The latest art and photography exhibition reviews (updated for 2026)

The National Portrait Gallery is as much a monument to national identity as it is an art gallery. Walk through its hallowed halls, and you’ll witness royals and politicians rendered in rich oil paints, celebrated actors and great thinkers captured by history’s leading artists, athletes and rock stars peering across the room at one another from gilded frames. It’s an education in our collective understanding of British life, culture and history. But who isn’t here? Who doesn’t get to shape the version of the nation’s identity on display to the thousands of tourists, school groups and art lovers who parade through these grand rooms every day? That question is central to the work of American photographer Catherine Opie, whose exhibition, To Be Seen, is currently installed on the second floor of the gallery. Securing Opie’s first major UK exhibition feels like a coup for a gallery that has clearly taken pains to shake off its stuffy image in recent years and is lent an air of transgressive cool by the cult photographer. And fortunately, it turns out that putting her oeuvre in direct conversation with the largest collection of portraiture in the world works wonders. Not only does Opie's work serve to challenge visitors’ ideas about who belongs on the walls of this historic institution, but it also brilliantly elucidates the artist’s Baroque and Renaissance references.  Visitors entering the exhibition are met with the piercing gaze of actor Daniela (now Daniel) Sea, best known...

A stroll through Tracey Emin: A Second Life is an evocative experience. Positioned as a 40-year retrospective through the pioneering artist’s vast and varied repertoire, the show lays bare Emin’s life through her distinct and often unsettling art, from career highs – such as the iconic, Turner Prize-nominated ‘My Bed’, which is every bit as shocking and moving today as it was in 1998 – to stark personal lows in work depicting her experiences with sexual violence, abortion and recent life-threatening illness. As you can imagine, with such subject matter, it is not always a comfortable experience for the artist and the viewer alike. However, Emin’s flair for dark comedy adds moments of levity throughout. The second room of the exhibition features a large-scale projection of a work on video entitled ‘Why I Never Became A Dancer’. It begins with the artist recalling an incident in her youth when she entered a local dance competition only to run off stage mid-performance when a group of men with whom she’d previously had sexual encounters chanted ‘slag’ at her until she could no longer even hear the music. The film ends with a sequence of Emin dancing, totally uninhibited, to the disco classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ by Sylvester, and the work is dedicated to each of her aggressors, calling them out by name. It is the perfect encapsulation of both Emin’s defiant approach to life and her ability to turn traumatic experiences into mesmerising art. Longform video is an...

‘Exuberance’ is the word of the day at the opening of The Picture Comes First, Rose Wylie’s marvellous retrospective at the Royal Academy. It is referenced in the press materials, and emphasised repeatedly by the show’s curator and the gallery staff on hand to answer questions. After a stroll through the galleries, it is not hard to see why. Though hugely varied in their subject matter – ranging from the Blitz to Nicole Kidman – Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy which beams out from all of them. The RA’s high ceilings and grand interiors act as a brilliant canvas for the artist’s large-scale, often child-like works. The 91-year-old Wylie is the first female painter to have a full retrospective in the space, a fact the institution has shouted proudly about, though on many levels it seems rather shameful given its 250+ year residency in Burlington House. Nevertheless, it only adds to Wylie’s credentials as a trailblazing feminist artist.  Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy The worlds of fashion, entertainment and celebrity are frequent sources of inspiration for the painter. In Lilith and Gucci Boy, she depicts Lilith, the supposed first wife of Adam (of Garden of Eden fame), who left him as she refused to be subservient. In a standout piece, she paints the character adjacent to an attendee of a Gucci fashion show, and labels her ‘the first feminist’. A series of four paintings that depict Nicole Kidman posing on a red...

