Yahoo Finance The best exhibitions to see in London galleries and museums right now, from Hallyu! to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Here are the top exhibitions to catch in London this month, from the soonest to close.
Gideon Mendel: The Ward Revisited
First seen as a book and exhibition at the Fitzrovia chapel in 2017, this new presentation will comprise a large-screen video installation of Mendel’s searing images, taken in 1993 in the Broderip and Charles Bell wards in London’s Middlesex Hospital – dedicated to patients with HIV/Aids. It’s accompanied by a new short film, with interviews of people that appear in the photographs. The stunning chapel is the only remaining building of the hospital, which was demolished in 2008.
Fitzrovia Chapel, to February 5
Cinzia Ruggeri
A unique figure of Italian postmodernism gets her day in the sun. Ruggeri isn’t just an artist: she is a fashion and furniture designer, sculptor, interior designer and even teacher who isn’t afraid to get experimental. She enhanced her clothes with contemporary technologies like LEDs, has created furniture from glass and chairs from stuffed animals; finally, we get to appreciate it up close in the first-ever survey exhibition of her work in Britain
Goldsmiths CCA, to February 12
Tiny Traces: African and Asian Children
Discover the heart-breaking stories from Britain’s colonial past in this exhibition of their personal artefacts. Travelling back to the London of 1739-1820, the show will tell the stories of African and Asian foundlings through the traces they left in history – from personal items to archival documents. Running alongside it will be works of art from contemporary artists including Hew Locke and Zarina Bhimji, offering a dialogue with the lives of the children and inviting us to consider the impact of Empire on their lives.
London’s Foundling Museum, to February 19
Japan: Courts and Culture
Head to the decadent setting of Buckingham Palace to see some of the Royal Collection’s finest pieces of Japanese art and design. For the first time, highlights from the collection - counted as one of the most significant in the western world - are being displayed to tell the complex story of British-Japanese relations. Including rare pieces of porcelain and lacquer, samurai armour and diplomatic gifts stretching back centuries, it’s a unique insight into a world of ritual and cultural exchange between the two countries.
Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, to February 26
Maria Bartuszová
For those more interested in the world of sculpture, then this exhibition on the intriguing Slovak-born artist Maria Bartuszová is sure to impress. Bringing together several of Bartuszová’s rarely seen works, it pays tribute to an artist who started plying her trade in the 1960s, at a time when artistic restrictions in Slovakia were strict. Nevertheless, she went onto create more than 500 sculptures, shaping clay into works that bring to mind nature and the human body.
Tate Modern, to April 16
Magdalena Abakanowicz
This revelation of a show looks at the first two decades of the career of the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose ambitious, richly coloured, technically complex textile sculptures and environments (just don’t call her a textile artist) are utterly beguiling. This is the first show for Abakanowicz at a public space in London for nearly 50 years and it’s outrageous that it’s taken this long.
Tate Modern, to May 21
Hallyu! The Korean Wave
South Korea has become a celebrated part of modern pop culture, with its thrilling dramas, artists and distinctive style. In this exhibition, viewers will be able to explore the beginnings of the “Korean Wave” and trace its evolution from the 60s and 70s to today, where Squid Game, Gangnam Style and K-Pop are known around the world.
V&A, to June 25
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League with the Night
This breathtaking exhibition was so wildly popular when it opened at Tate Britain in December 2020, and then so cruelly cut off by the pandemic, that in an unprecedented move (there’s that word again), the museum has decided to restage it, to give visitors the chance to see it. Yiadom-Boakye’s invented portraits are extraordinary in their narrative richness - you feel like you know these people, that the room has only just gone quiet.
Tate Britain, to February 26
