Exhibitions at Tate Modern, British Museum, Foundling Museum, Serpentine and London Museum Docklands featuring Picasso Prints, Contemporary Ceramics, painting and portraiture.
Picasso Head of a woman no. 7. Portrait of Dora Maar, 1939 © Succession Picasso/DACS, London, 2024.
© Succession Picasso/DACS, London, 2024.
As the end of 2024 approaches art lovers and culture vultures may find themselves with a bit of time on their hands over the festive period to visit some exhibitions. Here is my pick of six museum shows and two independent exhibitions to see in London this winter.
There is always plenty to see at the British Museum, from the permanent collection to temporary exhibitions, and current highlights include an epic survey show of Picasso prints and ‘What have we here?’, an educational exhibition conceived by Hew Locke in response to the museum’s links to Britain’s colonial past. Meanwhile by the river Thames at London Museum Docklands, Zak Ove explores migration via a contemporary lens with mixed media installation ‘Exodus’, and at Serpentine American artist Lauren Halsey’s first UK solo exhibition features an immersive ‘Funk Garden’ inspired by iconography of the African diaspora.
At Tate Modern on the Southbank, art lovers seeking an analogue, pre-Internet experience should check out ‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet’.
Ceramic artists Rachel Kneebone, Matt J Smith, Renee So and Phoebe Collings-James explore notions of identity through the expressive medium of clay in ‘Self Made: Reshaping Identities’ at the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. LUAP takes over The Bottle Factory in Peckham with ‘Life Lines’, and Daniel Lismore reveals his first solo exhibition of paintings with ‘Mind on the Wall’ at Farsight Collective in central London.
Picasso: Printmaker at the British Museum (until 30th March, 2025).
Picasso, 'The little artist', 1954 © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2024.
© Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2024.
‘Picasso: Printmaker’ showcases around 100 prints from the Spanish Master including several prints from the 347 Suite, a series of prints the artist made as a swan song during his final years. Picasso was a prolific artist and printmaker, producing around 2,400 prints during his career.
The British Museum owns more than 500 Picasso prints, the largest collection in the UK. A self-taught printmaker, Picasso made his first print in 1899 at the age of 17, producing his iconic Blue Period etching ‘The Frugal Meal’ in 1904. ‘The Frugal Meal’ opens the exhibition, which also features Picasso’s seminal ‘Vollard Suite’, portraits of former partners Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot, prints relating to his iconic ‘Guernica’ painting, and a series of Minotaur images.
‘Picasso: Printmaker’ concludes with the ‘347 Suite’, a collection of 347 etchings, drypoints and aquatints created by Picasso at the age of 86 during a seven-month period in 1968 during his twilight years. This stunning exhibition demonstrates Picasso’s skill as a printmaker and his enduring legacy as an artist.
Hew Locke ‘What have we here?’ at the British Museum (until 23rd June, 2024).
Hew Locke with 'The Watchers' at the British Museum 2024. Photograph © Richard Cannon
Photograph © Richard Cannon
Hew Locke ‘What have we here?’ is the result of a two-year curatorial collaboration between Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke and the British Museum. Locke confronts the links of the British Museum collections to a regrettable colonial past and highlights treasures and lesser-known objects from Africa, India and the Caribbean, examining British imperial power while acknowledging contemporary debates around cultural heritage.
The exhibition features 150 objects spotlighting the historical interactions of Britain with Africa, India and the Caribbean, all of which impacted Guyana where the artist grew up, juxtaposed with artworks by Locke such as carnivalesque figures ‘The Watchers’.
Locke’s bold exhibition is an education and invites visitors to question their relationship with the featured objects and cultures they represent. Hew Locke and his partner and studio curator Indra Khanna spent two years visiting the British Museum in preparation for the exhibition, working closely with over 20 specialist curators.
Zak Ové ‘Exodus’ at London Museum Docklands (until 25th May, 2025).
Installation image of Zak Ové 'Exodus' at Museum London Docklands. Courtesy of Zak Ové.
Installation image of 'Exodus' Courtesy of Zak Ové'
Zak Ové is the first artist to exhibit in ‘The Reflections Room’, a new free to view display space for artists at London Museum Docklands. British-Caribbean artist Ové inaugurates the space with ‘Exodus’, a mixed media installation exploring migration through a contemporary lens and highlighting the history and challenges of major population movements through time. ‘Exodus’ will join the museum’s permanent collection following its display in The Reflections Room.
Ové has conceived a cityscape populated by toy figurines of animals and people weaving their way through a gridlock of toy cars and trucks in a rainbow of colours. Ové’s installation symbolically rests on two Castrol oil drums. Data compiled by the artist on international migration, trade and tourism dating back to 1500 is displayed on a wall in the form of historic maps. With ‘Exodus’ Ové invites viewers into a discourse on migration and explores the impact of multinational business, capitalism and finance on our planet.
‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet’ at Tate Modern (until 1st June, 2025).
Tatsuo Miyajima, Lattice B, 1990 and Opposite Circle, 1991 installation view in Electric Dreams, Tate Modern, 2024. © Tatsuo Miyajima. Photo © Tate (Lucy Green).
Photo © Tate (Lucy Green)
‘Electric Dreams’ is an ambitious new multi-media exhibition at Tate Modern offering visitors a trip down memory lane via vintage tech art ranging from the origins of Op Art to the birth of the internet age. This retrospective look at how artists envisioned a futuristic visual lexicon features early optical, kinetic and digital art pioneers working at the intersection of art and tech. Immersive installations and artworks built using mathematical principles are featured dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, through to the dawn of digital technology in the 1970s and 1980s when artists experimented with machine-made art and early home computing systems.
