The Best Art and Fashion Exhibitions to Visit in London This Fall
Must-see exhibitions from the Saatchi Gallery, Somerset House, Barbican Centre and more.
As temperatures begin to drop and the urban landscapes get drearier and colder, there’s no better activity to do during this cozy period than spending a morning or an afternoon in a gallery. This season’s exhibitions are electric and varied, yet all inspired by the pulsing, troubled times we live in and striving to open conversations on race, beauty, gender and power. From “The New Black Vanguard” exhibition at Saatchi Gallery to Somerset House’s “The Horror Show!,” we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting London art and fashion exhibitions taking place this fall and winter, offering viewers something different from every angle.
Continue scrolling to find out more about our must-see exhibitions for the season.
“The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2022”
National Portrait Gallery, Cromwell Place
View this post on Instagram
“The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2022,” now celebrating 15 years under Taylor Wessing’s sponsorship, is the leading international competition, highlighting and promoting the very best in contemporary photography. Over 4,462 entries from 1,697 photographers were received this year, from which a panel of judges selected a total of 51 portraits from 36 artists for display in the exhibition, held at Cromwell Place.
DATE: October 27, 2022 — December 18, 2022
LOCATION: 4 Cromwell Pl, South Kensington, London, SW7 2JE
“The New Black Vanguard”
Saatchi Gallery
View this post on Instagram
Curated by American writer and critic Antwaun Sargent, “The New Black Vanguard” features 15 international Black photographers contributing to a new vision of the Black figure and reframing representation in art and fashion. Sargent’s exploration of a new aesthetic of Black portraiture across different creative disciplines has opened a global conversation on race, beauty, gender and power. The exhibition celebrates Black creativity both in front and behind the camera, showcasing works by Black stylists, models, make-up artists and creative directors who are bringing a radically new set of references and experiences to image making.
DATE: October 28, 2022 — January 22, 2023
LOCATION: Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London SW3 4RY
“Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art”
Hayward Gallery
View this post on Instagram
Featuring 23 international artists working across recent decades, “Strange Clay” examines the plasticity and the possibilities of ceramics while addressing topics that range from architecture to social justice, the body, the domestic and the organic. By providing a closer look at this tactile medium, the exhibition contributes to the broadening dialogue between art and craft. Ranging from small abstract works to large-scale installations that take the medium beyond the kiln, the exhibition space encompasses fantastical creatures and uncanny representations of every day, exploring thinking through making.
DATE: October 26, 2022 — January 8, 2023
LOCATION: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX
“Universal Everything — Lifeforms”
180 Studios
View this post on Instagram
180 Studios has brought together 14 projects showcasing a series of habitats designed by Ab Rogers Architects. Lifeforms navigate the history of visual culture through unpredictable, generative pieces and installations that mirror and shift with time and the public’s iterations — “From Futurist’s attempt to depict the body in motion to Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential 19th-century film experiences.” The lifeforms figures, protagonists of the space, are made with generative software but are grown characters, plants or abstract livings by themselves. “It’s compelling and surprising because it’s always fresh. It’s off doing its own thing and evolves beyond what we create in the studio,” read the exhibition notes.
DATE: October 12, 2022 — December 4, 2022
LOCATION: 180 Strand, Temple, London WC2R 1EA
“LuYang NetiNeti”
Zabludowicz Collection
View this post on Instagram
Serving as their first U.K. solo exhibition, multimedia artist LuYang has taken over Zabludowicz Collection’s space and created a disorientating and darkly humorous world. Drawing inspiration from the cultures of anime, video games and sci-fi, “LuYang Neti Neti” combines Buddhism, neuroscience and digital technology to investigate the mysteries and mechanics of the human body and mind. Throughout the show, the viewer can explore the artist’s own avatar DOKU, comprised of six versions corresponding to the six paths of Buddhist reincarnation: Hell, Heaven, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Asura and Human. An interactive games arcade is also a central part of the exhibition offering an entertaining, thought-provoking and sometimes grotesque experience.
DATE: September 22, 2022 — February 12, 2023
LOCATION: 76 Prince of Wales Rd, London NW5 3PT
“The Horror Show!”
Somerset House
View this post on Instagram
Somerset House presents “The Horror Show!,” a landmark exhibition that invites visitors to experience the underbelly of Britain’s cultural psyche and look beyond horror as a genre. Featuring over 200 artworks and culturally significant artifacts by some of the country’s most provocative artists, the exhibition presents an alternative perspective on the last five decades of modern British history in three acts — Monster, Ghost and Witch. Viewers are invited to take horror as a reaction to the country’s troubling times and explore through the disruption of 1970s punk the revolutionary potential of modern witchcraft, showing how the anarchic alchemy of horror – its subversion, transgression and the supernatural.
