectives to reflect on environmental stewardship, moral responsibility, and collective survival.
Transcending religious boundaries, ‘NOAH: A Future Hope’ speaks to the urgency of ecological care in a rapidly changing world. The exhibition aims to serve as a creative catalyst, encouraging reflection and action toward more sustainable ways of living. Ultimately, it offers a vision rooted in hope: that through care, responsibility, and imagination, a more just and livable future can be made possible for generations to come.
Lead image: Bridget Riley, R.A. (b. 1931), Woman at Tea-table, not dated, coloured crayons and pastel. The Ingram Collection © The Artist.
‘RISE & SHINE PICCADILLY’, 3 – 10 February 2026, Piccadilly Circus –
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‘Crossing Into Darkness: Curated by Dame Tracey Emin’, 18 January – 12 April 2026, Carl Freedman Gallery –
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‘The National Gallery Artist in Residence Ming Wong: Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua’, 15 January – 5 April 2026, National Gallery –
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‘The Seeds of Eternity’, 18 February – 31 December 2026, Auckland Castle –
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‘Fear not, for I am with you: An exhibition of religious paintings by David Sowerby’, 9 January – 3 April 2026, St Andrew’s Church, 11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN –
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‘Jean Lamb: An Urban Passion’, 18 February – 3 April 2026, St Peter’s, St Peter’s Square, Nottingham –
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‘Saint Takyi & Ivan Moraes: Two Shores’, 6th February – 28th March 2026, Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Deptford –
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‘Kith & Kin | The Quilts of Gee’s Bend’, 14 February – 21 June 2026, American Museum & Gardens –
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‘TITUS KAPHAR: The Fire This Time’, 29 January – 7 March 2026, Gagosian Paris –
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‘Yinka Shonibare: Patterns of Power’, 13 February – 3 June 2026, The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester –
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‘Aki Sasamoto: Grilled Diagrams’, 4 February – 19 April 2026, Studio Voltaire –
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‘Objects of Enchantment’, 6 February – 29 March 2026, Wimbledon Museum –
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‘People Watching’, 31 January – 10 May 2026, Dorset Museum & Art Gallery –
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‘Peter Rodulpho’, 28 February – 29 March 2026, Chappel Galleries –
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‘Sean Scully | Leiko Ikemura’, 18 February – 11 April 2026, Lisson Gallery –
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‘NOAH: A Future Hope’, 5 February – 1 April 2026, The Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion –
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Art doesn’t have to shock
Art doesn’t have to shock
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