London art exhibitions: what to see in December 2024
We have now approached the last month of 2024. December is the season for an array of festivities, with London’s streets lit up with lights and shop windows boasting extravagant displays, and Christmas markets showing off quirky crafts. Even with all the additional goings on, London is still abuzz with art exhibitions. From group shows to major career retrospectives plan your next visit with our handy, frequently updated guide to the city's art exhibitions happening in December.
Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.
George Rouy. The Bleed, Part I
Hauser & Wirth
Until 21 December 2024
Painter George Rouy marks his debut solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in London, which dives into his inquiry within collective mass, multiplicities and movement, and human modes of existence. Rouy’s dynamic use of the human figure explores identity in a modern, technology driven world. The second chapter ‘The Bleed, Part II,’ will be on display in Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles in February next year.
The 80s: Photographing Britain
Tate Britain
Until 5 May
Set against a backdrop of race riots, strikes, mass unemployment and gentrification, a new show at Tate Britain explores one of the UK’s most colourful eras through the medium of photography. Bringing together nearly 350 images and archive materials, ‘The 80s: Photographing Britain’ explores how the medium became a tool for social representation, cultural celebration and artistic expression throughout this period.
Writer Anne Soward
tate.org.uk
Buchanan Studio x Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons
Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons
Until early 2025
Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, A Belmond Hotel, is a haven in Oxfordshire. Just a short hop from London, it is the mini break you need pre-Christmas. As well as Raymond Blanc's Michelin-starred food and the verdant gardens, this winter there is another reason to visit thanks to a collaboration with Buchanan Studio.
Angus and Charlotte Buchanan, the founders of the London-based design studio, have partnered with Le Manoir to mark their 40th anniversary in style, transforming the serene Glasshouse into an artistic installation. Nodding to the surrounding careful cultivation of land, the duo have introduced a blooming beauty into the room thanks to vast hanging crepe Paperwhite Narcissus flowers. A romantic nod to seasonal botanics, the scene makes an elegant backdrop for the masterclasses, afternoon teas and horticultural workshops which will take place there. Available to view throughout December, it is a magical way to embrace the festive frolics of the season.
Writer: Hannah Silver
Kenia Almaraz Murillo: 'Andean Cosmovision’
Waddington Custot
Until 30 January 2025
In her new London art exhibition, Bolivian-born textile artist Kenia Almaraz Murillo adorns her wall hangings with found, urban objects, from car headlights to motorbike headlamps, brilliantly lit up with curves of neon.
The results are striking, juxtaposing traditional Bolivian materials such as sheep’s and llamas’ wool against the more modern, in a bid to find a balance between the natural and the man-made, the technological and the mythical. It is a tension reflected in the materials themselves, with gold threads from France, dating from the 1920s-1940s, woven with alpaca threads from Bolivia in a mish-mash of textural nods.
Writer Hannah Silver
'Electric Dreams'
Tate Modern
Until 1 June 2025
Encompassing the period from the 1950s to the beginning of the internet era, and uniting over 70 artists, ‘Electric Dreams’ celebrates vintage tech art in all its mind-bending glory. From US artist Rebecca Allen’s experiments in motion capture and 3D modelling for a Krafwerk music video, to Eduardo Kac’s text poems created with Minitel machines, the exhibition delves into movements including kineticism, cybernetics and abstraction as they began to take shape.
Writer Hannah Silver
Anastasia Samoylova: ‘Adaptation’
Saatchi Gallery
Until 20 January 2025
Saatchi Gallery presents a major survey of works by American photographer Anastasia Samoylova. ‘Adaptation’ includes five of Samoylova’s contemporary series ‘Landscape Sublime’, ‘Image Cities’, ‘FloodZone’, ‘Floridas’, and ‘Breakfasts’. With a curious gaze she explores the environment and human intervention, with her work anchored in social and political views towards climate change.
Francis Bacon: Human Presence
The National Portrait Gallery
Until 19 January 2025
Francis Bacon’s distorted forms, caught in hellish moments, are etched into the brain of those with only a passing interest in the art canon, an eerie familiarity that still doesn’t prepare you for the sheer emotionality of his major retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery.
Taking you from Bacon’s early portraits in the 1940s, through self-portraits and portraits of friends in the 1950s, to the personal relationships that defined his work in the 1960s, the exhibition documents Bacon’s relationship with representation in his dismantling of both traditional power structures and tortured memorialisations of departed lovers.
Read our full review of Bacon at the National Portrait Gallery.
