Noémie Goudal in Wallpaper*

'References to Rubens, to George Stubbs, to Tintoretto, all appear in these works, and these 'traditional' artists are naturally touchstones for me,' says Shaqúelle Whyte on the works in his current exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. With an exhibition title taken from Wynton Marsalis’ interpretation of jazz standard, I’ll Remember April, there is a musicality which runs throughout Whyte's exquisitely detailed oil paintings.

Curated by Maudji Mendel of RAW (Rediscovering Art by Women) the two-part exhibition looks at the work of overlooked women artists of the 20th century. The exhibition is focused on Surrealism, with the Erotic playing a central role, with works focused on liberation, subversion and desire. ‘Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1880’ dives into these artistic engagements by female and queer artists across painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture.

War Child, the charity that provides support to children caught in war zones around the world, is back with another auction of original artworks. This year, the charity has invited 52 artists to create artwork inspired by Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ in honour of the 40th anniversary of the 1985 Hounds of Love album. The particular lyric inspiring the art – ‘If I only could, I’d make a deal with God’ – was chosen by Bush herself. Artists taking part include Maggi Hambling CBE, known for her works in the National Portrait Gallery, Tate, and National Gallery; painter Peter Doig , Charlie Calder-Potts, Britain’s youngest female war artist; Unskilled Worker aka Helen Dowdie; Corbin Shaw; Susie Hamilton; and Ayobola Kekere-Ekun.

Chantal Joffe presents her fourteenth solo exhibition with the gallery. Here, she paints the truth of memory, motherhood and family dynamics. The exhibition takes its title from Joe Brainard’s iconic memoir. ‘Joe Brainard’s book always makes me list for myself the things I remember and the atmosphere and time that they conjure,’ says Joffe. ‘These paintings are a sort of memoir of my childhood and of my family, an attempt at a kind of time travel. When I am making them, it’s almost as if I am existing in that past.’

Tai Shani: Cardinal

British artist Tai Shani creates mystical other worlds through sculpture, performance and film in the artist's second solo exhibition with Gathering. Spanning across both of the gallery floors, the showcase is a crimson-hued multi-layered installation. Upstairs, expect a regal throne room with deep tones and a full length red carpet floor. Downstairs, the viewer is then enveloped in a moody darkness.

Cecil Beaton's Fashionable World

Oscar-winning costume designer and fashion illustrator Cecil Beaton was known for his creative scenes in 20th-century British and American media. In the first exhibition dedicated entirely to his fashion and portrait photography, explore images which capture beauty and glamour in the interwar and early post-war eras. With over 200 items from letters and sketches to fashion illustration and costume, the exhibition also features portraits from Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. His work has been recently faced with critique due to Beaton crossing personal boundaries and, through his lens, you see a more narrow minded view of beauty.

Marina Abramović

Inspired by Picasso’s Blue Period and Matisse’s Red Period, conceptual artist Marina Abramović looks back on her performance videos - ‘Blue Period’ and ‘Red Period’ - by transforming them from video works into a series of 1,200 individual photographic stills. Abramovic wants the viewer to be immersed in human emotion and physical endurance, captured through the power of colour.

Søgelys

'Søgelys' is Eva Helene Pade’s first solo exhibition in the UK. The Danish-born, Paris-based artist explores the tension between bodies and space with a violent yet evocative energy. ’With my figurative painting, I create blurred lines or gaps that become the language for the things we can’t put into words,’ says the artist. ‘That’s what I envy so much about abstraction, it’s already working in a realm for which language does not exist.’

Wolfgang Tillmans: Build From Here

Marking the eleventh exhibition with the gallery, artist Wolfgang Tillmans has created a showcase to inaugurate the new gallery in 4 Herald St, a space which used to be the artist’s studio. Expect to see new photographic work and two recent videos, all of which look at the process of making and observation as an act of transformation.

Dana Schutz: One Big Animal

Dana Schutz’s new paintings and sculptures is inspired by the idea of one large group acting as one entity. The viewer is invited to interpret this as an organism working in unison or formation. The protagonists of her works are usually staged in unusual and obscure settings. There are hints of mythology, with political and social issues threaded within the pictorial narrative.

Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s

The Blitz club, which launched the careers of acts such as Spandau Ballet, Visage, and Boy George, transformed London style in the 1980s. The Design Museum welcomes visitors to explore the club’s history and atmosphere through music, fashion, film and graphic design.

The Barbican brings dirt and decay to the forefront in its latest exhibition on decay in fashion. The exhibition features faux-stained jeans to mud-splattered dresses, and asks the question: 'Why did fashion get dirty?' Featuring pieces from Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen to Vivienne Westwood, and Maison Margiela, explore how this has impacted beauty standards, and why there has been a resurgence of dirt in young designer’s work, and the potential sustainable future of fashion.