Have you ever swum with a sea snake? If not, you may soon get your chance. Apparently, UK waters are about half a century off becoming habitable to these potently venomous creatures, but if you’re impatient like me, and would prefer your first encounter today, Somerset House has you covered.  Diana-Fiona Armour is the artist responsible: she has scaled up a 3D scan of this endangered sea snake (more professionally known as Aipysurus fuscus), sliced it into three parts, illuminated it with mesh-LED, and set it among the courtyard’s dancing fountains. Projections based on 50 years of data from oceanographic sensors along the British coast suggest that, as seas continue to warm, this slippery species—today at home in the warm shallow coral reefs of north-western Australia—might one day share your New Year’s Day dip in British waters. Sea snakes, after all, are a sign of how the oceans are doing. So while the thought of sharing the water with one may seem alarming, in truth, it’s the scientist’s purple data programmed to pulse through Armour’s LED sculpture that is scarier. ‘Sea snakes are a vital, but often overlooked, indicator of marine health,’ says Armour. ‘By focusing on these animals, and highlighting how their existence is being threatened, I hope to draw attention to wider ocean and ecological issues.’ By day, Armour’s sculpture takes on the dry, armoured shell of shed skin—fitting, as we wave goodbye this week to the Year of the Wood Snake. Or rather, for those...

There’s an undeniable bliss that comes from being next to a large body of water, and this cold London winter has left me craving a day trip to the seaside. However, my desire for escape was sated by visiting Seurat and the Sea at the Courtauld Gallery, where I wandered through quiet coastal towns and had the shore all to myself.  French painter Georges Seurat was dead by 31, but in fewer than 50 canvases he left an indelible mark on art history. By applying thousands of dots and dashes of pure colour right next to each other, he pioneered the technique of Pointillism, which in turn birthed Neo-Impressionism. The aim of this psychedelic morse-code was that the eye, rather than the brush, would blend colours together to create the image.  Though renowned for his scenes of leisuring Parisians such as Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, more than half of Seurat’s output (and the subject of this show) is stoic visions of the sea from towns along the northern French coast. Seeing as I’ve always found Seurat’s rendering of people somewhat flat and uninspiring, thankfully, these paintings are devoid of people – the only human presence being the boats punctuating the horizon. This heightens the sense of serenity as you trace the geometric silhouettes of ports and harbours mingling with the carefree contours of the surrounding coast. Pointillism really lends itself to seascapes, the unblended paint shimmering under the gallery spotlights like sunlight over the...

London’s art world seems convinced that it’ll implode if there isn’t a major exhibition of Lucian Freud’s works every couple of years. Following his Self Portraits show at the Royal Academy in 2019 and then New Perspectives at the National Gallery in 2022, the most recent fix comes from the National Portrait Gallery. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of the celebrated painter’s oeuvre; his works on paper. Many artists liken drawing to thinking – you may not like everything you see when you’re allowed into their thoughts. Canvas and paper, because of their varying absorbency and materiality, require wildly different approaches. Compared to the grand monuments of Freud’s paintings, his drawings are delicate and vulnerable, which is why he largely made them as preparatory sketches or to keep a visual diary. Certain marks and motifs would be experimented with on paper before they ended up on canvas. And while he pushed the boundaries of how to represent the human form, not every experiment produced interesting results, so to base an entire exhibition around such drawings is certainly an interesting choice. Where the show really succeeds is in its curation, fostering a dialogue between Freud’s drawings and paintings. When they’re hung side by side – the figures in his drawings isolated from the painting – you really appreciate his keen observation of the body reflected in every determined line. You can see how the density of shading in...

This year’s New Contemporaries exhibition, a showcase of 26 of the UK’s finest emerging artists, opened at the South London Gallery at the end of January. The show includes themes of - and you may want to take a breath here - dystopian futures, the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification, displacement, critical approaches to systems of power, digital technologies, mourning, remembrance, and loss. Among others! Highlights include a striking photographic work by Timon Benson depicting a group of young people congregating in an intimate, cramped party setting, a series of brutalist sculptures by William Braitwaithe, and a number of satisfying works on canvas by a collection of plainly virtuosic painters. The absolute stars of the show, however, are located across the street in the gallery’s Fire Station building. On the first floor are two remarkable films. The first, by Chinese artist River Yuhao Cao, explores mourning in regional Chinese folk traditions. It’s a quiet, beautifully shot meditation that centres on a moving stage vehicle, which parks up in the middle of a forest at night. The curtains are drawn to reveal a lone dancer who performs for an audience of just one, presumably grieving, man who sits on the ground, transfixed by her movements. This moving film has a graceful, hypnotic quality to it, and it makes great use of minimal lighting to pierce through the dark, twilight hours during which it was shot. What this exhibition lacks in cohesion, it makes...

