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Autumn is a big time in art, with all the major galleries opening up new shows for the new season. That means some current favourites have to shut to make way. So it’s time to wave bye bye to some of the best exhibitions of the year; see you later Tavares Strachan at the Hayward, TTFN Yoko Ono at Tate Modern, arrivederci Francis Alys at the Barbican.
You’ve got just a month (or less in some cases) to catch these art corkers.
Seven exhibitions closing soon
Tavares Strachan: ‘There Is Light Somewhere’ at the Hayward Gallery, closing Sep 1
Strachan uncovers hidden Black histories – histories ignored, forgotten, erased by dominant white western narratives – and gives them new life. He creates new encyclopaedias, launches space programs, rebuilds old ships. It’s dizzying, complex, ungraspable, because that’s what history is. Black pasts have been erased and forgotten for so long that you can forgive Strachan for striving so hard to say so much. He’s just got a lot to squeeze in.
Read the review here.
Francis Alÿs: ‘Ricochets’ at the Barbican, closing Sep 1
It’s a hard heart that can leave Francis Alÿs’s Barbican exhibition without being a little broken by it. At the Barbican, the Belgian artist has turned his eye on children, filling the gallery with dozens of videos of children’s games from around the world. The work is meant to be an archive of children's games, of the vital importance of play, but the context of war, pain and loss is unignorable.
Read the review here.
Judy Chicago at the Serpentine, closing Sep 1
Erased, forgotten, overlooked, subjugated and dominated; Judy Chicago saw what history, what society, had done to women, and she did something about it. The pioneering American feminist has spent decades using her art to call out injustice at the hands of the patriarchy. This show focuses instead on her drawings and paintings, all aimed at her primary target: power and those who wield it. And when she’s got it in her sights, she’s pretty unstoppable.
Read the review here.
‘Dominion’ at Newport Street Gallery, closing Sep 1
Your taste reflects your personality, so all the art in this gallery full of snark, smut and death can only be Damien Hirst’s. ‘Dominion’, curated by his son Connor in his gallery out of art from his own collection, is a portrait of a man through the art he loves, and it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. The show’s a mixture of peers, friends and idols, including work by Jeff Koons, Sarah Lucas, Francis Bacon and Marcus Harvey. This is the art collection equivalent of genes, a set of markers, ideas, traits, passed from father to son. Wit, gore, morbidity, cynicism and a couple of Francis Bacons, it’s not a bad inheritance.
Read the review here.
Penny Slinger at Richard Saltoun, closing Sep 7
Sex, gore and sacrilege; Penny Slinger knows how to tell a surreal story. The LA-based, London-born artist has been at the forefront of feminist art since the 1970s, and this gothically atmospheric exhibition pushes her ideas deeper into the weird, repressed psyche of society than ever before. The collages and films here feel like a traumatic psychedelic trip through English values, a Hammer Horror-esque journey into sexual repression and gender oppression in middle-England.
Read the review here.
Rheim Alkhadi at the ICA, closing Sep 8.
You can contain the whole history of a nation in a tarpaulin. At least, Rheim Alkadhi can. The artist, who grew up in Iraq, uses the sturdy plastic material to recount endless stories of colonial exploitation, capitalist greed and ecological disaster, twisting it into floor-based sculptures or hanging it as filthy canvases. Alkadhi’s point is a powerful one, and it’s when the art is given room to speak that its voice echoes the loudest.
Read the review here.
Lonnie Holley at Camden Art Centre, closing Sep 15
Since the 1970s, Lonnie Holley’s been at the forefront of a loose movement of Black American artists from the Deep South exploring the legacies of slavery and everyday injustice that shape their society. By digging through the refuse of society, the decaying bones of America, and improvising with it, Holley can tell stories that need telling. He reconstitutes and reconfigures the world around him, and the results feel powerful, necessary and often beautiful.
Read the review here.
Want even more art? Here are the top ten exhibitions in London.
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