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There are lots of new exhibitions coming up in London next month, with plenty to get excited about. But before the new, we must wave goodbye to the old.
Some of London’s best exhibitions are closing in the next few weeks to make way for the new stuff, and chances are you were too busy with mince pies and Traitors to have caught many of these. So here you go, this is your last chance to see some of the best shows of the year. Be quick.
Last chance to see this amazing London art exhibitions
Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: ‘The Call’ at Serpentine North, closing Feb 2
If you like GDPR training, you’re in for a treat at the Serpentine. Tech experimenters Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s series of mediaeval church altars and choral compositions is actually a deep dive into the intricacies and legal frameworks of AI modelling. The quasi-historical approach helps to make you feel safe in the uncomfortable, scary waters of new technology. The call of the title is a call to collectivise, to unite and take control, to imagine a utopian future that’s as safe, welcoming and natural as a choir, singing together as one.
Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: ‘The Call’ at Serpentine North until Feb 2. Free. Read the review.
Joan Snyder: ‘Body and Soul’ at Thaddaeus Ropac, closing Feb 5
While the big, imposing, hefty men of mid-century American abstraction were trying to reshape the course of art, Joan Snyder was doing something quieter, but no less important. Now 84, Snyder has spent her life using abstraction not for grand gestures, but for smaller, personal ones. Written across the walls of this career-spanning show is a lifetime of emotions and feelings, of memories and experiences, in big bursts of shape and colour.
Joan Snyder: ‘Body and Soul’ is at Thaddaeus Ropac until Feb 5. Read the review.
Hew Locke: ‘What Have We Here’ at the British Museum, closing Feb 9
Hew Locke (who recently filled Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries with a kaleidoscopic carnival) spent two years digging through the British Museum’s archives and stores for this show, finding maps, photos, sculptures and artefacts that tell countless clashing stories of empire with countless narrative threads. Britain obviously comes out of this badly, as it should. But it’s not just about the evils of the British, it’s about the evils of empire and power. Locke’s display of objects feels like a warning to beware of how power ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes, but always comes back.
Hew Locke: ‘What Have We Here’ is at the British Museum until Feb 9. Read the review.
‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael’ at the Royal Academy, closing Feb 16
Leonardo was a blockbuster renaissance artist, and so were Michelangelo and Raphael, two younger artists who were in the same city at the same time, competing for the same attention (and big money commissions). This show pits them against each other as rivals in the turbulent era of 1504 Florence. It’s a great bit of art historical academia, but it’s loads better as an essay – with space for arguments, evidence, images – than as an exhibition.
‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael’ is at the Royal Academy until Feb 16. Read the review.
Letizia Battaglia at The Photographers’ Gallery, closing Feb 23
Letizia Battaglia was a witness, she was there. She saw the mafia tearing Italy apart in the 1970s, murdering its sons, raping its daughters, and she documented all of it with her camera. She started out as a late-budding journalist, an apprentice in her mid-30s for Palermo’s daily newspaper l’Ora, and spent her life capturing the hardships and poverty of life in Palermo. There are some incredible photos here. Excellently composed, shockingly confrontational, but tender despite the grimness. None of this is pleasant, or joyful, or beautiful, but it’s all something that photojournalism must always be: it’s real.
Letizia Battaglia is at The Photographers’ Gallery until Feb 23. Read the review.
The Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain, closing Feb 16
This year’s Turner Prize shortlist (Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Delaine Lebas and eventual winner Jasleen Kaur) is inarguably ladened with contemporary identity politics. Is this what life in the UK in 2024 is like? A constant struggle under the weight of colonialism, imperialism and societal injustice? For lots of people, totally. But in that struggle, these artists are doing something important: they’re making sense of it.
The Turner Prize 2024 is at Tate Britain until Feb 16. Read the review.
Want more? Here are the top 10 exhibitions in London right now.