Things to do in London today

Popping up each summer on the steps where the Regent’s Canal passes Granary Square, Everyman’s Screen on the Canal is one of the city’s best loved outdoor cinemas, thanks to its atmospheric setting, eclectic programming and the fact that it doesn’t cost viewers a penny. And this year’s pop-up will be looking more Instagrammable han ever before, thanks to designer and architect Yinka Ilori, who has created an eye-popping screen design echoing ‘the fantastical landscapes’ explored in Disney movies. Pop down on a sunny afternoon to catch live coverage from Wimbledon every day of the tournament, plus the usual mix of live sports, classic movies, family-friendly flicks and recent hits including Breakfast at Tiffany's, Grease, Parent Trap, Top Gun: Maverick, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Encanto. Best enjoyed with a couple of tinned cocktails and some picky bits from the nearby Waitrose, or classic cinema snacks from Everyman’s on-site bar.  Check out the full film schedule here.

This King’s Cross Lightroom now has surely the weirdest repertoire of any venue in London, possibly the world. With an oeuvre based around massive megabit projection-based immersive films, its shows so far have been a David Hockney exhibition, a Tom Hanks-narrated film about the moon landings, a Vogue documentary and a visualiser for Coldplay’s upcoming album. It’s such a random collection of concepts that it’s hard to say there was or is anything ‘missing’ from the extremely esoteric selection of bases covered. But certainly, as the school summer holidays roll around it’s very welcome to see it add an overtly child-friendly show to its roster. Bar a short Coldplay break, Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs will play daily at Lightroom from now until at least the end of October half-term. It is, as you would imagine, a dinosaur documentary. And indeed, if the name rings a specific bell it’s because it’s culled from the David Attenborough-narrated Apple TV series of the same name. It’s quite the remix, though: Attenborough is out, and Damian Lewis is in, delivering a slightly melodramatic voiceover that lacks Sir David’s colossal gravitas but is, nonetheless, absolutely fine. Presumably Attenborough is absent because he’s very busy and very old, because while the film reuses several of the more spectacular setpieces from the TV series, it’s sufficiently different that repurposing the old narration would be a stretch. Any child with any degree of fondness for the...

The seemingly unstoppable David Attenborough has achieved more since hitting retirement age than most of us - let’s be honest, all of us - will achieve in our entire lifetimes. This new immersive film is his second major project since turning 99 in May, following his more traditional documentary Ocean. Produced by Open Planet Studios, Our Story sees the Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum transformed into a smaller version of the Lightroom in King’s Cross (a sort of projection-based theatre). While ‘immersive’ is a word exhausted by overuse, ‘immersive documentary’ is emerging as a fairly distinct genre with clear hallmarks. As with the Lightroom’s shows, Our Story is based around powerful digital projectors beaming the film onto the four walls of the space, wrapping around the surfaces so there are different images whichever direction you look. You are indeed immersed. It’s still a narrative documentary film, in which Sir David tells us the story of the planet from fiery, lifeless rock to the advent of mankind to a possible future. Attenborough narrates, and appears at the start and end. There’s a fair smattering of expectedly dazzling wildlife footage. But Our Story isn’t really a nature doc in the style of Attenborough’s most famous works, and rather than painstakingly captured original footage of animals, it uses pre-existing stuff plus heavy use of CGI to supplement its storytelling. Occasionally this feels like a minor letdown: though they’re not trying to...

‘Weather schmeather’ say the people behind Rooftop Film Club. Stratford and Peckham’s rooftop cinema institutions are firing up the projectors early this year – Peckham’s Bussey Building screen opens on April 10, and Roof East in Stratford from April 17 – and they’re employing a secret weapon against a bit of chilly night air this spring: snuggle power. Two-person ‘fireside loveseats’ come with a personal wood-fired heater and hot beverage (regular, snuggle-free seating is available). On the programme are recent hits like Wicked, Nosferatu, Anora and Moana 2, as well as evergreen classics (La La Land, Notting Hill, 10 Things I Hate About You, When Harry Met Sally…), and a Friends watch party. Tickets come in at £18 for adults and £8 for children, and there’s a 20 percent discount if you book before the end of March.

