Tate Britain

Like a blast of hairspray to the eyes, the Tate is about to blind you with the ’80s. This expansive, exhaustive and exhausting exhibition features dozens of photographers and hundreds of photographs depicting all the turbulence of that most turbulent of decades. It opens with Greenham Common, the miners’ strike, Rock Against Racism, the poll tax and the gay rights movement. Dozens of black and white images depict riots, protests, banners, shouting and marches. At first it hits all the right spots: anger, resistance, a nation in turmoil and all these amazing photographers there to capture it. But then you realise that half of these photos, these events, are from the 1970s, and it all falls apart. What it does do however is set the tone of the show: by 1980, Britain was so broken, divided and impoverished that the coming decade was going to be a wild ride. The second room is maybe the best in the show: Martin Parr hobnobs with the comfortable classes as they chit chat at soirées and art openings and Anna Fox infiltrates offices to watch deals getting done; while Tish Murtha captures the abject dereliction of life on the dole and Paul Graham brilliantly snaps candid images of filthy, miserable waiting rooms at the Department of Health and Social Security. From there we’re taken on a journey through all the big issues of 80s Britain. The troubles are here in the work of Paul Graham, environmental destruction in Keith Arnatt photos, the everyday reality of poverty rears its...

Multimedia performance duo Hylozoic/Desires – aka Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser – use their work to explore both the past and the future via experimental poetry, music and moving images. This new Tate Britain exhibition sees them dive into the lost archive of the Inland Customs Line, a 2,500 kilometre hedge grown by the British Empire in the 1800s that separated the British-occupied Bengal Presidency from independent states in a bid to prevent smuggling – and keep the Brits at their most powerful. Cast through Hylozoic/Desires’ lens, the hedge becomes a poetic and political space with continued relevancy in our own divided timeline.

A career-spanning exhibition of video and animation artist Ed Atkins, in which visitors will be able to explore paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings, alongside the acclaimed artist’s moving image works.

Ed Atkins specialises in a deeply unsettling approach to the human condition. Largely through CGI videos and writing, this English artist picks apart the emotions, the struggles, the realities of everyday life. This isn’t easy, simple, approachable art, it’s uncomfortable, awkward, and often totally brilliant.

Over the past few years we’ve been awash with Wicca, wallowing in witchcraft and overwhelmed with the occult. To capitalise on the trend for all things pointy hatted and spiritual, Tate Britain is finally giving much-overlooked radical English artist Ithell Colquhoun a major show. Colquhoun was a practicing occultist who used myth, magic and surrealism to explore the idea of divine feminine power through painting, drawing and tarot.

2025 will see the launch of the most extensive retrospective of Lee Miller’s photography in the UK, celebrating the trailblazing surrealist as one of the 20th century’s most urgent artistic voices. Around 250 vintage and modern prints will be on display – including some previously unseen gems – capturing the photographer’s vision and spirit.

This exhibition will put the work of two rivals – and two of Britain’s greatest painters – J.M.W. Turner and John Constable side by side. Although both had different paths to success, they each became recognised as stars of the art world and shared a connection to nature and recreating it in their landscape paintings. Explore the pair’s intertwined lives and legacies and get new insight into their creativity via sketchbooks, personal items and must-see artworks.