Eddy Frankel

There's so much more to London art than just painting or sculpture. Instead of boring old brushstrokes and dull old canvases, you can lose yourself in all kinds of new worlds by tracking down the best photography exhibitions in London. From sweeping landscape scenes to powerful portraits captured by daring individuals, photography in London offers a full-exposure of thought-provoking, visually captivating art. So in this list, we've compiled reviews of the best photography exhibitions in London. How do we know they're the best? Because we've been: we've quite literally dragged ourselves (well, our art critic has) to every photography exhibition worth going to and figured out what's snappy and what's crappy.  Eddy Frankel is Time Out's art editor, every day he wakes up and consumes endless, copious amounts of art and photography. It's a terrible physical diet, but it's very mentally enriching.  RECOMMENDED: Check our complete guide to photography in London  

Looking at great art in London usually won't cost you penny. Pretty much every major museum is free, as is literally every single commercial gallery. That's a helluva lot of art. So wandering through sculptures, being blinded by neon or admiring some of the best photography in London is absolutely free. 'What about the really good stuff, I bet you have to pay to see that,' you're probably thinking. Nope, even some of them are free. So here's our pick of the best free art happening in London right now. RECOMMENDED: explore our full guide to free London

This city is absolutely rammed full of amazing art galleries and museums. We've got everything from major contemporary art museums to high end commercial galleries, stunning local institutions to incredible independent spaces. That means that there are a lot of exhibitions to see.  But how do you sort the good from the bad? How do you decide which shows are worth spending your meagre free time on? Well, we're here to help. We go to every major exhibition in London, and a lot of the smaller ones, and we figure out what's a masterpiece and what's a disasterpiece. Our art editor (me!) spends his week trudging the streets of London, going from gallery to gallery, to help you figure out what's worth heading into town for. Our critera is simple: we want the best. It doesn't matter if it's painting or conceptual installation, if it's old or new, it just has to be good. Really good. And this list right here is the best art we've seen recently, and it's updated throughout the week. Eddy Frankel is Time Out's art editor, he literally forces himself to get out of bed every day just to go look at paintings and sculptures. It's a tough job, but apparently someone's got to do it.  Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.

London is absolutely world-class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check, check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a big reason why I moved here at the first chance I got, and I’ve racked up countless hours traipsing around display cases and deciphering needlessly verbose wall texts in the eleven years since. From iconic collections, brilliant curation and cutting-edge tech right down to nice loos, adequate signage and a decent place to grab a cuppa; my colleagues and I know exactly what we want from a museum, and we’ve put in a whole lot of time deliberating which of the city’s institutions are worth your time. So here’s our take on the 25 best ones to check out around London, ranging from world-famous cultural

Damn, 2024 is coming through with some absolute bangers. We had Brat summer with hit-after-hit from Charli xcx, but we also saw Sabrina Carpenter sing silly little outros to her sleeper hit Nonsense, Taylor Swift quite simply refusing to leave the charts (by any means necessary) and Chappell Roan catapult into fame faster than you can say ‘Pink Pony Club’. This year really was for the pop girlies. But what are the songs that defined the year? Well, aside from the above, we’ve seen chart-topping country boy crooners, instantly iconic rap takedowns and joyously twee indie – all making 2024 a pretty stellar year for new music. I was tasked with building our ranking of the best songs of 2024 (so far) and compiled this list by asking our amazing international team of writers and editors to contribute their year-defining tracks. Expect to find a global list of tunes, from personal favourites to chart-toppers that simply can’t be ignored. We’ll be updating this list with more music throughout the rest of the year.

London can be a pretty expensive place to go out in, and there's the small matter of the deepening cost of living crisis to boot. But there's no need to lock yourself away, because almost all the art here is free to see. Most of London's major museums – as well as many of its smaller institutions and literally every commercial gallery – are free to enter, so you can see world-class art and artefacts without getting out your wallet. From the Tate to Gagosian, the National Gallery to Camden Art Centre, you've got your choice of literally hundreds of amazing art spaces, all free. Want to see masterpieces by Raphael and Turner, or contemporary abstraction by future art stars? You can, and you don't have to pay.  Our list of brilliant, and totally free, art galleries and museums in London covers the four corners and centre of the city, so wherever you live, there’s a gratis cultural experience near you. Go forth and enjoy, and save your pennies for something else. RECOMMENDED: The best free things to do in London.