Deptford X, SE8’s beloved contemporary visual art festival, is back – but this time with a brand new format. For the first time, it’s going biennial, expanding the festival to 18 days packed with art, exhibitions, events, and a street parade. Plus, fringe art events will leave almost no part of Deptford untouched. An artist callout is currently underway, head to the event website if you fancy applying. Otherwise, watch the space for the final programme.  

Street food, river views and five family-friendly movies… what could be better than July’s outdoor screenings in Vauxhall’s Pleasure Gardens? Just the fact that they’re all completely free. Running every Tuesday evening from July 8 at 7pm, this leafy Thames-side spot will be welcoming all-comers for screenings of 2019’s ‘Aladdin’, ‘Jumanji – Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Sister Act II: Back in the Habit’. Picnic blankets and chairs are a fiver to hire, and there’s an array of street food options to tuck into. Book ahead because spots are limited.

Helping replace Canary Wharf’s corporate image with something fun and family-friendly, Canada Square Park will be screening movies and sporting events up on its big screens this summer. There’s a packed programme of free movies, taking in everything from ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ (June 15), to ‘Invictus’ (September 23). There are two Bollywood movies on the bill, too – sci-fi action thriller ‘Ra.One’ (July 15) and life-affirming vacation film ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ (August 3). It’s very much a BYO set-up, so bring your own blankets and snacks – though there’s a Waitrose nearby for any last-minute picnic needs.

From screeching tube carriages and blaring rickshaws to the lulling podcast we listen to on our commute and the music that soundtracks our walks, noise is constantly shaping our lives, and in bigger, deeper ways than we might at first realise. The Baribican’s Feel the Sound exhibition promises to be a multi-sensory journey into our personal relationship with sound and an exploration of how the world of listening goes way beyond pure audio. Eleven commissions and installations will take over the Barbican Centre from the entrance on Silk Street to the Lakeside Terrace, all exploding visitors to frequencies, sound, rhythmic patterns and vibrations that define everything around us. Even the Centre’s underground car parks will be part action as it’s transformed into a club space. There’ll also be the chance to sing with a digital quantum choir and experience music without sound. Plus, look out for collabs with Boiler Room celebrating underground club culture, Joyride which will mix ‘boy racer’ subculture with DIY music communities and Nexus Studios which will fuse neuroscience and design to capture visitors’ emotional responses to music. This is ‘an invitation to awaken the senses, embrace our sonic world and discover the sound in each of us’, says the Barbican. Sounds like a hit.   

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Cocktails in the City, a pop-up festival unfolding over two weekends (July 10–12 and August 7–9). Every summer, cocktail-loving Londoners flock to Bloomsbury’s Bedford Square Gardens, which are taken over some of the city's very best bars, mixologists, and booze brands. Enjoy a complimentary welcome drink on arrival, then start exploring creative concoctions from a star-studded roster of top mixologists. Experimental Cocktail Club, Vesper Bar, Archive & Myth, and Viajante87 are just a handful of the celebrated London bars on the line-up, while guests will also be able to check out live music, street food, ice carvings, and masterclasses within the picturesque private gardens. 

It’s up to every primary school parent to wrestle with their own conscience as to whether it’s appropriate to take their dinosaur-loving child to Jurassic World: Rebirth (rating 12A) this summer. But regardless of how much a wuss your kid is, a new installment in the franchise inevitably means a glut of family-friendly mesozoic-related shows. London is full of them this summer holidays, and foremost is the ‘official’ show Jurassic World: The Experience, which was last seen here three years ago at ExCel London (then called Jurassic World: The Exhibition), the last time a Jurassic World film came out.  God help me, I also saw it the last time around, and can report that the only significant change is the location: it’s now staged at NEON, a new venue just outside Battersea Power Station that will apparently be dedicated to similar immersive events. I don’t have a lot to say about NEON – it’s basically a big box – but the Power Station redevelopment is quite a fun place to take little ones to after the show, which is pretty brief.  It’s all good clean cretaceous fun The premise is the same as before. The experience is roughly 45 minutes long and begins with us boarding a ‘ferry’ to get out to Isla Nublar, home to Jurassic World. A handful of impressively gigantic animatronic herbivores greet us, along with some fun interactive bits, and then it’s on to the incubation lab where we can pet a ‘baby dinosaur’ (a puppet) and muck around with more displays. Next up we witness...

