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Top 10 events in London
- Miracles & Charmes - Wellcome Collection's autumn exhibition programme explores the extraordinary in the everyday with two shows: Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings, the first major display of Mexican votive paintings outside Mexico; and Felicity Powell: Charmed Life, an exhibition of unseen London amulets from Henry Wellcome's collection, selected and arranged by the artist Felicity Powell. Drawing lines between faith, mortality and healing, Miracles &Charms offers a poignant insight into the tribulations of daily life and human responses to chance and suffering. Until 26 February. www.wellcomecollection.org
- Memory Remains: Francesc Torres - Marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11 these photographs, by Francesc Torres, explore Hangar 17 at JFK Airport which became a storehouse of memories when it was filled with material cleared from the World Trade Center site. Until 26 February. london.iwm.org.uk
- Terence Conran - The Way We Live Now - The Design Museum marks Sir Terence Conran’s 80th birthday with a major exhibition that explores his unique impact on contemporary life in Britain. Through his own design work, and also through his entrepreneurial flair, Conran has transformed the British way of life. As well as this, his design studio and architectural practice have a world wide reach. The Way We Live Now explores Conran’s impact and legacy, whilst also showing his design approach and inspirations. The exhibition traces his career from post-war austerity through to the new sensibility of the Festival of Britain in the 1950s, the birth of the Independent Group and the Pop Culture of the 1960s, to the design boom of the 1980s and on to the present day. Until 4 March. www.designmuseum.org
- Zarina Bhimji - Landscapes and buildings haunted by their layered histories are the protagonists in British artist Zarina Bhimji’s photographs and large-scale film installations. India and East Africa are the repeat locations for her poetic foray into the archaeology of place. This first major survey exhibition traces 25 years of Bhimji’s work. It opens with the premiere of her long-awaited film, Yellow Patch (2011), inspired by trade and migration across the Indian Ocean. Desolate yet beautiful close-up images of abandoned Haveli palaces and colonial offices in Mumbai harbour give way to atmospheric renditions of the desert and the sea, all accompanied by an evocative soundtrack. Yellow Patch complements the renowned film Out of Blue (2002), an arresting visual journey across Uganda, its elegiac terrain disturbed by the sound of fire, birds and human voices. Until 9 March. www.whitechapel.org
- Royal Society of British Artists Annual exhibition - Exhibiting the best of contemporary representational painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing, sourced from member artists and open submission. This year’s show will once again feature a selection of the most outstanding work by A-level students from around the country. From 29 February until 10 March. www.mallgalleries.org.uk
- Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year - This world-renowned yearly exhibition at the Natural History Museum provides a spotlight on the rarely seen wonders of the natural world. Enter an atmospheric space inside the exhibition gallery and be inspired by this year’s competition winners. The images are selected from 1000s of international entries and are beautifully displayed in sleek backlit installations. Until 11 March. www.nhm.ac.uk
- SHANE WALTENER: Drawn to motion, written in space, stitched in time - In January 2012, artist Shane Waltener presents an exhibition of new works specially designed for Siobhan Davies Studios exploring the relationship between textiles and dance, making and performance, objects and their recordings. Using stitching patterns, dance notation and the building itself as inspiration, he has used this opportunity to research and develop new work with dancers and members of the public. With Stairwell Suite, Waltener uses the stairwell as a loom, and its distinctive vertical metal framework to weave on. Waltener has collaborated with dance artist Laura Glaser to interpret stitching patterns into a set of movements. Acting as needles, or human bobbins, each dancer holding a length of yarn will create a spiraling web-like structure during the opening of the exhibition (on 12 January) while travelling up and down the staircase. Midway through the course of the exhibition, the piece will be remade in a performance taking place on February 17. Stitching Score #1, consists of a 200+ metre long strip of fabric made from deconstructed items of clothing. The making of the strip was staged as an interactive project last year involving six people operating overlocking machines that cut and stitched the clothing together simultaneously. Arranged in a daisy chain formation, a silent conversation was had between the stitchers as fabric was fed from one machine to the next. The installation invites the viewer to read the strip of fabric as a piece of notation, with its own unique grammar and symbols made up of stitch, thread and cloth. A series of woven pictures, Ready Steady Stitch (bobbin lace), will also be included in the exhibition that combine architectural plans, stitching patterns and dance notation into templates for making bobbin lace. These works play with the idea of appropriation as different coded visual data are reinterpreted through collage and stitch. The series will include a limited edition piece using material worked with to create Stairwell Suite. Until 11 March. www.siobhandavies.com