I moved to this city in the deep, dark depths of the pandemic. My first flat was, obviously, awful. The landlord was dodgy (shock). It was full of mould. The shower was next to the kitchen and had no door. Still, though, I look back on those days fondly. One rare sunny afternoon we climbed out of my flatmate’s window to sit on the roof, drinking homemade Bloody Marys and blasting the Bad Boy Chiller Crew from a box speaker into the sticky, polluted air of Kingsland Road. We got quite a few glares from passers-by, but also a fair amount of smiles.  Whether you’re moving here for study, work, family, or another reason, your first months in London will be challenging, but you’ll probably look back on them with such fogged-up rose-tinted glasses it will hardly matter anyway. Use this time to meet as many new people as you can and to make mistakes. Be broke, go to M&M world (don’t actually), get lost on the tube. That said, there are some things I wish I’d known before coming here. Hindsight is a blessing, as they say. But we’re not gatekeepers, so we asked Time Out staff to share their top tricks and tips for anyone moving to the capital. Some of these folks have been born and bred here. Others are adopted Londoners, like you might well be one day. Listen up, take note, and good luck. 

If you can somehow prize the iPad out of your child's filthy mitts and get them out of the house, you'll find a city full of amazing cultural experiences for kids. Historical relics and heirlooms not for them? Drag them through a hall of Egyptian mummies, fighter planes or dinosaur fossils instead. They might not thank you now, but they'll appreciate it when they get to your age.    RECOMMENDED: Discover 101 things to do in London with the kids and here are the 17 best day trips from London.

Every parent knows the desperation of trying to find something to do with their kids that isn't mind-numbingly tedious. There are, after all, only so many soft plays a human can handle. And while taking the little ones to a museum or gallery may seem like a nice way of culturally enriching your child, it can also be fraught with danger: smashed sculptures, torn paintings, and not to mention the risk of boring your child to literal tears. But there are plenty of art exhibitions that are perfect for kids in London, and this regularly updated list will pick the best of them.  What do you want from a child-friendly art exhibition? Colour, fun, interactivity, and an almost total lack of breakables. These exhibitions should tick most of those boxes for you. Good luck.  Art exhibitions for kids

Everyone loves a good action movie, even if some won’t admit it. Film school snobs may pretend to turn up their noses, but no matter how cultured you’d like to think you are, there’s a part of your lizard brain that loves explosions and shootouts and badass one-liners – and it needs to be satisfied.  But action flicks needn’t be dumb, loud or graphic to succeed. Some find beauty in orchestrated violence. Others might crane-kick you right in the heart. Some even have – gasp! – character development. And so, to help put together this definitive list of the greatest action movies ever made, we reached out to some of the people who understand the action genre better than anyone, from Die Hard director John McTiernan to Machete himself, Danny Trejo. Pull the pin, light the fuse and batten down the hatches – these are the most pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat thrill rides ever put to film.  Written by Eddy Frankel, Eddy Frankel, Yu An Su, Joshua Rothkopf, Trevor Johnston, Ashley Clark, Grady Hendrix, Tom Huddleston, Keith Uhlich, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Dave Calhoun and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🪖 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (as picked by the greatest stunt people)🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies of all-time

As the sun starts to set earlier and the leaves turn from green to golden and orange hues, you might start to think about changing your own habits with the turn of the season. The arrival of autumn is no reason to start staying in or swapping London’s rich cultural scene for the sofa. In fact, the capital comes alive in autumn – just as much as summer. There are new theatre shows taking over the stages of the West End and belong, artistic masterpieces forming the focus of fresh exhibitions at the city’s art galleries and still plenty of music festivals galore. The parks are covered in crunchy leaves and perfect for an autumnal walk and there are plenty of places in the city to head to for a day out. Weekends are ready to be filled with nostalgic fun of exhibitions like Power Up or intellectually stimulating events like New Scientist Live. There are series that celebrate our city, like Totally Thames Festival and the annual architectural extravaganza Open House, and others that offer a different perspective on our streets, buildings and communities. Yes, autumn is here and there is a bountiful harvest of brilliant stuff to get up to. Better start filling up your diary.  Want more? Find out what else is happening in September, October, and November 2024.    

