Things to do in London today

This immersive exhibition from Australian filmmaker and architect Liam Young is impressively audacious, taking up multiple spaces in the Barbican, including a rather pungent underground carpark. What is In Other Worlds? Well, it’s not an art exhibition in the classic sense, but a sort of multimedia hybrid of visual art, storytelling, and speculative sci-fi, combined to make the point that while humanity has famously screwed up the planet, the means to un-screw it are within our grasp if we embrace radical solutions. If that sounds a bit worthy for you, then sure, it is kind of worthy. At the same time, it’s weird, psychedelic and vividly imaginative, offering more a sort of fever dream of a possible future than an actual pragmatic solution for climate change et al. At its centre is the mad vision of the Planet City, an unimaginably dense single urban environment in which all ten billion of Earth’s inhabitants live, while the rest of the planet is effectively allowed to rewild, with visits to nature confined to a sort of annual opportunity for every citizen on the planet to be dropped randomly somewhere on the planet. This is obviously an insane idea, but the vision Young and collaborators present is nonetheless really weird and cool. Physically, we’re presented with taller-than-a-person scale models of gargantuan tower blocks comprising of individual homes madly piled on top of one another, while a giant screen projects a Young-directed digital film shows us a vision of...

Is it art, or is it maths? It’s a question even MC Escher himself couldn’t answer about his own work. While the Dutch printmaker known for his infinite staircases, metamorphosing tessellations and paradoxical buildings was rejected by the art world, he was revered by mathematicians, and is now one of the most famous optical illusionists of all time.  The OG creator of images that make you go ‘Huh?’ is going under the microscope in London with a blockbuster exhibition celebrating his life and work this summer. Created by Italian company Arthemisia and the immersive peeps at Fever, MC Escher: The Exhibition has arrived at Somerset House as part of its world tour.  The family-friendly display is surprisingly big. With more than 150 artworks on show, it tells the story of Escher’s life and work in chronological order, before it gets to the biggies – the ones that have been wheeled out in maths classrooms for decades – towards the end. You’ll see the originals of ‘Waterfall’, where water appears to run upwards, ‘Ascending and Descending’, the looping staircase that goes up and down simultaneously, and ‘Belvedere’ depicting an impossible tower. And you’ll learn about the techniques and mathematics that make these illusions possible along the way.  The meticulous craft that went into his totally baffling work is evident. On a personal level, I can see why Escher was rebuffed by the art world. Many of his works seem like something from a bad acid trip: giant, bulbous ants;...

Tired of merely listening to your favourite podcast hosts yabbering away? Now you can watch them at it IRL at London Podcast Festival, which is hosting some of the best podcasting talents from the UK and US live at Kings Place over another 11 days this September. This year get a front seat at plenty of big shows in the audio world, including hugely successful British Asian pod Tommy's Brownload, Wrong Turns with Jameela Jamil, family fact show No Such Thing As A Fish, The Empire Film Podcast and The Beef and Dairy Network Podcast (trust us, it’s waaay more fun than it sounds!)

A hat in the shape of an upside-down shoe; a dress resembling an inside-out human body; embroidered jackets covered with gorgeous pink roses, sparkling zodiac symbols and vibrant vegetables. Elsa Schiaparelli made clothes that were as surprising as they were beautiful. The V&A has plundered the well of ingenuity that is Maison Schiaparelli in its latest landmark fashion exhibition – the first British exhibition dedicated to the Italian designer, who rose to fame in Paris between the World Wars – and there are some real treasures to be found.  With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019.  Excitingly, many of Schiaparelli’s 20th-century creations appear astoundingly contemporary. Knits from 1927, some of the designer’s first works, are patterned with pretty bows that the TikTok girlies of today would die for. There’s also an incredible gold chainmail headdress which wouldn’t look amiss on Florence Pugh in Dune, or on a ‘medievalcore’ Pinterest board. A shirred form-fitting dress with a visible zip – a...