- Raphael Hefti - For the past ten years he has been interfering with material processes, manipulating and transforming substances to create surprising images and objects. Coming from a technical background with a keen interest in how things are made and what things can do, Hefti sets-up pseudo scientific experiments which challenge industrial fabricators and ultimately divert objects from their original state. This exhibition approaches his investigations from a specific tangent: discovering mistakes in industrial processes and pushing them to a limit where aesthetic transformations take place, where accidents are seen as productive forces. Consisting of large scale objects and photograms installed in Gallery 3 and the Central Space, Raphael Hefti runs at Camden Arts Centre until 18 March. www.camdenartscentre.org
- Norman Cornish - The Early Years - The story of Norman Cornish’s prodigious career as an artist who converted his experience as a miner into compelling imagery has become justly famous. As the mining industry recedes into history though the real context of his life and art grow ever more elusive. At the time of his birth in 1919 the average death rate in British pits was an annual 1:3 per thousand miners. By the time he started work at the age of 14 technological advances had reduced that figure to 0.75 per thousand but that is to ignore the many accidents. Indeed the Spennymoor pit at which he started his working life, the Dean and Chapter Colliery, was notorious enough locally to be known as ‘The Butcher’s Shop’. For the next 33 years, Cornish recorded the life of the pit where his ‘marras’ risked their lives every day. He depicted them in the claustrophobic space of the seams or tending pit ponies but of course, his “narrow world” as the novelist Sid Chaplin admiringly called it included that network of customs and shared experiences that bind a community together. In his scenes of their ‘civilian’ life, miners are shown walking to work in the early dawn, the pit head gantry resembling another Calvary. As for his repertoire of pub interiors, they are, of course, bathed in an amber glow, the colour of brown ale, while the local fish van also looms large as a communal meeting point – for gossip as much as for food. From 14 February until 24 March. www.kingsplace.co.uk
- The Sublime in Woolwich - In this exhibition the American artist Tina Mammoser will place paintings created in response to her experiences at the limits of ordinary vision in the context of the history of the notion of the 'sublime' (literally 'up to the limit') in Western painting. Stephen writes from the viewpoint that Tina's 'Sublime' is created from the external viewpoint - taking the interpretation of landscape and light from physical vision and using a Kantian approach where the mind interprets the visual signals and forms a rational interpretation. But the work becomes Sublime when the rational can't entirely relate to endless or overwhelming ideas of light or space. Tina in turn will reply to Stephen's historical perspective with her intention as an artist in capturing both a scientific nature of light and aiming for the sublime in landscape views. Exhibition opening days/times: 16-18 March 11am-5pm, 23-25 March 11am-5pm. www.noformat.co.uk
- Venetian Visions: the art of Canaletto, Tiepolo, Carlevarijs and their contemporaries 1700 – 1800 - The eighteenth century was possibly the last great period of Venetian art. It witnessed a wealth in artistic production from paintings, drawings and prints to porcelain, lace and glass. This display will draw from the V&A collections of prints, drawings, textiles, ceramics and glass to showcase Venetian arts during this age of stylistic splendour. Until 1 April. www.vam.ac.uk
- Michael Raedecker - volume - Best known for his subtle and unsettling, enigmatic works combining muted tones of paint and embroidery, Raedecker’s paintings explore and push the boundaries of his medium. He goes beyond conventional methods of representing formal elements such as texture and perspective. Through his layering of thread, paint and small, yet aggressive punctures to his canvas, Raedecker imparts an unexpected physicality to his two-dimensional works. In his paintings, Raedecker depicts abstracted scenes of suburban architecture and everyday domestic life. However, instead of using a brush to paint his subject matter, he uses a needle to painstakingly delineate every scene with stitched threads. From 23 February until 5 April. www.hauserwirth.com
- Yayoi Kusama - New Paintings - The paintings have been selected from a major series commenced during the past three years. Initially conceived by Kusama to comprise a hundred paintings, the series has, with characteristic dynamism, grown far in excess of that number. The result is a magnum opus, a vibrant flowering of an artist whose six-decade career has been a constantly evolving enquiry into the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal obsession. The paintings are at once startlingly innovative and classically Kusama. Completed in a single session, each is a flatly painted monochrome field that abounds with imagery including eyes, faces in profile and other more indeterminate forms, often in pulsating combinations of colour. From the psychedelically primordial My Forsaken Love, in which biomorphs traverse a black-fringed molten-pink ground, to the strata-like composition of Standing on the Riverbank of My Hometown I Shed Tears, a canvas filled with sedimentary layers of cell-like dots, eyes and extravagantly decorated lashes, the paintings generate new motifs and arrangements of forms while continuing a lifelong preoccupation with the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical, the tangible and ineffable - the space where seeing and feeling intersect. From 9 February until 5 April. www.victoria-miro.com
- David Hockney: A Bigger Picture - In January 2012 the Royal Academy of Arts will showcase the first major exhibition of new landscape works by David Hockney RA. Featuring vivid paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire landscape, these large-scale works have been created especially for the galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts. 'David Hockney: A Bigger Picture' will span a 50 year period to demonstrate Hockney’s long exploration and fascination with the depiction of landscape. The exhibition will include a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using 18 cameras, which will be displayed on multiple screens and which will provide a spellbinding visual journey through the eyes of David Hockney. Until 9 April. www.royalacademy.org.uk