Has movie music ever been better? With legends like John Williams and Howard Shore still at work, Hans Zimmer at the peaks of his powers, and the likes of Jonny Greenwood, AR Rahman, Mica Levi, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross knocking it out of the park, the modern film score is a Dolby Atmos-enhancing feast of modernist compositions, lush orchestral classicism and atmospheric soundscapes.What better time, then, to celebrate this art form within an art form – with a few iconic soundtracks thrown in – and pay tribute to the musicians who’ve given our favourite movies (and, to be fair, some stinkers) earworm-laden accompaniment? Of course, narrowing it all down to a mere 100 is tough. We’ve prioritised music written for the screen, but worthy contenders still missed out, including Dimitri Tiomkin’s era-defining score for It’s a Wonderful Life and Elton John’s hummable tunes for The Lion King.To help do the narrowing down, we’ve recruited iconic movie composers, directors and broadcasters like Philip Glass, Carter Burwell, Max Richter, Anne Dudley, AR Rahman, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Edgar Wright and Mark Kermode to pick their favourites. Happy listening!Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time.🪩 The 50 best uses of songs in movies.💃 The greatest musical movies ever made.

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 ugly b

Your parents told you that if you got too close to the TV your eyes would go square, but no one warns you about what happens when you get too close to a painting. What happens is Mary Ramsden’s show, where everything is blown out, fuzzy and hazy. The English abstract artist was last seen flirting dangerously, but successfully, with figuration in recent years, but these latest works are a return to full on, no compromise abstraction. They’re big washed out colourfields, drenched in lilac and soft, sunny yellow. They look like she’s zoomed in microscopically-close on a tiny segment of a Pierre Bonnard or Edouard Vuillard painting, something impressionistically bright, then blown up that minuscule view to monumental size.  The canvases mash together splashy washes of pigment with precise little squares of thickly marked paint to create abstract landscapes. It’s all about texture, surface, these moments of intense daubing mixed with empty, calm spaces. Seen from a distance they become one big gradient; up close they’re filled with tiny detail.  The pieces that don’t work feel a bit like a freshly plastered wall, but the good ones almost seem to hum, vibrate with colour, with allusions to art history, with gestures and textures. Despite being bigger than a lot of her other work, they’re somehow subtler, they take longer to make sense to your eyes. They’re like enforced glaucoma, a blanket of fuzz wrapping your eyeballs, like Ramsden has spent way too long staring way too close at

It’s grim up north they say, but George Shaw’s paintings prove that it’s not much better anywhere else in this country. This group of six small enamel paintings – and a handful of watercolours of flowers – see Shaw returning to his childhood estate in Coventry to continue documenting its long, slow decline into dereliction. It’s a decline you can take as a metaphor for the rest of England, not just the industrial midlands. One painting shows a shuttered garage, another depicts a rusted shipping container; the plants all around are either overgrown or dying, a fridge has been left abandoned, render is crumbling off the grim, minimal houses as Union Jacks and St George’s crosses flutter in the wind. There are no people here, only the places they’ve been left to rot in. But there is light, there is colour: a painting of a rose bush seen through a UPVC window, watercolours of flowers grown from cuttings. They are slices of hope in the darkness. But that hope still feels pretty pointless. This small show is full of allusions to William Blake and the histories and legends of England, but this is a portrait of a nation constantly treading water, kicking against the sinking, the decline. These paintings are depictions of how we strive, we do our best, but we inevitably all give up. They are such beautiful, stunningly done paintings. Intricate, precise and obsessively dedicated to capturing every detail of this nation’s crumbling decrepitude.

That eighth or ninth drink of the night just goes right through you, and all the girls in Lily Bunney’s paintings have broken the seal. The young London-based artist’s show is filled with pointillist watercolours of girls crouching down between parked cars to have a slash, girls caught short on their way back from a night out while their pals capture their vulnerable pants-down ablutions on smartphones or disposable cameras. You can almost hear the giggling. It’s meant to be an ode to friendship; these paintings, based on found imagery, are rude, crude, lewd pixelated depictions of the last gasps of partying. They’re half-paparazzi snaps, half-private photos of drunken togetherness and youthful glee, and they’re good, interesting, clever paintings. The rest of the works are photos of the artist and their friends remade out of beads, memories rendered as teenage hobby crafts. These paintings feel tinged with sadness to me because I know these times can’t last. Soon, work will get too busy, the hangovers will hurt too much, nights out with your mates will get rainchecked into oblivion. The nights of getting so hammered you and all your pals have to piss behind a car are numbered. Either that or you do it into your 40s or 50s, and then it’s not cute anymore: it’s not fun, it’s just sad. Maybe Bunney feels the same way, maybe she knows it’s coming, maybe this is proto-nostalgic pissy pointillism. It might be the soundtrack of sad-girl-emo-folk playing in the gallery, but I was ge

