Last chance art: seven London art exhibitions closing in December 2024

What have you been doing for the past few months? Living, working, breathing, partying, just barely scraping by? Well it’s time to buck your ideas up and go see these exhibitions which you probably missed while going through the rigmarole of existing – it’s your last chance, they’re all closing soon and most of them are well worth your time. 

Seven London art exhibitions closing in December 2024 

Geumhyung Jeong: ‘Under Construction’ at the ICA, until Dec 8

Bodies lie splintered, shattered, in pieces on the floor in Geumhyung Jeong’s installation at the ICA. Skeletal appendages – ribs, femurs, spines and skulls – are abandoned on the concrete, wires and motors and batteries left half connected to tibias and hips. it’s not about the robots, or the technology, it’s about the failure. It’s about Jeong trying to build a functional body - one that moves and dances and interacts - but constantly coming up short. These things she builds out of everyday materials flail and fall and fail, no matter how hard she tries to perfect them. Geumhyung Jeong hasn’t created something robotic or mechanical here, but something wholly human: desperation and failure.

Read more here. 

‘Chronoplasticity’ at Raven Row, until Dec 8

You know a gallery is absolutely winging it when they say their new show is an attempt ‘to fold or stretch time’ and ‘consider new conceptions of the ‘historical’’ while also being about climate change, clairvoyance and the ‘plasticity’ of the body. Which is to say that Raven Row is flying by the seat of its incredibly nonsensical pants in this exhibition somehow about all of those topics, curated by Denmark-based theorist and art historian Lars Bang Larsen. it’s kind of great as an exercise in total nonsense. You have to respect the chutzpah it takes to whack a load of stuff in a gallery, slather on some self-contradicting art theory and then head to the pub knowing you’ve done your level best to make sure no one could possibly ever know what you’re on about.

Read more here. 

Parker Ito at Rose Easton, until Dec 14

Some people spend too much time on the internet. And by some people I mean you, obviously, and me. All of us. It’s just that most people don’t turn that filthy habit into art. Parker Ito does, though. Ito mixes art historical symbols with modern technology and feeds it all through a crippling internet addiction. It feels like it’s about image making in a digital world, about locking yourself in your room, going goblin-mode and scrolling the endless proliferation of visual information that blights our lives and trying to find some way of making sense of it, some way of codifying the overwhelming tsunami of digital stuff we’re all drowning under.

Read more here.

Lewis Hammond: ‘This Glass House’ at The Perimeter until Dec 20

There’s a crushing, sombre atmosphere of paranoia an bleakness in young English painter Lewis Hammond’s work. In his biggest UK show, he’s filled the gallery with demons, depression and disgust in a despairing meditation on how modern society chews you up and spits you out. Hammond’s paintings are dark and gross and oppressive because the world is dark and gross and oppressive. Maybe his art would be all sunshine and love hearts if life got less grim, but that’s not something that’s happening any time soon. 

Read more here.

Nicola L.: 'I Am The Last Woman Object' at Camden Art Centre, until Dec 29

This Moroccan-born French artist (1932-2018) used her art to push a utopian, subversive agenda, but it’s still a lot of fun. She made furry suits that multiple people could wear at once to become one giant collective body, banners that double as masks for 11 faces emblazoned with the words ‘same skin for everybody’; there are jumpsuits to allow you to become the sky or the sun. It’s radical politics in the form of pyjamas. It’s not all great, and it hasn’t all aged particularly well, but it’s full of joy, anger, resistance, noise and loads of pyjamas.

Read more here.  

‘Fragile Beauty’ at the V&A, until Jan 5

Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy taste. Luckily, Sir Elton John would probably know his art from his elbow even if he hadn’t become one of the world’s biggest, richest megastars. For decades now, he has been building a world class collection of photography with his partner David Furnish. It’s been shown all over the world, even at the Tate in 2017, and now it’s the V&A’s turn. This exhibition is a portrait of Elton, of an icon, through portraits of other people; it spills out a story about style, fashion, the crippling excesses of success, the endless, head spinning allure of sexuality.  

Read more here.

‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998’ at the Barbican, until Jan 5

What do you do when your world is falling apart? When regimes are oppressing, corporations are exploiting, society is crumbling and economies are collapsing? Well, you can fight, you can make art, or you can just live. The Indian artists in the Barbican’s big autumn show do all three. In many ways this is entirely and uniquely Indian art dealing with an entirely unique set of Indian circumstances. But it’s also universal, it’s art about trying to get through the tough times, surviving tumult and turbulence, and knowing yourself a bit better at the end of it.

Read more here. 

Want more? Here are the top ten exhibitions in London right now.