If streetwear is a religion, Nigo is one of its deities. The man behind A Bathing Ape (Bape, for short) is worshipped by hypebeasts the world over, not only for his pioneering approach to streetwear but also for his cultural footprint. Inextricably linked to hip hop – Nigo is besties with Pharell, and everyone from Biggie Smalls to Drake and Lil Wayne have donned his designs – the Japanese designer’s work is characterised by bold camo prints, Warholian pop-culture references and brash graphics.  For the first time, the man behind Bape and Human Made, and the creative director of Kenzo since 2021, has his own London retrospective. The Design Museum’s exhibition features 700 objects – 600 of which come from Nigo’s personal archive – including records, toys, magazines, music videos and a whole lotta clothes, spanning the ‘80s to the present day.  Nigo: From Japan With Love starts with a joyful recreation of the designer’s teenage bedroom – a dream of an ‘80s boudoir displaying Nigo’s own teenage relics: a lava lamp, a Kangol hat, stacks of hip hop records and his very first vintage piece – a shredded Levi’s type II denim jacket. It then moves through a selection of his most treasured objects, which range from Star Wars figurines to a Mr Peanut canvas jacket, and an absolutely amazing 1970s McDonald’s uniform from Hawaii, where the traditional flowers of the Hawaiian shirt are replaced by illustrations of burgers, fries and shakes. His obsession with Americana and vintage...

Every year, London’s famous river gets a whole festival of art installations, performances, and talks devoted to her watery charms, many of which are free to check out. This year’s Totally Thames Festival has scores of events throughout September, all dotted along riverside locations from Richmond to Barking & Dagenham. This year, look out for The Waterfront Journals, (Sep 6), a promenade performance of New York City artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz’s monologues, Turning the Tide (Sep 17-20), a site-specific film installation by Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass projected onto the columns of the disused Blackfriars Railway Bridge and Where the River Holds Us (Sep 27-28), a site-responsive opera on Victoria Embankment. There’ll also be a dance performance from ex-Rambert dancers in the atmospheric Brunel Museum Tunnel Shaft (Sep 24) and recitals aboard Victorian steamship the SS Robin (Sep 26). Old favourites will also be making an appearance, including the Great River Race (Sep 12) from Tower Hamlets to Richmond – where 330 crews from across the world spending the morning speeding down the Thames on wooden rowboats, many of them in fancy dress costumes – and the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival (Sep 12-13), where visitors can clamber aboard more than 50 historic vessels. You can also join a river exploration session as part of Mudlarking Weekend (Sep 5-6), take part in paddlesports sessions and a fishing competition as part of Tidefest (Sep 6)...

If you’re a carnivore with a big appetite for BBQ, Meatopia has your name written all over it. The boozy food fest is a veritable utopia for meat lovers, with 50 chefs invited down over four days to cook up a storm over a live fire. This year's highlights include Jess Murphy from Ireland’s only Michelin Green Star restaurant Kai, Geravich Mesaengnilverakul from Bangkok’s Choen, plus legends of the UK barbecue scene, Melissa Thompson and Hon’s BBQ. Book your tickets here, but be warned – they don’t include food, and the queues here can be lengthy, so it’s best to arrive early with your ‘meatbuck’ tokens at the ready.

Before I enter The Music is Black: A British Story I’m handed a pair of headphones with a sensor on top. These will be my auditory guide through an exhibition that tells the story of Black British music from the past 125 years. As I move through the show, my ears are blessed with the sounds of composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, ‘Silly Games’ singer Janet Kay, Sade, jungle pioneer Shy FX and Little Simz. What is a music exhibition without the melodies, after all?  Kicking things off with a bang, the V&A East’s first exhibition explores the trailblazers, visionaries and unsung heroes of Black music in the UK from the 1900s to the present day. From swing and jazz, to jungle, grime and trip hop, no genre goes uncovered. More than 200 objects from the V&A’s collection are displayed, with photographs, instruments, fashion, sheet music and artworks on show.  The Music is Black doesn’t shy away from the murky past. At the beginning, you are confronted with the horrifying realities of slavery and colonialism – from a graphic showing the volume of slave ship voyages through the 16th to 19th centuries, to the 1633 Royal charter legalising the trade of enslaved Africans. There are items, like an Ethiopian prayer book, marked as looted by British troops (although there’s no mention of returning it). The stark opening is a grave reminder that early protest music paved the way for the tunes we listen to today.  It’s a comprehensive and triumphant ode to some of the best...