  Having premiered at the Old Vic in 2017 – and gone on to conquer the West End and Broadway – Girl From the North Country has lost none of its potency as it returns to the theatre where it all began — a dreamy, sepia-soaked production of character-driven vignettes and reimagined Bob Dylan songs. It’s 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota – Dylan’s actual birthplace – and the Great Depression is chewing through the soul of the town. At the centre of this dustbowl drama is the Laine family, struggling to keep their guesthouse (and each other) from crumbling under debt, loss, and the weight of time. Nick Laine (Colin Connor) is a man burdened by a bubbling anger — the same kind that seems to course through the town — while his wife Elizabeth (Katie Brayben) floats between madness and sudden, unnerving clarity. Their adopted Black daughter Marianne (Justina Kehinde) is pregnant, unmarried, and navigating her place within the world. Their house is a revolving door of boarders: hustlers, dreamers, a smooth-talking preacher, and a boxer down on his luck (think 1930s sitcom). The 23-strong company moves fluidly between character, chorus, and live band. Simon Hale’s arrangements of 20 Dylan songs float in the spaces between joy and hardship. Stripped-back renditions of ‘Forever Young’ and ‘I Want You’ drift through wood-panelled walls and empty whisky bottles. Some numbers are so radically reimagined you’ll barely recognise them — like Brayben’s raw, ragged and impossibly controlled version...

Packed your fascinator? Rehearsed your most attractive crying face? Well, good; over in Mansfield – by way of the Theatre Royal Haymarket – the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov), and the audience, some of whom are sat directly on the stage, are all invited.  The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre early last year. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. As the lights come up on Samal Blak’s set, little of the grandeur associated with getting hitched is visible. There’s a huge disco ball hanging overhead, whizzing fragmented stars across the theatre, but this romantic image dissipates when it comes face to face with  the realities of the working class family wedding: the electric fan, the TK Maxx shopper, the extension cord. Here, the sublime and the mundane exist in constant opposition; some characters dream aloud about the enormity of space and the universe, while others discuss their greying pubes. Matthews’s Sylvia, our scratchy voiced bride, is getting ready for her big day. Buzzing with nervous energy, she is something of a supporting figure to her conversation-dominating...

  General advice is to stay away from hornets’ nests, especially if you are the West End and you want people to have a nice time and pay lots of money for a ticket. Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play goes against general advice. In fact he finds the biggest hornets’ nests he can and prods at all of them, and sees what comes flying out. What does come out is pretty spectacular. Despite recently winning what seemed like every single award that had ever been invented, and turning round the faltering fortunes of the Royal Court Theatre, there was never a guarantee that his play about (‘about’ seems like a fairly inadequate word) Roald Dahl’s antisemitism – and the deep trenches of dispute about Israel – would work in the West End. At the Royal Court you expect that kind of politics. The West End is for musicals and celebrities.But it does work, just as brilliantly. First off there’s John Lithgow (also all the awards) stooping and scowling his way into Dahl, charming in his grandpa-ish grumping at the beginning. He’s a walking metaphor: a giant – of literature, of stature – and big. But friendly? If you knew nothing about him except the good stuff – Charlie, Matilda, Mr Fox – you’d be charmed by his strong will, his passion and compassion. It’s 1983, he’s got a bad back, his house is being noisily renovated, he’s recently got engaged, and has a new book coming out so no wonder he’s grumpy. When his publisher suggests he moves temporarily to a nearby cottage, his crabby reply is, ‘I...

