15 art exhibitions ending in London in January 2026
January is your final opportunity to catch some of London’s most exciting and talked-about exhibitions of 2025. Spanning fashion, photography, contemporary sculpture and multimedia, a wide range of shows are drawing to a close across the city. From iconic painters such as Wayne Thiebaud to bold contemporary figures like Gilbert & George and experimental digital installations by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, here’s our guide to the exhibitions not to miss before they end.
Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey
Joy Gregory, Stockwell Siren from the series Celebrity Blonde, 2001, performance © Joy Gregory
#FLODown: Whitechapel Gallery presents a major retrospective of Joy Gregory, a British artist known for experimental photography exploring race, gender, identity, and diaspora. The exhibition features analogue and digital photography, installation, performance, and textiles. Key series include Objects of Beauty, Memory & Skin, and The Blonde, alongside a new commission connecting Afro-Caribbean histories with indigenous Kalahari communities, offering an insightful meditation on memory and cultural exchange.
Date: 8 October 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Price: from £15. Concessions available. Book now
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
Kerry James Marshall, De Style, 1993,Acrylic and collage on canvas. 264.2 x 309.9 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Purchased with funds provided by Ruth and Jacob Bloom. © Kerry James Marshall. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
#FLODown: In celebration of his 70th birthday, The Histories is the largest European survey of the acclaimed American artist at the Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition features over 70 works, including paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures, spanning Marshall’s career from the 1980s to the present. His powerful, large-scale paintings depict the Middle Passage, the legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and everyday life in Black communities, highlighting daily experiences while centring Black figures. The show also includes imagined portraits of historical Black figures, monumental contemporary scenes, and a new series of works created especially for the exhibition.
Date: 20 September 2025 – 18 January 2026. Location: Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: £23.50–£25.50. Book now
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION
THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.
#FLODown: Over at Serpentine North, British artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley presents THE DELUSION, a groundbreaking new project and ambitious multiplayer video-game experience that blends satire, cooperative gameplay and participatory theatre to explore polarisation, censorship and social connection. Conceived as a live “community play”, the show invites collective decision-making, dialogue and reflection on pressing sociopolitical issues. Merging advanced digital technologies with traditional animation techniques, the project highlights Brathwaite-Shirley’s ongoing engagement with the Black Trans and Queer community.
Date: 30 September 2025 – 18 January 2026. Location: Serpentine North, West Carriage Drive, London W2 2AR. Price: Free. serpentinegalleries.org
Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion
Dirty Looks, IAMISIGO, handwoven raffia-cotton blend look dyed with coffee and mud spring/Summer 2024 Shadows. Photograph by Fred Odede, courtesy of IAMISIGO.
#FLODown: Dirty Looks at the Barbican Art Gallery examines how designers worldwide have used dirt, decay and imperfection as creative forces in contemporary fashion. The show features over 100 looks from more than 60 designers, tracing fifty years of distressed and decomposed aesthetics that challenge traditional notions of beauty, luxury and value. Displays range from rusted, buried garments and mud-stained couture to regenerated textiles and spiritually inspired designs, revealing how decay has been reclaimed as a symbol of resistance, renewal and transformation. Scenography by Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck contrasts sleek gallery spaces with raw, eroded surfaces, creating a sensory experience that mirrors the tension between fashion’s polished image and its material realities.
Date: 25 September 2025 – 25 January 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £20+BF. Book now
Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum, Orbital, 2018 © Mona Hatoum. © White Cube (Theo Christelis).
#FLODown: Also on display at the Barbican Centre is the second exhibition in the Encounters series, this exhibition juxtaposes iconic works by Alberto Giacometti with new and existing pieces by Mona Hatoum, exploring themes of conflict, exile, and the human body. Hatoum recontextualises Giacometti’s sculptures, creating a dialogue that highlights the artists’ shared engagement with trauma, displacement, and the power of art to challenge perception. The show features bronze, plaster, steel, and installations, transforming the gallery into a space of reflection and tension.
Date: 3 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Barbican, Level 2, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: £8+BF. Book now
Lucy Raven: Rounds
Lucy Raven: Rounds. © Lucy Raven. Photographer Ari Marcopoulos.
#FLODown: Lucy Raven’s exhibition Rounds at the Barbican’s Curve explores cyclical violence and industrial force in the American West. The UK premiere of Murderers Bar (2025) documents the Klamath River’s transformation after the largest dam removal in US history, using aerial, drone and sonar imaging to trace its return to natural flow and foreground Indigenous-led environmental activism. A newly commissioned kinetic light sculpture intensifies this exploration, reflecting the physical and ecological impacts of industrial development and restoration.