‘Self Made: Reshaping Identities’ at The Foundling Museum (until 1st June, 2025).
Installation photograph of 'Self Made' at the Foundling Museum. Photo credit Fernando Manoso.
Photo credit Fernando Manoso
Four ceramic artists explore complex notions of identity and belonging in ‘Self Made: Reshaping Identities’ at the Foundling Museum. Rachel Kneebone, Matt J Smith, Renee So and Phoebe Collings-James use the malleable, shape-shifting properties of clay to create distinctive sculptures and wall mounted artworks that form connections to the history of The Foundling Museum as a place of refuge and hope for abandoned or orphaned children. Each artist uses clay to explore how we embody narratives and build an identity based on class, cultural heritage, gender or sexuality.
Matt J Smith depicts non-conforming couples from history in a series of plates exploring gender and sexuality including Radclyffe & Una, Walt & Peter and Fanny & Stella, who caused a scandal in Victorian England by living openly as women and performing at the theatre, although they were assigned male at birth. Phoebe Collings-James has created a triptych of clay tiles inspired by the personal objects that Mothers left with their child between the 1740s and 1760s when handing them over to the Foundling Hospital, as a way of identifying them if they were ever in a position to reclaim the child. There are over 400 tokens in the Foundling Museum Collection and some of these poignant symbols of belonging can be found in the permanent collection on display on the ground floor.
The Foundling Museum is well worth a visit and it was an education for me to learn more about the UK’s first children’s charity and first public art gallery and its roots as a hospital created by Thomas Coram in the 18th Century to care for and educate London’s most vulnerable children. ‘Foundling’ is an historic term applied to children, usually babies, who have been abandoned by parents then discovered and cared for by others. Early patrons of the foundling hospital were William Hogarth and Handel., and the museum continues to collaborate with artists with a belief that the lives of vulnerable children can be transformed through creativity. The Princess of Wales became Patron of the Museum in March 2019.
LAUREN HALSEY ‘emajendat’ at Serpentine (until 23rd February, 2025).
Lauren Halsey, emajendat, 2024. Installation view, Serpentine South. © Lauren Halsey. Photo: © Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Serpentine.
Photo: © Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Serpentine.
Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Halsey has transformed the Serpentine South Gallery into an immersive ‘Funk garden’ complete with water fountain that extends the neighbouring park into the galleries with emajendat, her first UK solo exhibition. A life-size version of Halsey’s signature vignettes is a focal point, arranged on a prismatic floor with walls made from CD’s in an environment fusing past, present and future via Halsey’s interest in iconography connected to the African diaspora. Halsey imbues everything she creates with an energy that acknowledges her historic inspirations such as ancient Egypt whilst looking to the future and embracing Black and queer icons, visionary architecture and the visual and sonic aspects of funk.
LUAP ‘Life Lines’ at The Bottle Factory (until 21st December, 2024).
LUAP 'Life Lines' at The Bottle Factory. Image (c) LUAP.
Painting and photography meet in LUAP’s powerful new body of work ‘Life Lines’, which features a series of powerful abstract paintings and photographic portraits. British artist LUAP (Paul Robinson) explores the human psyche through his multidisciplinary practice, and touches on issues of mental health with the abstracted portraits exhibited in ‘Life Lines’. Curated by Guerin Projects, the exhibition takes over The Bottle Factory, a 19th century warehouse in Peckham which was restored by Fabrix and is supported by Nikon. A percentage of exhibition sales will be donated to Mind, supporting their essential work for mental Health.
LUAP made a name for himself with his distinctive ‘Pink Bear’ images, which have popped up in galleries and public spaces around the world in the form of paintings, murals and sculptures, offering a sense of hope and positivity whilst embedded with a sense of melancholy and isolation. ‘Life Lines’ represents a new direction for LUAP, who uses abstracted portraiture to sensitively delve into the minds and narratives of his sitters, who come from diverse backgrounds and were asked to hold an item of personal significance during their portrait sitting. LUAP photographed the sitters through a broken mirror to create the effect of a shattered visage. The Pink Bear plays a supporting role in the portraits, representing some sort of angelic guardian figure, and the portraits ignite a conversation about mental health.
Daniel Lismore ‘Mind on the Walls’, Farsight Collective (until 15th December, 2024).
Daniel Lismore at 'Mind on the Wall' exhibition photographed by Billy Tarlton.
Photography by Billy Tarlton.
Why wear your heart on your sleeve when you can exhibit your mind on the walls? Daniel Lismore is best known as a ‘living sculpture’, activist and recently as curator of acclaimed group show ‘Fragile’. His first solo painting exhibition is partly a riposte to a teacher during his schooldays who told him he couldn’t paint, and partly the result of a therapy session which led to a cathartic creative period when he painted 300 artworks in 4 days. Following the creative spurt, Lismore reluctantly showed the paintings to his friend Marina Abramovic when she was exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts. Abramovic encouraged Lismore to exhibit the paintings, kickstarting the curation by arranging them in a cross shape on the floor of the RA, and suggesting he exhibit them with a title of ‘4 days’.
The ‘4 days’ period is exhibited in a vast Warehouse-style space with Farsight Collective, juxtaposed with a vast series of expressionistic, sometimes cubist portraits depicting former lovers, friends or characters that Lismore has crossed paths with. His palette is dominated by bold red paint, which led to the development of 'Lismore Red' paint with artist Stuart Semple.
Lee Sharrock
Editorial Standards
Forbes Accolades
Contributor,Lee Sharrock