Back in the mid-1960s, pure abstraction still just about meant something. We’d already had Malevitch and Kandinsky and all the abstract expressionists, but art hadn’t yet been totally blown to pieces by conceptualism. And at the precipice of all that came Patrick Heron and Victor Pasmore, showing up to represent the UK at the 1965 São Paulo Biennial with a load of experimental paintings that were still – just – fresh enough to feel experimental. The show is semi-recreated here, with a few works from the Biennial mixed with others from the same period.  Heron and Pasmore had their differences. Heron worked flat, Pasmore in 3D; Heron was all bold and bright, Pasmore all muted and sombre. But they work well together. Heron’s rough, brash, quick, ultra-colourful compositions are feverish and joyful, like he couldn’t wait to splodge on the circles and lines, can’t even finish one idea before rushing onto the other. Pasmore is much more considered. He arranges wood and Perspex into geometric constructions that jut out of the wall, like he’s taken a table apart and reassembled it to make more sense. It’s that clash – quick and easy versus slow and overthought – that makes the show work. Alone, Heron feels a bit slap-dash, like you wish he’d just taken a bit more care and time. And Pasmore, equally, feels a bit too arch and overthought. They balance each other out. Pasmore edges it for me, though; his paintings and assemblages just work better, they’re clearer, more successful, quite

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. Walking into the American artist’s show here is like stumbling upon a long lost shrine. Two scanners on the floor strobe and flash in the darkness, attempting to scan a plastic statuette of some manga knight. The scanners are now kinetic, devotional sculptures. Lights flash in the darkness, 8-bit chords scream out of speakers, a disembodied computerised voice asks ‘why am I so beautiful?’ A siren blares and suddenly a spotlight shines on a huge diptych of paintings in the corner. Those paintings are probably the easiest entry point to the show, a little slice of approachable, intelligible figuration in this chaos of ideas. Images of knights and saints are printed onto the canvases, then oversprayed with red paint and a thick layer of gungy lacquer. Half-digital, half-physical, it’s an attempt to root this heavily internet-coded work in art history. Ito is mixing art historical symbols with modern technology and feeding it all through a crippling internet addiction Then the lights shut off again and you’re plunged back into darkness, the scanners flash, the speakers blurt out ambient chords.  For something so contemporary it actually feels oddly old-fashioned, indebted to the heyday of post-internet art of the mid-2000s, but updated for 2024 – post-post-internet art, I guess? It

The camera is meant to be a tool of truth, an instrument that captures reality. But it captures something else in Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s work: fantasy. The Nigerian-born artist lived in Brixton until his early death in his 30s in 1989. In the privacy of his studio, he was able to use the camera to explore ideas of difference, identity and a whole lot of desire. The first images here are full of African masks and twisted, nude anguish: naked bodies contorted and writhing in a cold, bare, unhomely South London flat. They’re images that express the reality of being an outsider in western society, of his Africanness, his queerness, his everythingness rubbing up awkwardly against the strictures of 1980s English life. The camera gave voice to his frustration, but it also allowed him to express his sexuality, his erotic fantasies. The back wall of this exhibition is a riot of leather and muscles and bulges and pearls and wrestling and total, unbridled desire. They’re beautiful images of beautiful men expressing their deepest urges. The final wall is almost all portraits of two men embracing, carrying, holding each other. A Black man and a white man, allowed to live free, naked, here in the studio if not out in the real world. Fani-Kayode’s mashing together of Yoruba culture, eroticism and a deep dissatisfaction with society’s injustices is powerful. The camera allowed him to live out his fantasies of a kinder, more accepting and much sexier world. That’s a reality we can all hope for.

Everyone in 1970s Lagos was cooler than you. At least they were on the evidence of this show, which collects together the best work of Abi Morocco Photos, a husband and wife duo who documented life in Nigeria as prosperity blossomed and the economy boomed. John and Funmilayo Abe zoomed around Lagos on Vespas with the name of their studio emblazoned across the windshield. They were there to document graduation ceremonies, weddings, gigs. In these gorgeous black and white photos, party people dance to Queen Mummy Juju and laugh with DJs, they pose outside shops, lean against a pile of tyres or next to their battered van. It’s Nigeria booming, but also allowing Western influences to seep into their culture: it’s a society in joyful, prosperous transition. But the Abes’ best work is from their Aina Street studio in Lagos, where they capture Lagosians exactly how they wanted to be remembered against painted backdrops and the most garish curtains imaginable. People came to the Abes to be photographed at their best, their sharpest, youngest, hottest, coolest. They’re in their best clothes, pulling their best poses. These were pictures to look back on with pride. But it’s also intimate. Much of the Abes’ archive was lost, they only saved what mattered to them, so the couple appears here repeatedly; playing with their camera, her in a mini dress, him in flares, or posing at a table looking impossibly hip. It’s a whole world of love and boasting and fashion in 1970s Lagos, and it’s coo