This community festival is back, taking over unusual local indoor and outdoor venues across south east London to screen feature films for kids and adults, artists' film and video and archive footage. This year’s highlights include a screening and film quiz at The Man of Kent (Sep 8), a spooky screening of The Blair Witch Project in Nunhead Cemetery (Sep 5), a short film night at Peckham Plex (Sep 5), and a finale screening of standout 2025 film Sinners at LEX2 Livesey Exchange (Sep 13). Look out also for showings of Blue Velvet, Paddington 2, Moonlight, Human Traffic, Burning an Illusion, and Labyrinth at weird and wonderful venues. 

With admirable chutzpah London’s latest immersive exhibition offers not just a focus on a single event, but a journey through the entire history of human civilisation. Well, ‘entire’ is a bit much: rather than focus on heavily documented eras of humanity, Timewalk – a creation of the DEM Museums in Türkiye – is dedication to using immersive tech to plunge you into a succession of semi-mythical ancient civilisations. Starting at Göbeklitepe in Türkiye – widely recognised as the world’s earliest communal gathering site – its various rooms will take you onward to Babylon, Ancient Egypt, the Maya, and Rapa Nui and more, with the idea being to present these vanished societies not as dusty relics but as living, breaking recreations of how they might have been. We’re not quite sure how they’ll do that – it looks like massive projections might be the order of the day – but ‘cinematic storytelling, multi-sensory environments, and cutting-edge technology’ are promised.

London’s spectacular free Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2026, taking place over three weeks at the end of the summer as the skies darken and its huge outdoor shows look particularly impressive at night.  Celebrating its 31st edition in 2026, the festival will kick off with 360 (Aug 21, General Gordon Square, Woolwich), a huge outdoor electronic dance work.  This will be followed by the return of the beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24), which combines family friendly games and activities throughout Greenwich with spectacular acrobatic works, largely in Greenwich Park. Meet My By the Fountain (Romford Market, Aug 28 and 29) will be a stunning son-et-luminaire bringing Romford’s ‘lost’ Liberty Fountain back to life, and in probably the most ‘wow’ show of the festival Argentina’s Efectos Especiales (pictured, Aug 29 and 30, Greenwich Peninsular) will seek to thrust you into an actual action movie. There will be dancing throughout the period, including the return of the Dancing City sub festival (Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Sep 5) and it’ll wrap up with (In)visible Dancing (General Gordon Square, Woolwich, Sep 6) and exhilarating 90-minute flashmob in the heart of Woolwich.  

What a treat for London to get two major Cate Blanchett stage performances two years on the trot. A major stage force long before her screen career took off, Blanchett famously co-ran the Sydney Theatre Company with her husband Andrew Upton for five years, and has taken plenty of work to New York, but her London appearances tend to have been confined to avant-garde projects that were difficult to get tickets to: see her previous National Theatre turn in 2019’s weirdy When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other. But with last year’s The Seagull at the Barbican the double Academy Award winner – and now Sussex resident – signalled that she was ready for still artsy but relatively more mainstream work on bigger stages, and that continues with Electra/Persona. Running on the Lyttelton stage over late summer, it’s directed and adapted by fellow Aussie Benedict Andrews and is indeed a mash-up of Ancient Greek classic Electra and Ingmar Bergman’s more recent 1966 masterpiece Persona. Exactly how all this will work is TBC, although it would seem from the synopis that a performance of Electra replaces the film images that traditionally rupture the world of the two female leads in Persona. Blanchett will be joined by her Tár co-star Nina Hoss and young Black Doves star Ella Lily Hyland. It’s not yet clear who is playing who although doomed princess Electra and Persona’s leads Elisabet and Alma offers three obviously leads (though it may not be as simple as all that).

Clint Dyer may no longer be National Theatre deputy artistic director, but he remains front and centre of its 2026 programming as he helms a widescreen Olivier Theatre UK premiere of Tracey Scott Wilson's 2003 play. Based on a series of real-life stories, it follows four journalists as they frantical scrabble to land the story of a white teacher murdered in a Black neighbourhood. Letitia Wright of Black Panther fame is the big name in the cast – other members include Ashley Thomas, Lorraine Toussaint and Wilf Scolding.