Writer: Hannah Silver
Jameel Prize: Moving Images
V&A
From 30 November to 16 March 2025
Preview the Jameel Prize exhibition which is soon arriving at London's V&A, this year with a focus on moving image and digital media. The winner of the V&A and Art Jameel’s seventh international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition will be showcased alongside shortlisted artists. The exhibition highlights the rich artistic heritage of the Islamic Middle East and South Asia, showcasing the vibrant connection between contemporary creativity and the region's historical legacy.
Writer: Smilian Cibic
‘Markus Lüpertz – Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’
Michael Werner Gallery
Until 1 February 2025
The Michael Werner Gallery has brought together the works of two iconic painters in one exhibition. Works from one of the most influential German painters of the post-war period, Markus Lüpertz, have been coupled with paintings and drawings of 19th-century French master Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Lüpertz’ work is inspired by cultural resonance and personal experience. His paintings will be complemented by an array of drawings and paintings by Puvis de Chavannes, including landscapes, preparatory drawings for commissions, scenes and portraiture.
María Berrío: The End of Ritual
Victoria Miro
Until 18 January 2025
Brooklyn-based María Berrío presents ‘The End of Ritual’ at Victoria Miro. Her works are often influenced by aspects of mythology and folklore which reflect contemporary issues women and children face, from identity to survival. The series of new works are somewhat satirical, with crowded interiors with characters’ faces covered in detailed masks and quizzical expressions, whereby others go about regular business unfazed.
The Turner Prize 2024
Tate Britain
Until 16 February 2025
The Turner Prize 2024 shortlisted artists are now able to view. The work of Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas will be exhibited, with the winner of the 40th edition of the prize set to be unveiled on 3 December 2024. Turner Prize chair and director of Tate Britain Alex Farquharson leads a jury composed of Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster, curator and a Wallpaper* contributing editor; Sam Thorne, director general and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian.
Writer: Hannah Silver
Auerbach: Portraits of London
Offer Waterman and Francis Outred
Until 7 December
British-German painter Frank Auerbach is best known for his portraits, parks and skylines of London, which are compact with dark and earthy tones with recurring characters adding personality and charm to his work. Offer Waterman and Francis Outred will present an archive of his work, which have been loaned from museums across the country of Auerbach’s London work. Charting familiar locations again and again throughout the years with varying colour and form, the exhibition captures the ever changing city from wartime to present day.
Leap Year
The Hayward Gallery
Until 5 January 2025
Artist Haegue Yang presents her diverse practice starting from the early 2000s to today, which explores an array of sculpture, collage, text and video to name a few, arranged into five thematic zones. Known for her work which transforms everyday domestic items into contemporary reinterpretations which touch on modernism and political history, Yang’s latest showcase will be immersive with varying visual and sensory experiences.
Enchanted Alchemies
Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Empress Club
Until December 21, 2024
Delving into the themes of magic, alchemy and occultism, Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents ‘Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art’. Through an array of artists' works from the 20th century to present day, Surrealism is at the core with the exhibition opening a century after the publication of French writer and poet, André Breton’s, first Manifesto of Surrealism. The exhibition invites viewers to reimagine the understanding of beauty, and mystery and dive deep into the sociological shifts that have reshaped spiritual beliefs.
‘Daffodils baptized in butter’
The Arts Club
Until 19 January 2025
The Arts Club is in full bloom as it uncovers the symbolic, mystical and historical meaning of flowers in its latest exhibition Daffodils Baptized In Butter. Through a contemporary lens, 25 artists present their unique perspective on flowers, which goes against the surface level idea that they are merely pretty, but actually represent the complexities of human life through growth and decay. Participating artists include Alvaro Barrington, Judy Chicago, Don Brown and more.
‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’
National Gallery
Until 19 January 2025
The highly anticipated Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is open at the National Gallery this month. A curation of Van Gogh’s most recognised paintings from across the world are united in this exhibition including his ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ (1888, Musée d’Orsay) and ‘The Yellow House’ (1888, Van Gogh Museum), as well as ‘Sunflowers’ (1888) and ‘Van Gogh's Chair’ (1889), among many other works which are rarely seen in public. The exhibition is romantic and mesmerising, offering much loved insight into his poetic work.
‘It Will End in Tears’
The Barbican
Until 5 January 2025
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum presents her first solo exhibition at The Barbican. Sunstrum draws upon her experience of living across Africa, Southeast Asia, and North America with It Will End in Tears . The showcase includes a series of paintings and drawings which tells a story of a ‘femme fatale’ film noir character living in an imagined colonial outpost. The narrative takes the viewer through her life, and what happens when she deviates from societal rules.
‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’
Until 27 April 2025
Wellcome Collection’s Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is a thought-provoking exhibition which delves into the complexities of unregulated work practices and how this impacts mental and physical health. The exhibition will consist of historical objects in parallel with contemporary artworks focusing on three places of work: The Plantation, The Street and The Home, each chosen due to the difficult, physical labour, where conditions may be unsafe, and with little to no access to healthcare, a stable income and even basic rights. From sex work, street vending, domestic labour, and prison labor to name a few, Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights highlights the inequalities people face and how their health, work and rights remain hidden.
Portrait of America
The Observatory Photography Gallery
Until 25 January 2025
Emerging photographer Katie Edwards captures the vast nation of America through a unique viewpoint- moving trains. Travelling nearly 10,000 miles and enduring 180 hours of train journeys, Edwards has captured glimpses of the country, from Southern deserts and urban dwellings to snow-capped peaks of the Cascade volcanoes. Due to the darkness in the carriage, the windows are lit up in contrast, and the lens captures the moving scenes wrapped in a beautiful frame, she said ‘I was able to see for hundreds of miles on either side of the train, and this created bizarre effects with the light as it hit specific strips of land in the expanse.’
theobservatory.org
Archive of Dissent
The Whitechapel Gallery
Until 19 January 2025
The power of the image has long held a particular resonance for Peter Kennard, artist and Emeritus Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art, whose current exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery is both a tribute to and a warning of the influence of information.
Archive of Dissent unites photomontages, installations and the newspapers where his images first appeared, paying tribute to the space’s original purpose, once known as the ‘People’s University of the East End’ and used as both a refuge from poverty and a place to nurture radical philosophies around art and politics.
Writer Hannah Silver
‘Grace’
Tate Britain
Until January 2025
Alvaro Barrington’s latest exhibition Grace is a curation of Black culture and identity drawn from his own experiences and memories growing up in ex-British colony Grenada and New York City. Installed in Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries, the exhibition is built around three key figures in his life; his grandmother Frederica, his close-friend or sister Samantha and his mother Emelda. Grace is also inspired by the hymn Amazing Grace, a piece of music that sits at the heart of Western Black culture.
Writer: Amah-Rose Abrams
'Somnyama Ngonyama'
Tate Modern
Until 26 January 2025
Zanele Muholi, artist and visual activist, celebrates the lives of South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in a series of arresting portraits that aim to offset the stigma around queer identity in African society. On showcase at Tate Modern, and also The Southern Guild in Los Angeles, Muholi considers their own form in portraits taken all around the world, each with intriguing aspects, from wearing crowns of clothesline pins, bed sheet cloaks or lipstick made from toothpaste and vaseline.
tate.org.uk
Writer: Hannah Silver
'Solid Light'
Tate Modern
Until 27 April 2025
Anthony McCall, a trailblazer within experimental cinema and installation art, presents Solid Light at Tate Modern, an exhibition dedicated to the artists' immersive works. Using beams of light projected through thin mist, resulting in solid light forms, allows visitors to playfully interact. The exhibition will also feature film, photography and archive material.
'The World To Me Was A Secret'
The Cosmic House
Until 20 December 2024
The Cosmic House was always intended as more than a home. A postmodern masterpiece, it was created by Charles and Maggie Jencks between 1978 and 1983 in London’s wealthy Holland Park. It functioned as a living space for the radical couple’s family and a hotbed for creative and architectural thought. Little within the house follows the rules of conventional design: the traditional staircase was replaced with a single spiral that is stamped with zodiac signs; everything from doorknobs to toilet flushes are present as unsettling doubles; and a lintel fireplace is painted to emulate polychromatic marble.
Writer: Emily Steer
'Fragile Beauty'
V&A
Until 5 January 2025
Avid photography fans Elton John and David Furnish have amassed a vast array of images over the years. Now, more than 300 rare prints from their collection are set to go on show at a new V&A retrospective divided into eight themes, from reportage and the male body to American photography and celebrity. Works from artists such as Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing and Diane Arbus are exhibited alongside fashion photography by the likes of Irving Penn, Horst P Horst and Herb Ritts. Highlights include intimate portraits of Marilyn Monroe, and Nan Goldin’s Thanksgiving series.
Writer: Hannah Silver
