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Visual Arts

Best art exhibitions: London 2021

As we wave goodbye to a turbulent 2021 and begin anticipating the artworks set to hang in London's galleries in 2022, we take a moment to look back at the exhibitions that dazzled us this year. Here are the ones that remain etched in our memories, and those one that you can still catch – if you're quick.

Stephen Friedman & London House of Modernity

Stephen Friedman and the London House of Modernity Review ★★★★★

Stephen Friedman and Modernity galleries joined forces to create one of the most extraordinary and inspiring design-meets-arts projects of the year. The exhibition took place in a sumptuously derelict Georgian mansion on Cavendish Square.

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WHEN
Tuesday 13 Apr – Friday 28 May 2021. The gallery is closed at the weekend
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tate Britain 2020

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League with the Night, Tate Britain ★★★★★

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s wonderful exhibition of interwoven words and paintings was an intensely intimate affair, a contemplative meditation on our relationship with others.

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WHEN
Wednesday 2 December 2020 – Sunday 9 May 2021, Open daily 10am – 6pm
WHERE
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
Noguchi, Installation View. Barbican Art Gallery ©Tim Whitby/Getty Images

Review: Noguchi, Barbican Art Gallery ★★★★★

There is a serenity about this exhibition, and at the same time a vitality, that grabs hold of you from the moment you set foot in the Barbican Art Gallery. Beautifully laid out over two floors and grouped under thematic headings such as Political Conscience, Earth and Gravity, are more than 150 pieces, as well as video documentaries, that illustrate Noguchi’s belief in sculpture as ‘a vital force in everyday life’.

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WHEN
Thursday 30 September 2021 – Sunday 9 January 2022, Sunday-Wednesday 10am-6pm; Thursday-Saturday 10am-8pm
WHERE
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Ryoji Ikeda 180 The Strand

Ryoji Ikeda at 180 The Strand exhibition review ★★★★★

If art is an intimate conversation between an artist and a viewer, Ryoji Ikeda takes it a step further. The Japanese electronic composer and visual artist’s digital project at 180 The Strand orchestrated sounds, visuals, materials, physics and mathematics to explore the infinates. It demanded of the viewer a genuine physical effort and pushes our human senses to new sonic and visual extremes.

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WHEN
Tuesday 18 May 2021 – Sunday 1 August 2021, 10am-6pm
WHERE
The Store, 180 The Strand, London WC2R 1EA
Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&A. Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum

Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, V&A review ★★★★★

Lewis Carroll’s Alice books have enchanted readers young and old since Victorian times. But their influence has spread far beyond the page, touching everything from fashion to film, art to advertising and pop-culture to politics. A blockbuster exhibition at the V&A, curated by award-winning designer Tom Piper, charts the evolution of Alice through the ages, showcasing why, 158 years after her inception, the heroine continues to inspire and delight today.

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WHEN
Saturday 22 May 2021 – Friday 31 December 2021, 10am-6pm
WHERE
V&A, South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
Serpentine Pavilion 2020 designed by Counterspace, Design Render, Interior View © Counterspace

Serpentine Pavilion, 2021 ★★★★★

Whether you grew up in Britain, southern Europe, Asia or Africa, it was easy to find yourself at home in this year's Serpentine pavilion. For some, the terracotta colour of the structure was evocative of local villages in central Africa, others found reference to ancient Greece or to Cambodian temples. The seducing and inclusive space was designed by Sumayya Vally and her all-female Johannesburg-based architectural firm, Counterspace.

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WHEN
Friday 11 June 2021 – Monday 11 October 2021
WHERE
Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
Paula Rego: The Dance, 1988 © Paula Rego

Paula Rego exhibition, Tate Britain, review ★★★★★

Paula Rego is a phenomenal storyteller. Whether in paint or pastel, collage or ink, she conjures up strident images that speak of personal as well as social struggle. Tate Britain’s major retrospective of the Portuguese artist's work gave Londoners the opportunity to see 17 important works never shown in the UK before.

Read more ...
WHEN
Wednesday 7 July 2021 – Sunday 24 October 2021, 10am-6pm
WHERE
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
Jean Dubuffet, Skedaddle(L’Escampette) 1964, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London

Jean Dubuffet, Brutal Beauty review ★★★★★

Brutal Beauty, a comprehensive retrospective of French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) at the Barbican, challenged our notions of art, beauty and the world around us.

Read more ...
WHEN
Monday 17 May 2021 – Sunday 22 August 2021
WHERE
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Fabergé in London: Romance and Revolution, V&A exhibition

Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution, exhibition V&A review ★★★★★

An exquisite, ongoing exhibition at the V&A invites us into the opulent world of Russian jeweller Carl Fabergé and his London clientele, while reflecting on the grand and final days of Imperial Russia.

Read more ...
WHEN
Saturday 20 November 2021 – Sunday 8 May 2022
WHERE
V&A, South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
Yayoi Kusama, Chandelier of Grief. Tate Modern

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate Modern ★★★★★

Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms – two major installations, currently showing at Tate Modern – are proof that the 92-year-old artist's dazzling power remains intact. Her ability to transport us into the heart of her obsessional and mysterious imagination is both welcome and exhilarating.

Read more ...
WHEN
Tuesday 18 May 2021– Sunday 12 June 2022, 10am-5pm
WHERE
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Noah Davis, David Zwirner Gallery

Noah Davis, David Zwirner Gallery

Noah Davis’ figurative paintings are little known in the UK – he was never exhibited here – for they sold in private American galleries almost immediately. The influential black artist who founded the Underground Museum in Arlington heights in Los Angeles in 2013 with his brother Khalil Joseph and his wife, Karon Davis died of cancer at the age of 32. This exhibition offered a rare chance to see his extraordinary range and talent as a painter, but also to explore the Underground Museum project, presented on the top floor of the gallery.

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WHEN
Friday 8 October - Wednesday 17 November 2021
WHERE
24 Grafton Street, London W1S 4EZ
Michael Clark, Because We Must 1987, Sadler's Wells London © Richard Haughton

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer review ★★★★★

The Barbican marked 15 years of its association with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark with an exhilarating exhibition that perfectly captures the heady atmosphere of 80s punk London.

Read more ...
WHEN
Wednesday 7 October 2020 – Sunday 3 January 2021
WHERE
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Artemisia, National Gallery review

Artemisia, National Gallery review ★★★★★

Violence, sex, revenge – the National Gallery’s exhibition Artemisia had it all. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654) was a sought-after painter, whose works were desired by royal courts, who achieved excellence as a female artist in a time of intense misogyny. But she was ignored and belittled for centuries by the keepers of the art historical canon, her name but a footnote in academic writings on the Baroque. In recent years she has become a feminist icon, recognised for her brilliance and her perspective as a woman, and this blockbuster exhibition cemented this perception.

Read more ...
WHEN
Saturday 3 October 2020 – Sunday 24 January 2021
WHERE
National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
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art

contemporary art

best of 2021

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