To be totally clear: Now You See Me Live is a stage-magic spectacular that has little to do with the Jesse Eisenberg-fronted film trilogy of the same name. That is to say, there’s no plot here and if the various participating magicians are using it as a front for fighting capitalism via the medium of high-concept heists, then they’re keeping quiet about it. Nonetheless, the producers of this Australia-originating international touring show have paid for the IP and it’s not a bad investment. After all, the films did in their own absurd way make magicians look cool. If there’s genuinely almost no allusion to the source material beyond a heist-themed mind reading trick at the start, then the grungy, black-wearing aesthetic and branding of the core performers – that’s Enzo Weyne, Andrew Basso, Gabriella Lester and Matthew Pomeroy – as ‘the Horsemen’ serves to give it a more focussed, less cheesy vibe than some of these multi-magician West End spectaculars.  In a way I don’t have a huge amount more to add, other than to note that while the individual names are subsumed by the concept, these are some top-class performers. At best, the magic on display here is jaw-dropping. I would say there are three tricks that are astonishing, none of which I should really spoil, plus there’s a tribute to Harry Houdini from Basso that is utterly nerve-wracking to look at but I think it’s probably fine to divulge that he doesn’t drown trying to pick the locks of his watery prison (or he didn’t...

If it hasn’t necessarily always been entirely clear why Matthew Warchus decided to reconfigure the Old Vic to an in-the-round set up for his final year in charge of the theatre (some sort of bucket list thing?) it does all pay off with this fine revival of an early Alan Ayckbourn classic. By the now venerable playwright’s standards, 1969’s How the Other Half Loves is relatively low concept, ie unlike many of his later plays, it’s not about robots. It is, however, explicitly written to be performed in-the-round (ie the stage is in the middle of the theatre), with a single central set standing in for the homes of couples Frank and Fiona Foster and also Teresa and Bob Phillips. Moreover, time is telescoped and chopped up, so that two very different dinner parties that happen on consecutive nights at the two different homes are spliced together into one amusingly unpredictable whole. Roger Allam’s Frank is a classic naive Ayckbourn protagonist, a well meaning, breathtakingly unperceptive director at a local firm who is absentminded to the point you probably couldn’t write a character like this now without audiences assuming he has dementia.  One thing he’s not absentminded about is his wedding anniversary, which he remembered, unlike his wife Fiona (Dorothy Atkinson), who – sick of Frank’s lack of attentiveness – was out boffing neighbour Bob (Rowan Polonski), who she has been having an affair with.  Not that the terminally amiable Frank really has any suspicions. But as the...

The Truth opens with a classic farce set-up: a rumpled bed from which the rumpled head of Stephen Mangan's Michel emerges, looking roguishly pleased with itself, next to the equally rumpled but less satisfied head of Alice (Sarah Hadland) who is, we soon discover, Michel's best friend's wife. Over the course of 90 tightly-plotted minutes, it becomes enjoyably clear that neither Michel, Alice nor their cuckolded spouses Paul and Laurence, would know what the truth was if it came and bit them on the bottom.  There is plenty to laugh at and to like about Lindsay Posner's production, which was a hit in 2016 at the Menier Chocolate Factory and is now revived, with extra star power, for the West End. It's a concise evening of polished, satisfyingly light entertainment, with a strong cast, an early finish time, and fairly reasonable ticket prices. Mangan fans won't be disappointed, his performance is more than worth the entry fee. He is fantastically enjoyable as Michel, bringing irresistible hangdog charm and ageing himbo vibes to the character who believes he is successfully deceiving everyone around him. His epic tantrum on discovering that he is the more deceived is hilarious: utterly hypocritical, and heartfelt. Michel's arc is the driving force of the story and when Mangan commits to his outrage, it lifts the comedy to the next level and really makes it grip. A comic ensemble often finds a deeper groove during a show's run. On opening night, it stopped just short of being...