DATE: October 27, 2022 — February 19, 2023
LOCATION: Strand, London WC2R 1LA
“Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds”
Serpentine North Gallery
View this post on Instagram
Pioneering artist Barbara Chase-Riboud debuts her first solo U.K. exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery. The space charts more than seven decades of her innovation in sculptural technique, exploring memory, history and power through monumental sculptures and works on paper. “Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds” features a focussed selection of large-scale sculptures alongside works on paper dating from the 1960s to the present day, including some never-before-seen pieces as well as some of the most celebrated works in the artist’s expansive oeuvre.
DATE: October 11, 2022 — January 29, 2023
LOCATION: W Carriage Dr, London, W2 2AR
“Africa Fashion”
V&A South Kensington
View this post on Instagram
“Africa Fashion,” presented by the V&A, is a landmark exhibition celebrating the captivating creativity, ingenuity and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Spanning iconic mid-20th century to contemporary creatives through photographs, textiles, music and the visual arts, “Africa Fashion” explores the vitality and global impact of a fashion scene as dynamic and varied as the continent itself. Over 250 objects are on display for the exhibition, with approximately half of these drawn from the museum’s collection, including 70 new acquisitions.
DATE: July 2, 2022 — April 16, 2023
LOCATION: Cromwell Rd, London, SW7 2RL
“Maria Bartuszová”
Tate Modern London
View this post on Instagram
Tate Modern presents an entire exhibition dedicated to the abstract sculptures of Prague-born Slovak artist Maria Bartuszová, bringing together many works rarely exhibited before in the U.K. The exhibition highlights how Bartuszová experimented using her own distinctive method of casting plaster by hand. Inspired by playing with her young daughter, she created abstract shapes by pouring plaster into rubber balloons — her signature material was white plaster, giving the sculptures a fragile quality.
DATE: September 20, 2022 — April 16, 2023
LOCATION: Bankside, London SE1 9TG
“Packed Stars Diving”
Seventeen Gallery
View this post on Instagram
“Packed Stars Dividing” is Gabriele Beveridge’s second exhibition at Seventeen Gallery. Her first show, “Live Dead World,” was showcased four years ago. This year’s exhibition continues some of the previous show’s motifs, such as the appropriated shop display racking or the pastel colors universal of the “feminine” aesthetic codes. One of the exhibition’s highlights is a hand-blown glass used in a conceptual, sculptural practice. Beveridge continues to innovate and explore materials that harness its beauty, strangeness and ubiquity.
DATE: September 15, 2022 — November 5, 2022
LOCATION: 270-276, Kingsland Road, London, E8 4DG
“Josèfa Ntjam: Underground Resistance — Living memories”
Soho Photography Quarter
View this post on Instagram
Multidisciplinary artist Josèfa Ntjam is showcasing her latest work titled “Underground Resistance — Living Memories” at the Soho Photography Quarter, a new public cultural space in the surroundings of the Photographer’s Gallery in London. The exhibition, showcased at street level, includes a series of large photomontages and augmented reality artworks that take viewers to a lively digital world containing a range of fluid, aquatic creatures and mythological symbols. Visitors can access the virtual space through a custom phone app.
DATE: September 22, 2022 — November 30, 2022
LOCATION: Turner House, 16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
“Carolee Schneemann – Body Politics”
Barbican Centre, Art Gallery
View this post on Instagram
Barbican Centre presents the first major survey of Carolee Schneemann’s work in the U.K., tracing her diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary expression over six decades. The exhibition showcases, through over 200 objects and rarely-seen material, the artist’s early paintings, her experimental sculptural assemblages and kinetic works, her pioneering performance work in which she used her own body as a medium, her ground-breaking group performances, as well as, her lyrical films and immersive multi-media installations.
DATE: September 8, 2022 — January 8, 2023
LOCATION: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS
Raffael Bader — Roam Inaccessible Paths
BWG Gallery
View this post on Instagram
BWG Gallery introduces German Artist Raffael Bader’s first international solo exhibition. Through beautiful projections of the Earth, Roam Inaccessible Paths explores the nature of the “self.” Bader’s practice uses abstract and expressionist renditions of landscapes as a reflection of his own journey through quiet corners of the natural world. In his work, Bader strives to meditate on connections, conflicts and strengths we find within ourselves throughout our lives.
DATE: November 10, 2022 — November 20, 2022
LOCATION: Garden Walk, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3EQ