- Hajj journey to the heart of Islam - One of the five pillars of Islam central to Muslim belief, Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim must make at least once in their lifetime if they are able. This major exhibition charts the history of this deeply personal journey. Examining the extraordinary travel logistics involved and how the wider operation of the event has changed over time, the exhibition compares how pilgrims over the centuries negotiated this often monumental undertaking and how it continues to be experienced by people from all corners of the globe today. Beautiful objects, including historical and contemporary art, textiles and manuscripts, bring to life the profound spiritual significance of the sacred rituals that have remained unchanged since the Prophet Muhammad’s time in the 7th century AD. Until 15 April. www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
- Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin - This major new exhibition examines the life and work of one of Britain's most critically acclaimed photographers. Over 200 photographs, including a number previously not seen on public display; films; objects; magazines and personal memorabilia provide a unique opportunity to understand how Don McCullin’s life and work has been shaped by war and how his work has shaped awareness of modern conflict. Until 15 April. london.iwm.org.uk
- The Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton & Antarctic Photography - This exhibition of remarkable Antarctic photography by George Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley marks the 100th anniversary of Captain Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole. Ponting’s dramatic images record Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910–12, which led to the tragic death of five of the team on their return from the South Pole. Hurley’s extraordinary icescapes were taken during Ernest Shackleton’s Polar expedition on Endurance in 1914–17, which ended with the heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Both collections of photographs were presented to King George V and are today part of the Royal Photograph Collection. Until 15 April. www.royalcollection.org.uk
- End Piece … - Ambika P3 is delighted to present a major solo exhibition by David Hall, the influential pioneer of video art, featuring a monumental new commission '1001 TV Sets (End Piece)' 1972-2012, as well as restaging two seminal early works. This t
imely exhibition vividly heralds the end of analogue TV in the UK as London finally switches to digital on 18 April 2012. From 16 March until 19 April. www.p3exhibitions.com
- Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton - To celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the V&A is holding an exhibition of portraits of Her Majesty by photographer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980). Presenting highlights of the V&A’s archive of Beaton’s royal photography, the exhibition will depict the Queen in her roles as princess, monarch and mother and include a number of photographs never before seen as well as Beaton’s diaries and letters. Romantic images of the teenage Princess Elizabeth and her mother and sister are followed by glittering and highly-staged photographs of the Queen in her Coronation robes. There are tender portraits of the Queen at home with her husband and young family, and later official portraits. The exhibition includes a number of rarely seen photographs, as well as film clips and Beaton's personal scrapbooks, and shows how the popular image of the monarchy changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century. From 8 February until 22 April. www.vam.ac.uk
- Jeremy Deller: Joy in People - A hugely influential artist for much of the past two decades, Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller has helped to rewrite the rules of contemporary art in many respects. This mid-career survey – the first in the artist’s career – provides a fresh overview of his multi-faceted work. The exhibition incorporates almost all of his major works to date, including installations, photographs, videos, posters, banners, performance works and sound pieces. From 22 February until 13 May. www.southbankcentre.co.uk
- Lucian Freud Portraits - Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011) was one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. Paintings of people were central to his work and this major exhibition, spanning over seventy years, is the first to focus on his portraiture. Produced in close collaboration with the late Lucian Freud, the exhibition concentrates on particular periods and groups of sitters which illustrate Freud's stylistic development and technical virtuosity. Insightful paintings of the artist's lovers, friends and family, referred to by the artist as the 'people in my life', will demonstrate the psychological drama and unrelenting observational intensity of his work. Featuring over 100 works from museums and private collections throughout the world, some of which have never been seen before, this is an unmissible opportunity to experience the work of one of the world's greatest artists. www.npg.org.uk
- David Shrigley: Brain Activity - British artist David Shrigley is best known for his humourous drawings that make witty and wry observations on everyday life.Trained as a fine artist, his deliberately crude graphic style gives his work an immediate and accessible appeal, while simultaneously offering insightful commentary on the absurdities of human relationships. This exhibition, his first major survey show in London, will cover the full range of Shrigley's diverse practice. This extends far beyond drawing to include photography, books, sculpture, animation, painting and music. From 1 February until 20 May. www.southbankcentre.co.uk