Picasso never stopped. He was relentless, prolific, voracious. He apparently produced 50,000 artworks in his lifetime, including thousands of paintings, countless drawings, tons of ceramics and – as this show at the British Museum proves – a vast amount of prints. They were just another way he expressed himself, another medium for him to try. This chronological show takes you from his early etchings in Paris to his final linocuts in Vallauris. Along the way it touches on every aspect of his long, wild life. The earliest etchings are dark, troubled, manic things. A family huddles in a barren field, a fragile couple shares some scraps of bread (an image you might have seen at the RA’s ‘Picasso and Paper’ show in 2020), a woman peers out of the shadows. All the pain, poverty and anguish (and plenty of the ideas and compositions) of his Blue Period are transmuted into grey and black, but in rougher, less assured form than his paintings. When it clicks, it’s Picasso at his freest, funnest, loosest. That’s because throughout his life, printmaking was a chance to experiment, to try out ideas without committing paint to canvas. So his moves through cubism and surrealism, his obsession with bulls and Minotaurs, his relentless simplifying of line and curve and form, all get tried out here, messed with, tested. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes his figures are messy and poorly defined, sometimes the compositions are ugly and conflicted. But when it clicks, like it does in the orgias

Where there’s pleasure, there’s shame; at least there is in American artist Sarah Slappey's work. She paints female bodies naked and writhing, reclining in baths, legs and arms intertwined. At first it’s plainly, obviously erotic. But then you notice little cuts and dribbles of blood, a body has been twisted too far, chains are wrapped around limbs, metal rods pierce hands and thighs. Is this an orgy or a crime scene? Maybe the two aren’t so different. Slappey paints some bodies like they’re carved from marble, implying that some sculptor made them this way, wanted them to be all exposed and vulnerable like this. It’s the erotic as a spectacle, femininity as something constructed, something built to constrict women. Slappey violently smudges the line between erotic and violent, appreciation and exploitation, sensuality and death. Her figures could be beautiful lovers writhing in ecstasy, or they could be dead bodies dumped in a bath. The same visual elements repeat throughout: gold hooped earrings, silver chains, rebar, plug holes and water just about to whoosh out of the bath. It’s a vortex of symbols, art historical allusions and terror. And damn, Slappey can paint. This is precise, expert stuff - super-real, super-sumptuous. Her figures are hyper-exaggerated, hyper-sexualised. These female bodies are twisted, distended, manipulated to accentuate their curves, their sexuality. The end result is horribly uncomfortable, almost shameful, like she’s punishing you for liking the

What is it White Cube is London’s ultimate mega-gallery. The one that started it all. White Cube brought us Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and loads of other YBAs. And after moving into its huge Bermondsey space a few years ago, it became one of the first museum-quality commercial galleries in the world. Seriously impressive. Why go White Cube strives to make small gallery exhibitions feel like shows at massive institutions. Their Tracey Emin, Andreas Gursky and Anselm Kiefer shows are worthy of any Tate or RA.  Don’t miss There’s no permanent collection at White Cube, so it’s the regularly changing exhibitions that make a visit worthwhile. But a lot of shows will also have events and talks programmes, so keep an eye on the website for those.  When to visit  Open Tue-Sat, 10am-6pm, Sun noon-6pm. Free. Time Out tip In our league of ‘best art gallery toilets’, White Cube comes pretty near the top. Lovely bogs, seriously.

What is it?  Since 1901, Whitechapel Art Gallery has built a reputation as a pioneering contemporary institution, giving early, important exhibitions to artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frida Kahlo. It got a big refurb in 2009, when it was transformed into a vibrant, holistic centre of art complete with a research centre, archives room and café. Why go?  This place has been an art hotbed for over a century, and it’s still doing sterling work, giving space and attention to artists that other institutions might overlook. Don’t miss Its main exhibitions are often great, but it’s the more experimental stuff in the archive and library areas that are usually the most interesting.  When to visit Open Tue-Sun 11am-6pm; Thu 11am-9pm. Ticket info Ticket prices vary, and some shows are free. Check the website for details.  Time Out tip The downstairs cafe is an atmospheric, intimate place to have a coffee while browsing through your latest art mag purchase from the gallery’s bookshop.

