15+ art exhibitions opening in London in September 2025
September marks the start of London’s autumn art season, with major retrospectives, bold multimedia installations, and fresh perspectives on fashion, identity, and history across the city’s leading galleries. From Kerry James Marshall’s landmark retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts to the V&A’s exploration of Marie Antoinette’s legacy, here is our guide to art exhibitions opening in London in September that you don’t want to miss.
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 by Kerry James Marshall presents 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 within Western artistic traditions. The show also includes imagined portraits of historical Black figures, monumental contemporary scenes, and a new series of works created especially for the exhibition, reflecting Marshall’s engagement with art history, contemporary culture, Afrofuturism, and science fiction.
Date: 20 September 2025- 18 January 2026. Location: The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD, Price: £23.50-£25.50. (including donation). Book now
Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum, Orbital, 2018 © Mona Hatoum. Credit: Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)
#FLODown: Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum is the second in the Encounters series, exploring a dialogue between historic works by Alberto Giacometti and new and existing works by Mona Hatoum. Staged on Level 2 under the subtitle Divide, the exhibition spans nearly a century of art, including sculptures in bronze, plaster, steel, and glass, as well as installations, video, and works on paper. Hatoum recontextualises iconic Giacometti pieces, such as Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932) and The Nose (1947), alongside her own large-scale sculptures and new works created for the exhibition. The show investigates themes of conflict, displacement, and the alienation of the body, transforming the gallery into a disquieting domestic space. Both artists, shaped by periods of global unrest, engage with trauma, exile, and the power of art to challenge perceptions of reality.
Date: 3 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Barbican, Level 2, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: £8+BF. Book now
Marie Antoinette Style
Film still from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp.
#FLODown: Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A will be the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the iconic French queen, highlighting her influence on fashion and culture. The exhibition will showcase 250 objects, including rare loans never before seen outside France, featuring personal items such as Marie Antoinette’s silk slippers, jewels, and her final written note, alongside lavish fragments of court dress and intimate objects from Versailles. Contemporary couture by designers including Dior, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, and Moschino, as well as costumes from Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film Marie Antoinette, will trace the queen’s enduring legacy through centuries of design and media. Through carefully curated displays, scent experiences, and theatrical staging, the exhibition will examine how Marie Antoinette’s extravagant and controversial style became a lasting symbol of opulence, femininity, and artistic inspiration.
Date: 20 September 2025 - 22 March 2026. Location: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: £23 - £25. Book now
Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s
Outside the Blitz club in 1979. Photograph: Sheila Rock. Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s opening at the Design Museum 20 September 2025.
#FLODown: Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s is a major exhibition at the Design Museum celebrating the legendary nightclub in Covent Garden that ignited the creative explosion of the 1980s. Running for just 18 months from 1979 to 1980, Blitz was the birthplace of the ‘Blitz Kids’ and launched the careers of iconic figures such as Spandau Ballet, Boy George, and Visage. The show features over 250 rare and personal items, including clothing, instruments, original design sketches, magazines, and unseen footage, that reveal how this small club night revolutionised fashion, music, and art.
Date: 20 September 2025 – 29 March 2026. Location: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG. Price: from £14.38 - £17.98. Book now
Ketty La Rocca: you you
Ketty La Rocca, Le mie parole, e tu?, 1971, Photographic sequence, 1 of 4 elements © Archivio Ketty La Rocca of Michelangelo Vasta Courtesy Estorick Collection, London
#FLODown: The Estorick Collection presents the first UK museum exhibition dedicated to Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976), a pioneering Italian conceptual and feminist artist. Featuring over 50 rarely seen works from her estate, the exhibition explores La Rocca’s evolution from early media critiques and visual poetry to her celebrated Riduzioni, which deconstruct images to examine identity, communication, and the body. A founding member of Gruppo 70, La Rocca merged art with poesia visiva, challenging patriarchal language structures and emphasising gesture, particularly the human hand, as a communicative tool. The show includes sculptural works, large-scale alphabetic forms, and reflects her enduring influence on contemporary discussions of consumer culture and gender. Accompanied by talks, workshops, and a fully illustrated publication, the exhibition highlights La Rocca’s lasting significance in modern art.
Date: 10 September 2025 - 21 December 2025. Location: Estorick Collection, 39-40 Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN. Price: from £9.50. Concessions available. Book now
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: Desire and Decay in Fashion, opening at the Barbican, examines how designers worldwide have used dirt, decay, and imperfection as creative forces in contemporary fashion. The exhibition features over 100 looks from more than 60 designers, including Hussein Chalayan, Vivienne Westwood, IAMISIGO, Robert Wun, and Comme des Garçons, 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.