Nicholas Hytner’s exuberant 2019 take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply too much fun to leave to the history books: what a joy it is to have it back. To bring you up to speed, it’s a show in the same lineage as the Bridge’s recent Guys and Dolls: designed by Bunnie Christie, half the audience sit in the round, while the other half stand on the floor where the fairy-filled action of Shakespeare’s comedy unfurls on mobile platforms that rise and fall around them (I stood, only cowards sit).  It is joyously queer: pretty much everyone in it gets a crack at snogging everybody else. And Hytner’s key textual intervention is swapping the bulk of fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania’s lines, meaning that it’s JJ Feild’s Oberon – not Susannah Fielding’s Titania – who has it off with Emmanuel Akwafo’s exuberant Bottom. Has much changed since last time? It doesn’t feel vastly different conceptually, though new leads Feild and Fielding put a different spin on what are very explicitly the lead roles. As is tradition they also play the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta in the bookending Athens-set sections, but there is the strong suggestion that they in fact play the same characters throughout.  Feild is harder edged and more menacing than his predecessor Oliver Chris in the Athens sections; when playing Oberon there’s a softness and vulnerability there. It’s a performance sympathetic to the production’s suggestion that the bulk of the play is Theseus’s dream, in which his cruel...

The last Lyttelton theatre show to be programmed by Rufus Norris prior to his departure looks like a good one: following the Jodie Comer-fuelled West End smash Prima Facie, writer Susie Miller and director Justin Martin join forces with a new star for for follow-up Inter Alia. Rosamund Pike has had a good few years with screen hits Saltburn and The Wheel of Time, and now she makes her National Theatre debut to star as Jessica Parks, a maverick high court judge who precariously balances her work and her home life. We don’t know a lot more about the Miriam Buether-designed show just yet, but the fact Pike will be joined by actors Jamie Glover and Jasper Talbot points to the fact that this won’t be a monologue in the vein of Miller’s last.

Michael Shannon interview: ‘I think TV is garbage – I certainly don’t watch it’. It’s a trap, almost, to think of Eugene O’Neill’s final play A Moon for the Misbegotten as a sequel to his miserable masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Sure, they share the character of Jim Tyrone, a dissolute young actor in Long Day’s Journey and a dissolute older actor here. But you go in expecting despair and instead find something that’s more like an episode of Steptoe and Son.Maybe that’s down to director Rebecca Frecknall – now a master of whipping the lesser-revived plays of the American canon into shape – putting space between this and the old workhorse of Long Day’s Journey (which we’ve seen three times in London in the last 13 years): not the faded grandeur of a seaside home here, but a wooden yard full of splintered timbers pointing into the sky, messy and dusty.The production itself, though, is anything but dusty. From the first moment, every line is a punch or a jab or a dagger. Peter Corboy and Ruth Wilson as siblings Mike and Josie burst onto the stage and whack each other with dialogue, and their fists. Fed up with his dad Phil’s drunkenness and slave-driving on their rock-infested farm, Mike is leaving. All that’s left to Phil is daughter Josie, whose sleeping around has made her ‘the scandal of the neighbourhood’, and their landlord Jim Tyrone who may or may not sell the farm to them and who may or may not be in love with Josie.David Threlfall is a hoot as Phil,...

In terms of pure column inches, the balcony scene from Jamie Lloyd’s Evita is surely the biggest news to come out of the theatre world in years. Hacks the planet over have been entranced by the potent cocktail of star Rachel Zegler’s fame and the sheer ballsiness of Lloyd having her sing ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ for free to the good people of Argyll Street at 9pm each night from the London Palladium balcony.  There has also been a fantastic amount of bollocks written about the sequence, both by journalists and on social media. First, a tranche of articles suggesting ticket holders were furious that Zegler wasn’t singing the song to them in the theatre. Second, well-meaning social media types decreeing Lloyd had intended it as some sort of earnest way to big up Argentine First Lady Eva Perón’s woman-of-the-people status.  The second party was not entirely wrong, but the scene – which is, to be clear, astonishingly good – can only really be contextually appreciated if you’ve seen the one before it, which very much takes place in the theatre. The first half of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s classic musical ends to the disorientating, super-amplified strains of ‘A New Argentina’. In it, Zegler’s Eva – a malevolent brunette hood rat in skimpy black leather with a howling, heavy metal delivery – eggs on her fascist beefcake husband Juan Perón (James Olivas) to take the Argentine presidency by any means necessary.  It’s remarkable that the Hollywood star has deigned to...