Simon Stephens is a playwright whose recent work has been found on big stages with starry actors like Andrew Scott and Ian McKellen. So this four-hander (that for the most part is actually a two-hander) that debuted in Dublin makes for a startlingly intimate affair.  Ashton (Ross Gaynor) and Reece (Ian Toner) have become unlikely bedfellows stuck in a bunker together while an apocalypse rages outside. Three years in, they know everything they could possibly know about each other, and maintain what little sense of hope they can by roleplaying key ‘moments’ from each other’s life – selecting treasured memories as you might a show on Netflix.  The conversation teeters on the philosophical in places (is hope a blessing or a curse? Should they be drawing maps to preserve a memory of the land they remember, or attempting to head out into whatever it’s become?), but for the most part it’s a frank and relatable look at what really matters if you were to strip everything else away. For Ashton, it’s memories of a crush, a promotion, his mother; for Reece, it’s his son.  ‘Trapped in a bunker’ is a convenient scenario for a play, not least because it negates the problem of tricky set changes, and ‘there’s an apocalypse outside’ is an obvious ploy to drive characters into said bunker – which is to say that we’ve seen this set up before. But Stephens really gets the cogs whirring over what any of us might do under similar circumstances. Case in point is the appearance of a fly, which at...

This review is from May 2026, of Pride’s run at the National Theatre, Dorfman. In November it transfers to the larger Bridge Theatre. Writer Stephen Beresford’s musical adaptation of his own 2014 film is a triumph. Under the assured direction of Matthew Warchus – who also directed the film – with a by-turns playful and powerful score by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, Pride succeeds in packing a wallop of an emotional punch while never neglecting to find the very human humour in even its most sombre moments. It’s an impassioned and timely plea for seeking out common ground. You’ll laugh-cry your way through it. As with the film, the show draws on the extraordinary real life story of how, in 1984, a group of gays and lesbians, led by fiery socialist Mark (Jhon Lumsden), raised donations and travelled to the small Welsh village of Onllwyn to support its striking miners against a common enemy: the British establishment. Along the way, the story takes in the media smear tactics and daily intimidation facing and uniting these seemingly dissimilar groups. It also unflinchingly charts the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS. Beresford sketches the colourful cast of characters with precision and wit, perfectly catching their personalities in the briefest lines of dialogue. Lumsden confidently walks Mark’s tightrope of charisma, drive and self-righteousness. Lewis Cornay is sweet as ‘newbie’ gay, Bromley. Jordan Shaw gets big laughs as humility-untroubled Reggie,...

This review is from 2022 and the original, Ralph Spall-starring London run for Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation. The production returns in 2026 with a new cast headed by Richard Coyle as Atticus Finch. Meet Atticus Finch: centrist dad. Aaron Sorkin’s smash Broadway stage version of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ makes a fair few tweaks to Harper Lee’s 1960 literary masterpiece.  Most predictably, there’s the ‘West Wing’ mastermind’s trademark sparkling dialogue. Yes, he remains faithful to the idea that we’re in ’30s Alabama, but his polished wit is very much present and correct, most especially in the goofily pinging three-way narration provided by his child characters: plucky Scout (Gwyneth Keyworth), chippy Jem (Harry Redding) and dorky Dill (David Moorst). The narrative structure has been tinkered with: the climactic trial scene is now parcelled up into chunks throughout the play rather than included as a single sweeping sequence.  The plot, however, is essentially unchanged. By far Sorkin’s most significant intervention via Bartlett Sher’s production is to pointedly reimagine the play’s white lawyer hero Atticus Finch. Rafe Spall’s interpretation of the role steers well clear of Gregory Peck’s immortal screen version and, to a large extent, the book. Peck’s Finch was famously sonorous-voiced and saintly. In both book and film, Finch was explicitly seen through the adoring eyes of his daughter Scout. Here, with his chipmunk Alabama twang, Spall simply *sounds* less like a wise...

There is evidence to suggest that giving the hero of Edmond Rostan’s French classic a big prosthetic nose is increasingly considered passé. Certainly the last major London revival – a brooding, rap-battling affair directed by Jamie Lloyd – was a case in point. James McAvoy starred as Cyrano, the brilliant wordsmith with an obtrusively big schnozz. But he did it sans stuck-on snout – it worked by suggesting Cyrano’s inability to directly woo his love Roxane was down to a crippling case of low self-esteem, amounting to body dysmorphia.  Lloyd’s take was a modern-dress masterpiece. So when posters appeared of this RSC transfer – with Adrian Lester in period clobber and sporting a spectacularly fake conker – it looked kinda stuffy by comparison. But not a bit of it! Yes, co-adaptors Simon Evans (who also directs) and Debris Stevenson restore the work to 1640 France – a time when the country was stuck in the Thirty Years’ War – and yes, it comes with all the trimmings of that era (pocket swords! Mournful violin players!). It’s very much the romantic tragicomedy Rostand wrote, but despite its period setting, it feels wholly current.  Lester’s Cyrano appears as a man of swaggering confidence – a soldier as adept with a sword as with a quill. Though there’s no mistake his nose has held him back in life – it seems to prompt a Tourettes-like response from those who meet him – he takes it on the chin, keeping his insecurities stoically bottled up. Rarely does limerence sound as...