- Yayoi Kusama - The nine decades of Yayoi Kusama's life have taken her from rural Japan to the New York art scene to contemporary Tokyo, in a career in which she has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known as "Accumulations", to her "Infinity Net" paintings, made up of carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. Since 1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessively charged vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space. From 9 February until 5 June. www.tate.org.uk/modern
- Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude - Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude is the most in-depth examination of Turner's experience of Claude's art to date. The exhibition includes oils, watercolours and sketchbooks and introduces visitors to the story of the Turner Bequest and its importance in the history of the National Gallery. The final room of the show exhibits archive material dedicated to this relationship. From 14 March until 5 June. www.nationalgallery.org.uk
- Song Dong: Waste Not - For his first solo exhibition in a major UK public gallery, Chinese artist Song Dong recreates his monumental work, Waste Not, in The Curve. Comprising over 10,000 items collected by Song Dong’s mother over five decades, ranging from a section of the house to metal pots and plastic bowls to blankets, bottle caps, toothpaste tubes and toys, the installation is a personal meditation on family and the artist’s own childhood during the Cultural Revolution. The activity of saving and reusing things is in keeping with the Communist adage wu jin qu yong – ‘waste not’ – a prerequisite for survival during periods of social and political turmoil. From 15 February until 12 June. www.barbican.org.uk
- Gillian Wearing - Turner Prize-winning British artist Gillian Wearing’s photographs and films explore the public and private lives of ordinary people. Fascinated by how people present themselves in front of the camera in fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV, she explores ideas of personal identity through often masking her subjects and using theatre’s staging techniques. This major exhibition surveys Wearing’s work from Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992–3) to her latest videoBully (2010). From 28 March until 17 June. www.whitechapel.org
- Picasso and Modern British Art - Picasso remains the twentieth century’s single most important artistic figure, a towering genius who changed the face of modern art. In a major new exhibition at Tate Britain, Picasso and Modern British Art explores his extensive legacy and influence on British art, how this played a role in the acceptance of modern art in Britain, alongside the fascinating story of Picasso’s lifelong connections to and affection for this country. It brings together over 150 spectacular artworks, with over 60 stunning Picassos including sublime paintings from the most remarkable moments in his career, such as Weeping Woman 1937 and The Three Dancers 1925. It offers the rare opportunity to see these celebrated artworks alongside seven of Picasso’s most brilliant British admirers, exploring the huge impact he had on their art: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney. From 15 January until 15 July. www.tate.org.uk
- Bauhaus: Art as Life - The biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years presents the modern world’s most famous art school. From expressionist beginnings to a pioneering model uniting art and technology the Bauhaus’ utopian vision sought to change society in the aftermath of the First World War. Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the diverse artistic production that made up its turbulent fourteen-year history and delves into the subjects at the heart of the school: art, culture, life, politics and society, and the changing technology of the age. Bauhaus: Art as Life will feature a rich array of painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation. Exemplar works from such Bauhaus Masters as Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl, will be presented alongside works by lesser-known artist Masters and Bauhaus students. From 3 May until 12 August. www.barbican.org.uk
- VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY: De Morgans and the Sea - De Morgans and the Sea gives visitors the opportunity to explore maritime influences in the work of the De Morgans. The theme of the sea was a major source of inspiration for both William De Morgan’s Arts and Crafts ceramics and his wife Evelyn’s paintings. Medieval galleons manned by sailors on the lookout for giant fish, dolphins and sea monsters form part of William De Morgan’s quirky cast of characters. Evelyn’s paintings of mythological subjects such as Ariadne (looking more stoical than distraught after being abandoned on the island of Naxos by her lover Theseus) or her depictions of Hans Christian Anderson’s much adored little mermaid reinterpret these classic tales for a new audience. From 3 February until 25 August. www.demorgan.org.uk
- Aquarium - Immerse yourself in the wonderful underwater worlds of the new Aquarium. Journey through delicate environments and ecosystems from teeming British Pond Life, stunning and sensitive Rockpools, tropical Fijian Coral Reefs, to mysterious Mangrove Swamps and a breathtaking South American Rainforest display. Discover captivating creatures from across the world including jellyfish, seahorses and tropical monkey frogs amongst others. Amazing tank-viewing dens and interactive displays get you up close to these fantastic worlds. Permanent. www.horniman.ac.uk
- Courtauld - Permanent Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections and Early Renaissance Italian and Flemish art and artefacts at Somerset House, Strand, WC2. Please phone 0207 845 4600 for more details or visit www.somerset-house.org.uk
- Dali Universe - (Permanent) Presented in a surreal, labyrinth sequence of galleries, this tourist attraction place viewers in the heart of a Dalinean fantasy land. Some 500 works of art set in 30,000 square feet help to unravel the great Spanish mind. Located at County Hall, Riverside Building, SE1. Telephone 0207 620 2420 for more information.