Stereophonic playwright David Adjmi recently wrote an article for a major British newspaper in which he waxed effusively about how his Broadway smash had been inspired by the band Led Zeppelin. I wonder if his lawyer was holding a gun to his head as he wrote it, because while the Zep may have been a tertiary influence, Stereophonic is very very very very very very very clearly about Fleetwood Mac. There are Fleetwood Mac fan conventions less about Fleetwood Mac. Hell, there are incarnations of Fleetwood Mac that have been less about Fleetwood Mac.  Specifically, it’s a lightly fictionalised account of the recording of the Anglo-American band’s mega-selling Rumours album, and while not every detail is the same, many are identical, from the cities it was recorded in (Sausalito then LA) to the gender, nationality and internal-relationship makeup of the band, to details like female members ‘Holly’ (aka Christine McVie) and ‘Diana’ (aka Stevie Nicks) moving out out the studio accommodation they were sharing with the band’s menfolk in favour of their own condominiums.  Which l hasten to say is all to the good, even if it frequently feels like a miracle that Stereophonic has stormed Broadway – becoming the most Tony-nominated play of all time – without being derailed by legal issues (though there is a lawsuit against it from Rumours producer Ken Caillet, who has accused Adjmi of ripping off his memoir).  Of course, it is a great subject for a play. The story of how erstwhile...

Change at the top can completely alter a theatre’s character. But there is something quite lovely about the fact that the great US playwright Lynn Nottage and our own fast-rising directing superstar Lynette Linton have done a play together for each of the last three Donmar artistic directors.  Josie Rourke’s reign ended with the monumental working class tragedy Sweat, which did much to establish both Nottage and Linton’s UK reputations. For Michael Longhurst there was Clyde’s, Sweat’s beautifully redemptive, almost magical realist sort-of-sequel. Now Linton moves on to Intimate Apparel. Where Sweat and Clyde’s were both UK premieres, Intimate Apparel is an older Nottage work that was her first US hit back in 2003 and had a very decent UK premiere a decade ago. But more Lynn Nottage is always a good thing. It’s a period drama, following a selection of characters in New York City, 1905. The story centres on Esther (Samira Wiley), a hard working but shy and emotionally repressed Black seamstress who specialises in ‘intimate apparel’ – that is to say underwear, which in 1905 includes a lot of fancy corsets.  Neither Nottage’s play nor Linton’s production really gives a sense of what the wider city – or indeed country – was like at the time, and that’s the point. Each of Nottage’s characters exists on some sort of margin, or we only see the marginal side of their existence. So there’s Esther: shy, self-doubting but determined in her passion for her work. There’s her friend...

There are no Shakespeare plays in Drew McOnie’s first season running the Open Air Theatre. But Tinuke Craig – the theatre’s new associate artistic director – tackles this old RSC adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s dystopian YA novel as if it were Shakespeare, bringing vigour and gravitas to the story of a Britain where Black ‘Crosses’ rule and white ‘Noughts’ serve as the underclass. It’s not an unreasonable approach. The story of how lifelong friends Sephy (a privileged Cross) and Callum (a poor Nought) fall for each other with disastrous consequences has more than a hint of Romeo & Juliet to it. But I’m not sure how well it all stands up. Ultimately the source material is a 24-year-old kids’ novel, as seen through Dominic Cooke’s faithful 18-year-old adaptation. At worst it feels both clunky and dated. Clunky, because while yes, having Black people oppress white people is clearly an ironic way to comment on the fact that historically it’s been the other way around, the society of the story is so hysterically racist – apartheid South Africa level, at least – that it feels like it lets actual institutional British racism off the hook somewhat. Dated, because racial discourse has changed over the last quarter century and there are bits of Noughts & Crosses that now play out uncomfortably close to a modern-day white grievance fantasy. I don’t think it’s going to attract a white-power audience, but I do think its story of how Callum and his family are radicalised into violence...