Harry Kane is an elite sportsman, a footballer with the ability to turn a game on its head, an unparalleled eye for goal and a knack for creating chances out of nothing. So who better to commemorate with a statue than Chingford’s favourite son?  No one, obviously, but they could’ve put a bit more effort into it, judging by the results of the bronzed depiction of him which has just been unveiled in northeast London. An image of the statue first came to light a few months ago when it turned out that Waltham Forest Council had spent £7,200 commissioning it in 2019 but then couldn’t find anywhere to put it. Initially, it was going to be placed on the platform at Chingford station (near Kane’s boyhood club, Ridgeway Rovers), but Transport For London decided it violated some kind of health and safety code (or possibly some secret TfL aesthetics code). So it languished in storage while everyone figured out where to put it.  And figure it out they have, because Kane himself showed up at Peter May Sports Centre (where Ridgeway Rovers now play) to celebrate its unveiling. Now listen, I love Harry Kane. I am a season ticketed Spurs fan who has watched him do some of the most beautiful things I will ever see. But I also love art, and this sculpture is a terrifyingly dead-eyed chocolate-coloured dud. It lacks both life and verisimilitude, it’s poorly finished and does poor Harry no favours. The only artistic tradition it fits into is the tradition of awful football sculptures, a la Ronald

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 [work in progress]. Photo by Kanghyuk Lee, 2023. 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.  Anna Daučíková, Untitled, 1995-96. Courtesy of the artist ‘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 n

She might have brass in pocket, but has she got any artistic talent hiding in there? We’re all about to find out, because one of pop rock’s biggest names is having an exhibition of her paintings later this month in London. Chrissie Hynde of Pretenders fame has been at the whole art thing for a while now, and in 2018 even published a book of almost 200 images of her original artworks. But now she’s bringing over 60 recent works to West London’s Cromwell Place for a free exhibition which will run from November 21 to December 14.  The paintings run the gamut from still life to abstract, with plenty of nods to the likes of Kandinsky and Picasso and Hockney. ‘What was a meditative practice had turned into something more substantial and could not now be ignored,’ said Hynde. ‘Like lyrics for a song waiting to be written, the paintings kept accumulating, wanting to be seen. Writing the will would have to wait; action needed to be taken — the paintings would have to be dealt with.’  Are they any good? Well, I’d say – as an art critic – they’re about as interesting as her music. But the best thing about the show is, without doubt, the title: ‘Hynde Sight’. Get it?  Chrissie Hynde: ‘Hynde Sight – Recent Paintings’ is at Cromwell Place, Nov 21-Dec 14. Free. More details here. Want more art? Here are the top 10 exhibitions in London. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel. Stay in the

A motion to whack a new public artwork in every London borough is set to be debated at the London Assembly this coming Thursday (November 7). The proposal would see each of London’s 32 boroughs commission a new sculpture or installation by a local artist, school or youth club that would form a vast, capital-spanning art trail. The whole thing is former Tory mayoral candidate Lord Bailey’s idea. He reckons the project would ‘encourage local tourism and bolster economic growth in outer London’. The hope is that the art trail would help de-zone-1-ify London’s cultural offerings by bringing some cultural attention to the outer boroughs.  If the motion gets passed, it goes straight the top: Sadiq Khan. He is, however, under no obligation to give it his approval. London does of course already have art trails. There’s Sculpture in the City, which sees new sculptures by contemporary artists dotted around the Square Mile every year; there’s The Line, a permanent sculpture trail from Stratford to Greenwich with works by people like Antony Gormley; there’s Frieze Sculpture, which puts on a new display of big outdoor sculptures in Regent’s Park every Autumn; and then there’s stuff like Mayfair Art Weekend, or Haringey's recent owl infestation. But hey, you can’t have too many art trails, as the old saying goes.  Want more art? Here, have the top 10 art exhibitions in London.  Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our

Boy George não é apenas um camaleão do karma, é também um camaleão das artes. Além de ser uma das maiores estrelas pop dos anos 1980, o músico é também um artista plástico e a sua última colecção de obras de arte inclui retratos de alguns músicos muito famosos. O cantor, compositor e rosto dos Culture Club já tinha exposto pinturas suas, muitas das quais celebram heróis desconhecidos e underground da cena nocturna dos anos 1980. Mas nesta sua primeira colecção de gravuras, de edição limitada, Boy George aposta em grandes figurões. Aqui não há desconhecidos: as quatro figuras retratadas são David Bowie, Prince, Madonna e o próprio Boy George. Todos são representados em cores vivas com linhas grossas e arrojadas. É muito pop art, muito simples. A ideia por detrás da colecção é aparentemente explorar a forma como diferentes figuras lidaram com a fama. “A fama de Bowie, a fama de Madonna, a fama de Prince, a minha fama – cada uma delas é única. Todos nós a gerimos de forma completamente diferente, porque não há uma ‘forma correcta’ de o fazer”, diz Boy George (nascido George Alan O’Dowd, em 1961). Cada trabalho está disponível em impressões de 195 exemplares, que são vendidos a 1950 libras cada (ou seja, ligeiramente acima dos 2300 euros). A série “Fame” pode ser vista nas galerias Castles Fine Art, que existem em várias localidades do Reino Unido. Mais pormenores aqui. 🪖 Este é o nosso Império Romano: siga-nos no TikTok 📻 Antigamente é que era bom? Siga-nos no Facebook