This is a summer when all the romance has been scorched off city life, as successive heat waves make tower blocks suffocate and pavements burn. Even in oh-so-pretty Paris, the city’s whimsical iron railings are suddenly looking more like prison bars. High-density living is dangerous, as our forebears well knew. Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition follows some of the biggest names in 20th century American photography as they document their country’s major cities, and reckon with its fearsome urge to build upwards and outwards. It’s full of iconic shots that don’t quite build into one towering narrative. Today, New York’s skyline is so familiar that it adorns film credits, baseball caps, and the walls of thousands of crappy Airbnbs the world over. But for the photographers who watched it being built, its heights were unexpected – unnatural, even. Berenice Abbott’s 1933 image ‘Exchange Place, New York’ is four times taller than it is wide – its vertiginous blocks seem to press together, about to crush the ant-like figures scurrying at street level. For her contemporary, Edward Streichen, this new New York is the stuff of sci-fi fantasies: in ‘The Maypole (The Empire State Building)’, he uses double exposure to turn this well-known landmark into an alien cross-hatching of lines, dizzying and unsettling. Photography – a new artistic discipline – was rising up alongside the city, and the possibilities felt endless. “Edward Streichen’s New York is the stuff of sci-fi...

Another London summer beckons: clouds clearing, days lengthening, an imaginative structure being erected in Kensington Gardens. Mexican architecture firm LANZA atelier has been chosen to design this 2026 Serpentine Pavilion, which features a ‘crinkle-crankle’ wall. Traditional structures seen in English architecture from the 18th century, these wavy partitions temper climate, create shelter, and are ideal for growing fruit. And fittingly, they’re also known as serpentine walls.  The prestigious architectural commission celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2026, with a landmark series of talks programmed in collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the charitable organisation founded by the late Iraqi-British architect, who designed the inaugural Pavilion 25 years ago. The programme kicks off with an Architects’ Talk hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, with a series of Family Days featuring hands-on workshops, creative activities and performances for all ages scheduled throughout the summer. Check out the Serpentine’s website for further details in due course.   

Henry Moore’s bulbous and undulating sculptures were designed to be seen outside and surrounded by nature. So we’re happy to say that Kew is displaying a huge collection of his works as they were intended at this mega exhibition. The world’s biggest ever exhibition of Moore will open at the botanical gardens, with 30 sculptures on show in the open air and more than 90 works including carvings and drawings displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Several of his famous and iconic reclining figures will be on view, as well as more abstract and amorphous pieces like the massive bronze marvel ‘Large Two Forms’. 

There’s something irresistably fascinating about seeing into artist’s studios – messy materials, stacks of canvases, and a peek behind the curtain into the work spaces for some of the world’s best creative minds. To coincide with the Courtauld’s major Barbara Hepworth exhibition, the gallery is running a companion show of photographs taken by Paul Laib offering a look inside Hepworth’s London studio that she shared with Ben Nicholson in the 1930s. 

As one of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors of the 20th century, Barbara Hepworth made stunning modern creations inspired by the nature and lanscapes of Cornwall, where she lived. Her abstract shapes often featured smooth ovals, holes, undulating surfaces and strings. This summer the Courtauld will stage an exhibition interested in one aspect of Hepworth’s practice: her obsession with colour, which often came up in her work in unexpected ways.  Featuring 20 of her most significant sculptures, alongside 30 drawings, Hepworth in Colour will unite for the first time her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s with major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s.  