Ithell Colquhoun didn’t sit still, visually or spiritually. This exhibition attempts to make sense of a sprawling oeuvre that engages with an incredibly wide gamut of spiritual, religious and formal ideas. Though not always coherent, it reveals her to be an artist of immense talent and invention. Across her engagements with the occult, Hindu Tantra, Christian mysticism and the Jewish Kabbalah, Colquhoun’s eye for composition remains a constant, and might be the best part of a sometimes confusing show. Born in 1906 in India, where her father worked in the British colonial administration, Colquhoun moved to Cheltenham at a young age and went on to study art at the Slade, where she developed an interest in the esoteric. She was a card-carrying surrealist until 1940, when the group’s British leader E.L.T. Mesens declared that members shouldn’t join other societies. A practicing occultist, she took her cue to leave. Throughout the exhibition, various strains of surrealism and ways of understanding the world serve as a kind of tasting menu for Colquhoun. Here, in a relatively small-scale restaging of her broader exhibition at Tate St. Ives, the jumps between various artistic mediums and grand ideas can be jarring. Spanning painting, drawing and a number of more experimental techniques, the diversity of Colquhoun’s output seems to work against the constraints of the exhibition. What might be an expansive exploration often feels like a whistle-stop tour. Standout moments are...

José María Velasco is making big moves, even over 100 years since his death. The beloved Mexican artist is getting his first UK exhibition this year, in what is also the first display dedicated to a historical Latin-American artist at the National Gallery. In it, you’ll find Velasco’s sweeping portrayals of the Valley of Mexico and detailed panoramic views that bottle a moment in time for a country then moving towards industrialisation, while capturing the natural beauty that surrounded him in exquisite detail.

Fashion icon, model, club promoter, musician; Leigh Bowery was a multi-hyphenate before multi-hyphenate became a thing. But above all else, he was a muse, as the Tate Modern’s extensive new exhibition tracing the Melbourne native’s life and legacy does an excellent job of portraying.  Starting with his arrival onto London’s New Romantic scene in 1980, we’re whisked through Bowery’s many different eras in loose chronological order, from his early days as a club promoter for the short-lived but influential Taboo, through to his later practice as a performance artist, clothes designer and life model for Lucian Freud.  Re-invention was what Bowery stood for, and the Tate does a great attempt of categorising his many selves, from the walls (the first section is plastered in the Star Trek wallpaper from his home, the next his favoured polka-dot motif, and so on), to the clothes, video clips and portraits on display, which grow ever more out-there as Bowery gained confidence in his craft and voice with each year he lived in London. In the final room, beautiful blown-up fashion photographs show him literally shape-shifting, wrapping and warping his flesh like a sculptor working the wheel.  Photos show him literally shape-shifting, wrapping and warping his flesh like a sculptor In the curator’s tour, we’re told that this exhibition could have been called ‘Leigh Bowery and Friends’ and perhaps that would have been more appropriate: the Bowery on show here wouldn’t exist without...

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too. It starts, like any good procession, with a load of geezers with trumpets, parping to herald the arrival of victorious Caesar. As they blare, a Black soldier in gorgeous, gilded armour looks back, leading you to the next panel where statues of gods are paraded on carts. Then come the spoils of war, with mounds of seized weapons and armour piled high, then come vases and sacrificial animals, riders on elephant-back, men struggling to carry the loot that symbolises their victory. The final panel, Caesar himself bringing up the rear, remains in Hampton Court, so there is no conclusion here, just a steady, unstoppable stream of glory and rejoicing.  The paintings are faded and damaged, and have been so badly lit that you can only see them properly from a distance and at an angle. But still, they remain breathtaking in their sweeping, chaotic beauty.  Partly, this massive work is a celebration of the glories of the classical world and its brilliance, seen from the other side of some very dark ages. But along with its rise, you can’t help but also think of Rome's demise, of what would eventually...