After the hectic insanity of October, art’s busiest month, November offers gallery goers a chance to slow down and take things at a more sensible pace. Instead of rushing from gallery to gallery saying ‘no, this is bollocks’ at a 100mph, in November you can be a bit more leisurely, you can really take your time to look at the art before deciding that ‘no, this is bollocks’. November has some big hitters at some big institutions, like Picasso at the British Museum and almost all of the Ninja Turtles at the RA, as well as some small gems at places like Pace and White Cube. With this breadth of options on offer, not all of it can be bollocks.  Seven London art exhibitions we can’t wait to see in November 2024 Pablo Picasso, Leaping bulls , 1950 © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2024 ‘Picasso: Printmaker’ at the British Museum In a bid to prove that you absolutely can’t have too much Picasso, the British Museum is putting on London’s umpteenth recent exhibition of the Spanish master’s work. This time, the focus is on Pablo’s prints, and there’s a lot to choose from, because he made over 2,400 prints over the course of his career, taking in everything from the stark misery of the early Blue Period through his cubist experimentation and his later more freeform mark-making. This show will feature his earliest works from 1904 all the way to pieces from his 1968 series of 347 prints called ‘The 347 Suite’, a body of work filled with Pablo’s etchings, drypoint and aquatints ruminati

Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ is quite literally just a banana taped to a wall with a bit of duct tape. But when it was first shown, at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, it caused uproar. People were screaming ‘how can this be art?! It’s just a banana taped to a wall! With duct tape!’ There were tears, fist fights, people weeping in the aisles, half a riot. Some of that is hyperbole, but ‘Comedian’ still managed to shock and appal, and that’s an impressive feat for art in this day and age.  And now, it’s coming to London. ‘Comedian’ will go on view at Sotheby’s auction house on Tuesday October 29 for just one day ahead of being put up for auction in New York in November. Its estimate is $1-1.5 million (£770,000-£1.16m) . When the work was first shown in 2019, it was in an edition of three, priced at $120,000 each, so if it reaches its estimate it’ll be proof that the cost of living crisis really be hitting food prices hard. It’s an interesting conceptual artwork by an interesting conceptual artist. The work has been repeatedly eaten by museum visitors, it has been copied, mocked, satirised, accused of plagiarism, and then eaten again.  And it can be yours, if you’re very rich and have gone absolutely bananas. Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ will be on view at Sotheby’s London on Oct 29. Free. More details here.  Want more? Here are the top 10 exhibitions in London.  Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time

He’s not just a karma chameleon, he’s an arts chameleon too. As well as being one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s, Boy George is also a visual artist, and his latest collection of artworks includes portraits of some very famous musicians.  Boy George has had exhibitions of his paintings before, many of which celebrate underground, unknown heroes from the 1980s club scene. But in this his first collection of limited edition prints, he’s going big instead, and pressing some very populist buttons. There are no unknowns here: the four figures depicted are David Bowie, Prince, Madonna and Boy George himself. All are rendered in bright colours with thick, bold lines. It’s very pop art, very simple. The idea behind the collection is apparently to explore how different figures have dealt with fame. Boy George says: ‘Bowie fame, Madonna fame, Prince fame, my fame – they’re each unique. We all managed it completely differently because there is no “right way” to do it.’ Very relatable. Anyway, each work is available as print editions of 195, being sold at a bargain basement price of £1,950 each.  Boy George, ‘Fame’ is on view at Castles Fine Art, various locations nationwide. More details here.  Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel. Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.   

