The London art exhibitions to see in August

Group shows, major career retrospectives, intimate viewings and avant-garde performances – London is abuzz with art exhibitions. Plan your next visit with our handy, frequently updated guide to the city's best goings on. Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.

London art exhibitions: what to see in August 2024

‘Grace’

Tate Britain

Until January 2025

Alvaro Barrington’s latest exhibition Grace is a curation of Black culture and identity drawn from his own experiences and memories growing up in ex-British colony Grenada and New York City. Installed in Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries, the exhibition is built around three key figures in his life; his grandmother Frederica, his close-friend or sister Samantha and his mother Emelda. Grace is also inspired by the hymn Amazing Grace, a piece of music that sits at the heart of Western Black culture.

Writer: Amah-Rose Abrams

Ricochets

Barbican

Until 1 September 2024

Francis Alÿs’ exhibition Ricochets is currently showing at the Barbican in London and explores a long-running project made alongside his other work, a documentation of children playing in 15 countries around the world. Alÿs first filmed children playing games in 1999 and has referred to the films as footnotes that run throughout his practice. Ricochets sees the films playing in one central room, while small vignettes of adult or daily life, or landscapes punctuate the space, providing intended ‘pauses’ where one can reflect on the films.

Writer: Amah-Rose Abrams

‘Only lovers left alive’

Arusha Gallery
Until 17 August

Beirut-born IIlona Szalay presents Only lovers left alive at Arusha Gallery. Using glass as a canvas Szalay implements her notable soft lines and swooping motions to create a fluid series of paintings that are not harsh, but still have a commanding subject. The tonality is somewhat organic and natural, evoking voyage and possibilities, whether that be a pining for self discovery or uniting with a long distance lover, the final destination forever a muse.

Writer Tianna Williams

‘Awaken Metamagical Hands'

Gazelli Art House

Until 28 Sep 2024

Uniting code with art, Awaken Metamagical Hands explores the world when mathematics and creativity meet. The collective group of artists work as engineers, and take a step back to see how computers have awakened its ‘creative hands’ within the advancements of artificial intelligence. From an exploration of interactive software and the world of generative art, the exhibition raises important questions about the boundaries of code and AI as art and the future of creativity.

Writer Tianna Williams

'Somnyama Ngonyama'

Tate Modern

Until 26 January 2025

Zanele Muholi, artist and visual activist, celebrates the lives of South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in a series of arresting portraits that aim to offset the stigma around queer identity in African society. On showcase at Tate Modern, and also The Southern Guild in Los Angeles, Muholi considers their own form in portraits taken all around the world, each with intriguing aspects, from wearing crowns of clothesline pins, bed sheet cloaks or lipstick made from toothpaste and vaseline.
tate.org.uk

Writer: Hannah Silver

‘Deadweight’

Whitechapel

Until 15 September 2024

Winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022-2024, Dominique White stages a new exhibition, ‘Deadweight’, at Whitechapel, featuring work that results from her six-month Italian residency completed as part of the award. The show – its title a reference to the measuring of the weight of ships’ contents, both people and cargo, as a single unit – sees the artist explore Afrofuturism, Afro-pessimism and hydrarchy (the practice of gaining power over land using water). Artworks take inspiration from marine ephemera such as anchors, sails and rope, and include unwieldy, twisted forms in metal, some deliberately corroded in the sea by the artist.

Writer Bridget Downing

whitechapelgallery.org

‘Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland’

Studio Voltaire

until 25 August 2024

Intertwining the playful hyperreality of both Beryl Cook (1926-2008) and Tom of Finland (1920-1991), curators Joe Scotland and Nicola Wright bring together their work in an exhibition which links together their consideration of class, gender and sexuality. Despite obvious differences between the two artists the UK’s Cook, with her larger-than-life women cavorting in often quintessentially British settings; and Tom of Finland (aka Touko Laaksonen), who lived in both Finland and the US, and his depictions of a queer masculinity – Studio Voltaire looks at both their work in unison and the impact it had on a wider audience.

studiovoltaire.org

Writer: Hannah Silver

'Solid Light'

Tate Modern

Until 27 April 2025

Anthony McCall, a trailblazer within experimental cinema and installation art, presents Solid Light at Tate Modern, an exhibition dedicated to the artists' immersive works. Using beams of light projected through thin mist, resulting in solid light forms, allows visitors to playfully interact. The exhibition will also feature film, photography and archive material.

‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’

Serpentine North

Until 1 September 2024

American artist and feminist icon, Judy Chicago, presents a major retrospective at Serpentine North, with an archive of unseen works including a manuscript penned by Chicago in the 1970s, and a deep-dive into her boat-rocking career that spearheaded the feminist art movement.

Writer Tianna Williams

'The World To Me Was A Secret'

The Cosmic House

Until 20 December 2024

The Cosmic House was always intended as more than a home. A postmodern masterpiece, it was created by Charles and Maggie Jencks between 1978 and 1983 in London’s wealthy Holland Park. It functioned as a living space for the radical couple’s family and a hotbed for creative and architectural thought. Little within the house follows the rules of conventional design: the traditional staircase was replaced with a single spiral that is stamped with zodiac signs; everything from doorknobs to toilet flushes are present as unsettling doubles; and a lintel fireplace is painted to emulate polychromatic marble.

Writer: Emily Steer

'Beyond The Bassline'

The British Library

Until 26 August 2024

If you’re delving into half a millennia’s worth of cultural research, then you’re really going to need some help. And that’s how ‘Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music’ has become a major exhibition at The British Library in London. ‘At first, people kept asking, ‘Why is the library telling the story?’, admits exhibition curator and public historian Dr Aleema Gray. ‘Of course, it is a place of quiet, but the British Library has an incredible sound archive, too, and so that's where we started.'

Writer: Caragh McKay

'Fragile Beauty'

V&A

Until 5 January 2025

Avid photography fans Elton John and David Furnish have amassed a vast array of images over the years. Now, more than 300 rare prints from their collection are set to go on show at a new V&A retrospective divided into eight themes, from reportage and the male body to American photography and celebrity. Works from artists such as Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing and Diane Arbus are exhibited alongside fashion photography by the likes of Irving Penn, Horst P Horst and Herb Ritts. Highlights include intimate portraits of Marilyn Monroe, and Nan Goldin’s Thanksgiving series.

Writer: Hannah Silver

'Purple Hibiscus'

The Barbican Lakeside Terrace

Until 18 August 2024

Ibrahim Mahama’s monumental work ripples across the Barbican’s Lakeside Terrace. For Mahama, it is possibly his greatest collaborative work - and certainly his largest scale public commission - in the UK yet. Purple Hibiscus, named after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2003 novel, encompasses around 2000 square metres of billowing panels of pink and purple fabric, woven and sewn in collaboration with hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale in Ghana. On the panels, around 100 batakaris have been embroidered - robes traditionally worn by both ordinary people as well as northern Ghanaian royals - which Mahama has been collecting over the years, without at first knowing for what purpose.

Writer: Hannah Silver

‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ 

Tate Modern

Until 1 September 2024

‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ at Tate Modern is an exhibition that wants you to get involved, fittingly for an artist and activist who has long considered participation to be integral to her art. It’s the thread that runs throughout the show, her largest UK retrospective, tracing her multidisciplinary work from the 1950s to date in an immersive experience that’s faithful to the instructive core at the heart of Ono’s work.

Writer: Hannah Silver