As anyone who has ever tried to secure a booking at the London Fields Lido on a warm summer day will know, us Londoners love a good dip. So it’s only natural that the capital’s Design Museum should stage an exhibition dedicated to our adoration of swimming.  With more than 200 objects, Splash! presents a whistle-stop tour for water babies taking us all the way from bizarre Victorian bathing carriages, to the present-day mermaidcore TikTok trend. From the politics of the pool (and who gets to learn to swim) to the evolution of swimwear and pool architecture, Splash! covers a lot of ground. The show is split into three sections – the pool, the lido and nature – and perhaps the most fun part, each section is designed to mimic different swimming spaces which feature in the exhibit, including the London Aquatics Centre and the art-deco Penzance Jubilee Pool.  In the first part, ‘the pool’, is quite the collection of stuff, focussing largely on Olympic swimming – a model for the London Aquatics Centre, a swimming cap belonging to Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini, a jumper knitted by Tom Daley, and a 1984 David Hockney poster for the Los Angeles Olympics are all show. It also wouldn’t be an exhibition about pool design without some pretty Wes Anderson-style photography. The highly controversial LZR racer swimsuit is another gem on display – the suit designed by Speedo and NASA was responsible for 94 percent of swimming gold medals at Beijing 2008, and was subsequently banned for...

‘Wherever conflict erupts, sexual violence is present.’ So it’s surprising that until 2025, the UK has never had a major exhibition on sexual violence in conflict. This year the Imperial War Museum is hoping to shed light on the topic that remains widely under-discussed.  Through first-person testimonies, objects, artwork, propoganda posters and papers, Unsilenced will investigate the different ways in which sexual violence in conflict can manifest. It will span the untold stories of child evacuees, victims of trafficking, prisoners of war, and survivors from the First World War to present-day conflicts, and highlight the ongoing efforts of those fighting for justice and working to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. It’s expected to be a sobering, ground-breaking exhibition.  NB: This exhibition includes cases of rape, sexual humiliation, torture and child abuse in conflict. IWM advises that this exhibition is only suitable for those aged 16 or over.   

DJ by night and artist by day, French interdisciplinary talent Christelle Oyiri is set to take over Tate Modern this June as the first recipient of the Infinities Commission, a new annual award celebrating experimental contemporary art. Working across music, film, performance and installation, Oyiri’s practice explores hidden narratives within media, identity, and diasporic culture. She focuses on what ‘lies between the lines’, from lost mythologies to youth subcultures. Presented in Tate’s Tanks, the commission was awarded by a panel including Brian Eno and Anne Imhof, with additional support granted to artists Xenobia Bailey, Rashida Bumbray, and Jean Katambayi Mukendi.

Somehow, inexplicably, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major museum exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. I say inexplicably, because since the 1990s – when she was part of Saatchi’s infamous, groundbreaking ‘Sensation’ exhibition – Saville has been one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the country. She is the natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.

British artist Lubiana Himid’s work is characterised by paintings of bright interior scenes, as well as depictions of contemporary everyday life and landscapes showing overlooked aspects of history. In June, the Turner Prize-winner will curate ‘Connecting Thin Black Lines’ at the ICA, an exhibition that marks 40 years since ‘The Thin Black Line’, the landmark 1985 exhibition at the ICA in London that foregrounded a collection of young Black and Asian women artists in Britain. This iteration will bring together new and historic works by the original 11 artists, including Sonia Boyce, Claudette Johnson and Veronica Ryan, exploring legacy, collaboration, and cultural visibility, alongside archival works and new commissions.

German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer is probably one of the most formidable voices in contemporary art. Working across painting, sculpture, and vast installation, he uses raw materials, from lead, ash and straw, turning them into contemplative meditations on memory, mythology, and the echoes of post-war Germany. This autumn, Kiefer takes centre stage at the Royal Academy in a landmark exhibition alongside Vincent van Gogh, exploring the lasting influence that Van Gogh has on Kiefer. Simultaneously, this major solo exhibition at White Cube’s Mason’s Yard will unveil a new solo exhibition of paintings by the artist.