Marie Antoinette Style

V&A South Kensington presents a landmark exhibition on the most mythologised queen in European history: ‘Marie Antoinette Style’. Across 250 objects, this exhibition, sponsored by Manolo Blahnik, traces the 18th-century monarch’s origins as a fashion icon, concluding in the present day with pieces from contemporary designers exemplifying her enduring legacy.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, The Delusion

Berlin-based British artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is keen to challenge the more solitary nature of gallery viewing, with her immersive new exhibition at The Serpentine encouraging visitors to interact – with each other.

The exhibition is a retrospective on Lee Miller’s career which spanned from her participation in French surrealism to her fashion and war photography. Miller began working with cameras when she was in front of it, being one of the most sought-after models in the late 1920s. She then decided to work behind the lens capturing scenes across New York, Paris, London and Cairo. Visitors can be captivated by 250 vintage and modern prints, including those never previously displayed.

Cosima von Bonin: Upstairs Downstairs

Since she came to prominence in Cologne in the 1990s, Cosima von Bonin has become a producer of objects that balance humour and melancholy. ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ is an exhibition featuring the artist’s early works, including a variety of objects and characters that nod to an imaginative childhood. This marks her first exhibition in London.

Val Lee: The Presence of Solitude

The Hayward Gallery until 11 January 2026

Taiwanese artist Val Lee marks her first solo show in the UK. The exhibition unites film, photography and costume, each reflecting the idea of isolation and solitude. Her work features disjointed and ambiguous narratives, while protagonists are unidentifiable. The result echoes a feeling of alienation, while the viewer is submerged in collective memories shaped by political systems.

'The Defiance of Summer' by Jonathan Schofield

‘The Defiance of Summer’ by Jonathan Schofield marks the former creative director at Stella McCartney’s return to painting. After graduating from London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) in the late 1990s under the tutelage of the likes of Peter Doig and Helen Chadwick, the London-based painter found that the type of work he wanted to create was out of step with the trends of the art world. He picked up his brushes again seriously during Covid. ‘I wasn’t meant to have a second turn of the wheel, and so I feel very liberated. As a young artist, you’re so hyper-conscious of your place in the world of private views and artistic trends that you can feel trapped. But since I came back to it, I feel liberated just to paint the things I want to paint.’

Conrad Shawcross unveils his most ambitious rope machine yet, in London. Working at the intersection of physics, philosophy and art Shawcross creates mechanical sculptures that are monumental in their scale. At 10m high, his new work ‘The Nervous System (Umbilical)’, is his most ambitious yet. Composed of 40 interlocking arms that weave umbilical-like rope in sequences that are never repeated, it is synonymous with the movements of our solar system, tracing the planets orbiting the sun in a spinning galaxy, itself flattening and expanding.

The David Bowie Centre

Fashion, memorabilia and personal ephemera from David Bowie, now on view at the V&A East Storehouse in London, are as wondrous in their range as their creator. The pioneering musician's 90,000-item personal archive are equally accessible, and – like the artist at the heart of it – equally wondrous in their range. Bowie was an inveterate curator – you might say hoarder – of his own life, keeping every quicksilver fashion statement, every scrap of paper, every piece of memorabilia, amassing a deeply personal life-map that accompanies the Centre’s 70,000 photographs, negatives and colour transparencies. So, alongside the rejection letters are fan correspondence that he kept with equal assiduousness.

'Very High Frequency' by Hilary Lloyd

English artist Hilary Lloyd’s film works defy easy classification. Lloyd likes to channel a mix of mediums and eclectic arrays of inspiration into a new way of seeing, often scattering monitors and screens around a space, forcing the viewer to move through an exhibition differently. At Studio Voltaire, she considers the life and works of playwright, television dramatist and writer Dennis Potter (b 1935–d 1994). Through a series of short films featuring the collaborators, producers and actors who were close to Potter, including Gina Bellman, Alison Steadman, Richard E Grant and Kenith Trodd, Lloyd constructs a theatrical biography of Potter’s life and enduring influence - ultimately begging the question, why Potter?

'Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World'

Celebrated as a pioneer of feminist and postcolonial literature, the Dominican-born Jean Rhys’s vision continues to inspire a new generation of Caribbean voices today, including Jamaica Kincaid and Caryl Phillips. Perhaps more surprising, though, is her affinity with the visual arts: now her work finds new life at Michael Werner Gallery’s ‘Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World’, an exhibition curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and critic Hilton Als. Drawn from archival research at Yale, the show brings together drawings, paintings, books, and archival material alongside works by artists such as Kara Walker, Celia Paul, Hurvin Anderson, and Francis Picabia, creating, ambitiously, a ‘collective portrait’ of Rhys’s life.