In a small, undecorated room, I stand amongst a group of onlookers, staring at a set of keys on the floor. A human hand crawls out through a gap between the ground and a slightly-not-long-enough wall, attempting to reach the keys. As we collectively gawk, confounded by the flailing hand, a middle-aged American woman in a sharp trouser suit asks: ‘I wonder if we’re all being terribly English about this, by not getting involved?’ She then proceeds to drag the keys along the floor, causing the hand to chase after them, never allowing it close enough to catch.  Believe it or not, we’re not the participants of some sort of University of Oxford social experiment, rather we are the voyeurs of ‘Ascenseur’, a work of art by the Brazilian artist Laura Lima. First conceived in 2013, it’s now on view in the ICA as part of a recently opened solo exhibition by Lima, spanning works from her repertoire, as well as a brand new commission from which the show, The Drawing Drawing, derives its title.  This work, the centre piece of the show, sits just behind ‘Ascenseur’ in the space’s Lower Gallery. A sort of Alice In Wonderland take on a traditional life drawing class, ‘The Drawing Drawing’ comprises several easels with stools and a nude life model, all sitting on individual podiums which revolve and orbit around the room, constantly obscuring and changing the sitter’s view of the model. People are encouraged to take a seat and use the drawing utensils provided to sketch, after which they...

Getting on the tube these days means being bombarded with dozens of ugly advertisements, selling you everything from whisky, to electric toothbrushes and LED facemasks. However, things weren’t always this way. Unlike today’s dull Underground adverts, tube stations during the 1920s and 30s were adorned with strikingly vibrant art deco posters that promoted things to do and places to go around London. Over a hundred of these are exhibited at the London Transport Museum’s latest temporary exhibition, Art Deco: the golden age of poster design, alongside objects like a cigarette case, compact mirror, and tea set that express the decadence of that period.  Back then, a post-war economic boom had propelled consumerism, affording people more leisure time than ever.  Speed, freedom, and opportunity became the ethos of an era that could harness industrial technology in recreation rather than warfare. Such carefreeness is reflected in the bold colours, opulent typefaces, sharp geometry, and indulgent scenes of Londoners enjoying a day out. While a younger audience will be drawn to their vintage aesthetic, older visitors might find them charmingly nostalgic. Art deco didn’t get its name until the 1960s when it came under academic scrutiny; during its day it was simply known as Style Moderne. Which is fitting because many of the artists regularly commissioned by London Transport took vivid inspiration from modernist art movements such as cubism, futurism, and vorticism; unknowingly...

‘Fun’ is a quality which seems to be all too frequently forgotten by curatorial teams. But it certainly takes pride of place at the Saatchi Gallery’s The Long Now, an expansive, nine- room retrospective which aims to both celebrate its past and reiterate its commitment to championing innovation in the present and future. The show is curated by Philippa Adams, who previously served as the gallery’s Senior Director for over 20 years, and is divided into spaces dedicated to key themes which have underpinned its exhibitions over the last four decades. Abstraction, landscapes, AI and technology, and climate change are all given their own rooms. They’re populated with works, old and new, by artists with whom the gallery shares a long-running history, as well as commissions from emerging artists.A reinvention of the wheel, conceptually speaking, it may not be, but it’s a bona fide feast for the eyes. Across two floors, each room has been curated and installed with care to ensure every piece in the room can shine - no space feels overstuffed. Adams has clearly given careful consideration to how the works will complement each other, both in terms of colour and scale, which enhances the viewing experience and makes you want to linger in every room. It’s a rarity that you find yourself at an exhibition where you genuinely don’t know where to look. However, starting from the very first room, dedicated to mark making and boasting Rannva Kunoy’s marvellous, luminescent,...