For Brits of a certain age, James McNeill Whistler will always conjure memories of that scene in the Mr Bean film. But while Rowan Atkinson’s 1997 opus was a memorable introduction to the American Gilded Age painter, Tate Britain’s grand new retrospective will properly acquaint you with his work – minus any snot-related hijinks – through his paintings, prints, and a litany of personal effects.  Using decoration from his Chelsea studio, the opening room establishes Whistler as a bohemian and fashionable man, but the contextual statement also foreshadows his fall from social grace later in his career (thanks to a lawsuit that left him penniless – more on that later). Thus, a unique, non-linear curatorial narrative is introduced. After arriving from New England in Paris in 1855, Whistler prolifically produced moody etchings that express the stoic dinginess of the French capital with dense and dynamic shadows. His first attempts at oil painting also happened here. The medium became an even bigger preoccupation when he moved to an equally morose city: London. Whether it’s choked by smog or cluttered with cargo, the Thames is his muse during his early years in the Big Smoke. The chaotic figuration of ships floating past in Wapping and the spectral abstraction of a frozen river in Chelsea in Ice represent two extremes of how Whistler turns urban ugliness into visual harmony. Conducting tone, colour, and blankness with orchestral balance, he’s acutely aware of the musicality...

In our age of mind-boggling CGI and AI-optimised everything, it’s easy to forget how much pleasure can be had from the simple optical tricks of mirrors and lights. But not for Julio Le Parc. A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, the late Argentinian artist spent seven pioneering decades making illuminated, kinetic and participatory works, and was still making art at the ripe old age of 97 before his death this past May. This major retrospective celebrates his visionary seven-decade career, spanning from from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s to his resurgence in the 2010s, with over 60 colourful, immersive (and extremely Instagrammable) works.

Since its inaugural edition in 1980, this long-standing portaiture competition has attracted more than 40,000 entries from over 100 countries and has been seen by more than six million people. The highly competitive award showcases the best of contemporary portrait painters, whose styles range from the abstract to the classic. Last year the top prize was awarded to British painter Moira Cameron for her non-naturalistic self-portrait, ‘A Life Lived’, which depicts the painter slumped in an armchair in vivid colours.   

Portraits are tricky things: can you ever really sift the individual from the image? And it gets even harder when the subject is one of the most recognisable faces of all time – a woman who was seemingly born to appear on camera. Since she died in 1962 – aged just 36, and already perhaps the most famous person on the planet – Marilyn Monroe has transcended mere stardom to become an icon: the image of glamour, sex, tragedy and celebrity itself. Marking what would have been her 100th birthday, the National Portrait Gallery grapples with that iconic status in a show that’s both beautiful and troubling. ‘Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait’ sets out its stall early, emphasising Monroe’s agency in shaping her image: not an artist’s muse, but an active collaborator. Exploited by Hollywood, coerced and abused by her husbands, at least Monroe could claw back some control over the way she was portrayed. She spent hours poring over contact sheets, and forbade some images from being published. (In one photo here, an out-take print from her very last photoshoot, the actor has scratched out her face with a hairpin.) Marilyn Monroe has transcended mere stardom to become an icon: the image of glamour, sex, tragedy and celebrity itself Deliberately light on biography, the show goes big on the star’s work with individual photographers: big names like Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson, but also friends (Milton H Greene, Eve Arnold), lovers (André de Dienes) and collaborators...

It’s clear from his major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery that Anish Kapoor shares Time Out’s fondness for the colour palette red and black. Although, it must be said, his shades have smarter names: Alizarin Crimson and Vantablack. The latter absorbs 99.965% of visible light, holding the world record for the darkest manmade substance, and Kapoor has purchased the exclusive rights to use it (to the consternation of some of his art world peers).  It's quite a privilege to have a solo show at the Hayward Gallery. Very few artists have been invited back for a second: Kapoor’s last exhibition here was in 1998, long before Chicago’s ‘Bean’ was commissioned, before he won the Turner Prize, and before he became one of the world’s most celebrated sculptors. Nearly thirty years later, this show gathers together many of Kapoor’s greatest hits: concave mirrored surfaces that turn the world upside down; hulking great sculptures caked in thick crimson oil paint, resembling bodies turned inside out. The opening room is dominated by a monumental new work that looks like a bicycle pump has been taken to a Babybel. The jacked-up crimson PVC form bulges against the Hayward’s brutalist concrete, wedged so tightly into the corners that it looks as though, with the slightest nudge, it might pop.  The depthless voids come next; a roomful of works where Kapoor’s Vantablack is put to the test. What appears to be a deep fissure carved into the wall is, in fact, nothing more than a crack-shaped...