Date: 9 October 2025 – 4 January 2026. Location: The Curve, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: Free. barbican.org.uk
Gilbert & George: 21ST CENTURY PICTURES
Gilbert & George DATE STONES, 2019 89 x 174 in. (226 x 442 cm) © Gilbert & George. Courtesy White Cube
#FLODown: The Hayward Gallery presents Gilbert & George’s most significant works from the past 25 years. Over 60 large-scale installations explore contemporary society through humour, symbolism, and provocative imagery. The exhibition features familiar series such as The London Pictures (2011) and The Beard Pictures (2016), alongside works such as The Corpsing Pictures (2022). It also debuts two new works from The Screw Pictures (2025), reflecting on ageing, mortality, and everyday life with the artists’ signature audacity.
Date: 7 October 2025 – 4 January 2026. Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. Price: from £20. Concessions available. Book now
Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life
Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), Cakes, 1963, oil on canvas, Gift in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art from the Collectors Committee, the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, and The Circle, with Additional Support from the Abrams Family in Memory of Harry N. Abrams © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2024
#FLODown: At the Courtauld Gallery, the first UK museum exhibition dedicated to Wayne Thiebaud is now on display, featuring his still-life paintings of post-war American everyday subjects, from diner food and deli counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines, which established his reputation in the 1960s. By elevating objects often dismissed as kitsch, Thiebaud transforms them into profound works of modern art.
Date: 10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026. Location: Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3, The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: £15. Concessions available. Book now
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
The Second Age of Beauty by Cecil Beaton, British Vogue February 1946 © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. Condé Nast Archive London.
#FLODown: The first major exhibition dedicated to Cecil Beaton, highlighting his career in fashion photography, illustration, and costume design, is on display at the National Portrait Gallery. Featuring over 170 works, the exhibition showcases Vogue spreads, royal portraits, and Oscar-winning film costumes. Beaton’s striking imagery, from interwar society to postwar Hollywood glamour, is complemented by insights into his collaborations with leading designers, revealing the influence of his visual language on fashion and popular culture.
Date: 9 October 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE. Price: £23. Concessions available. Book now
Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots
Jennie-Baptiste, 1995. Photo taken from a series for fashion designer Wale Adeyemi.
#FLODown: Rhythm & Roots at Somerset House is the first major solo presentation by British photographer Jennie Baptiste, spanning three decades of work celebrating Black British youth culture. The exhibition features iconic and previously unseen portraits of artists including Roots Manuva, Estelle, Ms Dynamite and NAS. Highlights include Revolutions @33 1/3 rpm, Baptiste’s series on London’s hip-hop DJ scene, and Black Chains of Icon, a conceptual exploration of identity and legacy. DJ-curated soundtracks and public talks complement the exhibition.
Date: 17 October 2025 – 4 January 2026. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: Free. Buy now
Tanoa Sasraku: Morale Patch
Tanoa Sasraku, Morale Patch [detail], 2025. Found object (acrylic and crude oil).
#FLODown: The ICA presents Tanoa Sasraku’s Morale Patch, a new solo exhibition exploring the symbolic and political power of oil and its connection to war, national identity, and memory. Using process-driven works on paper, sculpture, and found objects, Sasraku meditates on destruction, seduction, and the making of national myths. Emblems and mementos recur as motifs, creating a layered exploration of personal and collective histories.
Date: 7 October 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: ICA, 12 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: from £6. Concessions available/ pay what you can. Book now
Maggi Hambling & Sarah Lucas: A Shared Brutal Wit
Maggi Hambling & Sarah Lucas: A Shared Brutal Wit. Image credit MTotoe.
#FLODown: This two-gallery exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects celebrates the friendship and dialogue between British artists Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas. The show presents their irreverent humour and explorations of love, death, and everyday life across painting, sculpture, and installations, highlighting their mutual influence and creative vitality.
Date: 20 November 2025 – 1 January 2026. Location: 8 & 38 Bury Street, London SW1Y. Price: Free. Book now
Yto Barrada: Thrill, Fill, Spill
Yto Barrada, Thrill, Fill and Spill, 2025. South London Gallery. Image credit Lucy Dawkins
#FLODown: This solo exhibition spans sculpture, textiles, film, and painting, exploring cultural identity, resistance, and environmental fragility. Barrada’s work includes textiles dyed at her eco-residency in Morocco, climate-focused sculptures, and reinterpretations of colonial imagery. Thrill, Fill, Spill offers a timely reflection on history, memory, and collective resilience, ahead of Barrada’s presentation for France at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Date: 26 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: South London Gallery, 65–67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH. Price: Free. southlondongallery.org
Hilary Lloyd: Very High Frequency
Very High Frequency, Hilary Lloyd. Image credit MTotoe
#FLODown: Very High Frequency is a major commission reflecting on the work of playwright Dennis Potter. Combining film, archival materials, and live performance, the exhibition explores illness, death, sex, power, and class through non-linear storytelling. Lloyd reimagines television and theatre sets as visual and auditory tableaux.
Date: 10 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1A Nelsons Row, London SW4 7JR. Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