Most of London’s big museums and galleries have just opened their big autumn shows, so there is a genuine glut of great art to see. But you’ve got absolutely ages to catch the new Turbine Hall installation or Barbican show. Five excellent London art exhibitions closing soon David Hockney My Parents, 1977 © David Hockney. Photo: Tate, London ‘Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look’ at the National Gallery, until Oct 27 Slow down, open your eyes, calm your mind and just look. That’s what David Hockney wants you to do in this exhibition that pairs a stunning renaissance composition by Piero della Francesca with two works by the Yorkshireman that reference it. He wants you to take the time to consider, think about, absorb and really, genuinely look at the art. London needs yet another Hockney exhibition about as much as it needs another Pret. But the whole thing is dizzyingly layered, drowning in ideas of the gaze, of the value of art, of religion, of influence and adoration. ‘Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look’  is at the National Gallery, until Oct 27. Free. Read the review here.  Simnikiwe Buhlungu, hygrosummons (iter.01) , 2024. Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, Photo: Andy Keate. Simnikiwe Buhlungu at Chisenhale Gallery, until Nov 3 If there’s any topic the inhabitants of this city can universally relate to, it’s dampness. Our wet, clammy homes on this wet, clammy island are uncomfortably, uncontrollably moist, mouldy, humid places. Amsterdam-based South African art

After doing a little orbit of the Earth, travelling to various different cities on the planet over the past two years, artist Luke Jerram’s giant globe is back at Southwark Cathedral. The huge seven metre sculpture is made out of detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface, creating a mind-bendingly realistic replica of our planet. The spinning globe is accompanied by a soundtrack by composer Dan Jones. If that all sounds impressive, bear in mind that this sculpture is in fact 1.8 million times smaller than the actual earth. How’s that for a sense of perspective. Which is part of Jerram’s point. He wants you to look at the work and be awed, and then realise that that’s something even more awesome outside the window, and we’re living on it, so maybe we should treat it with a little respect. It’s all part of the Cathedral’s Climate Justice Fortnight, which includes plenty of other events too. More details here.  Luke Jerram's 'Gaia' is at at Southwark Cathedral until Nov 2. £5. Want more art? Here are the top ten art exhibitions in London right now.  Jerram currently also has a gigantic floating moon on display in Somerset – find out more about that here. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel. Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox. 

Are you healthy, robust and capable of staggering feats of endurance? Well, if you want to take on October’s insane number of exhibitions and art events, you’ll have to be in the shape of your life, because next month is a cultural ultra-marathon that’ll test even the fittest of art-thletes. Pretty much every museum is opening a big exhibition next month, as is every single gallery, all to coincide with Frieze. So here, we’ve compiled the best shows at London’s major institutions, the headline acts that you can’t afford to miss. 12 unmissable London art exhibitions and events in October 2024 Mike Kelley, Ahh...Youth! 1991. © Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved / VAGA at ARS, NY Mike Kelley: ‘Ghost and Spirit’ at Tate Modern In a dizzying collision of sculptural installations, found objects, performance and sound work, American artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) tore apart ideas of America and youth. The results are often disconcerting, filled with stuffed toys and grime, but always about something essential, important, underground, powerful. This is art for the punks, the hobos and the freaks, so you normies better beware. Mike Kelley is at Tate Modern, Oct 2 2024-Mar 9 2025. More details here.   © Sonia Boyce.All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024Courtesy of the artist, APALAZZO GALLERY and Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Lygia Clark and Sonia Boyce at Whitechapel Gallery Forget boring old paintings on walls and sculptures on plinths, leading Brazilian modernis

Marking the art calendar’s annual marquee moment, Frieze London has opened the doors to its big tent. That means the general public finally gets to see what every major gallery in the world thinks is worth bringing to the big white yurt in Regent’s Park. If you come to Frieze looking for a satisfying, moving, profound art experience, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, this is a chance to take a big gulp of rarified art world air, to see what all the biggest galleries in the world – and some of the best smaller ones – think is worth sharing, celebrating, championing, and flogging. Is this year’s Frieze better than last year’s? Worse? No, it’s pretty much the same thing you always get: big trophy art, loads of abstracts, awful still lifes, bad pop and questionable conceptualism, all aimed at billionaires with infinitely more money than taste. There’s some great stuff here, and a genuinely jaw-dropping amount of dross too. Just like every year. It’s expensive, ludicrous, overblown, silly, and a lot of fun. Just like every year. It’s a pretty overwhelming experience - there’s a lot of art to take in, and it can be hard to separate the good from the bad. So here is our pick of the must-see artworks at Frieze London, just eight things we think are just about worth the price of entry. RECOMMENDED: 🎨 The ultimate guide to Frieze Art Fair London.🍁 The best art to see this autumn. Eight things we loved at this year’s Frieze London Stephen Shearer at Frieze, photo: Time Out Stephen Sh