Date: 25 September 2025 - 25 January 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £20+ BF. Concessions available. Book now
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION
THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
#FLODown: British artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley opens a groundbreaking new project at Serpentine North this September. THE DELUSION is an ambitious multiplayer video game experience that combines satire, cooperative gameplay, and participatory theatre to explore polarisation, censorship, and social connection. Visitors are immersed in a live “community play,” encouraging dialogue and reflection on some of today’s most pressing sociopolitical issues. The project merges advanced digital technologies with traditional animation techniques, while highlighting Brathwaite-Shirley’s engagement with the Black Trans and Queer community, marking a bold step forward in the creative use of game engines in contemporary art.
Date: 30 September 2025 – 18 January 2026. Location: Serpentine North, West Carriage Drive, London, W2 2AR. Price: Free. Book now
Theatre Picasso
Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman 1937. Dil paint on canvas. Tate. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2025.
#FLODown: Marking 100 years since Picasso’s The Three Dancers (1925), Theatre Picasso at Tate Modern explores the theatrical spirit that infused the artist’s work throughout his life. Featuring around 50 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, collages, and textiles, the exhibition highlights how Picasso crafted his public persona and found inspiration in performers, outsiders and popular entertainment. Curated in collaboration with contemporary artist Wu Tsang and writer Enrique Fuenteblanca, the show stages Picasso’s art as performance, with live responses from choreographers and dancers. Anchored by iconic works from Tate’s collection and major loans from French institutions, Theatre Picasso presents a dynamic, critical and celebratory portrait of one of modern art’s most mythologised figures.
Date: 18 September 2025 – 12 April 2026. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: from £14. Concessions available. Book now
Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists
Helene Kröller-Müller. © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.
#FLODown: The National Gallery will host its first-ever exhibition dedicated to the Neo-Impressionist movement. The exhibition will feature major works from the renowned Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, bringing together paintings by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Théo van Rysselberghe, and Jan Toorop. Seurat’s iconic Le Chahut (1889–90) will be shown in the UK for the first time, alongside other works that demonstrate the movement’s radical approach to colour and technique. With additional loans from major international collections, the exhibition will offer a rare opportunity to explore the bold vision that helped shape the course of modern art.
Date: 13 September 2025 – 8 February 2026. Location: Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN. Price: from £25. Concessions available. Book now
Grant Mooney
Grant Mooney, production image, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
#FLODown: Grant Mooney’s upcoming exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery will present a series of sculptures exploring the tactile and sensory qualities of metal, blending abstract, autonomous, and site-specific approaches. Drawing on his background in metalsmithing and deep knowledge of metal alloys, Mooney will investigate the physical interactions and transformations of materials. For this commission, he will respond directly to the gallery’s environment and architecture, creating works that engage with the building’s infrastructure and surroundings.
Date: 26 September – 7 December 2025. Location: Chisenhale Gallery, 64-84 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ. Price: Free. chisenhale.org.uk
Yto Barrada: Thrill, Fill, Spill
Yto Barrada, A day is a day, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery.
#FLODown: Thrill, Fill, Spill, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Yto Barrada, opening at the South London Gallery, will span sculpture, textiles, film, and painting. Barrada’s work explores resistance, cultural identity, and environmental fragility. The exhibition includes textile works dyed at her eco-residency, The Mothership, in Morocco, and Tangier Island Wall (2019), a sculpture exploring climate change. Also featured are sculptural works inspired by Moroccan human pyramids and Tintin in Palestine, which reinterprets colonial imagery through hand-dyed silk grids. Opening ahead of Barrada’s presentation for France at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Thrill, Fill, Spill offers a timely reflection on history, memory, and collective resilience.
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
Research image, Forest of Dean. 2025.
#FLODown: Very High Frequency is a major commission by Hilary Lloyd that reflects on the life and work of pioneering playwright and television writer Dennis Potter (1935, 1994), celebrated for dramas such as The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. Combining film, archival materials, and live performance elements, the exhibition will present a non-linear experience that revisits Potter’s distinctive approach to television, interweaving reality and fantasy, while addressing illness, death, sex, power, and class. Featuring new short films with actors, producers, and collaborators connected to Potter, including broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and producer Ken Trodd, Lloyd’s installation will reimagine theatre sets and television studios as a series of visual and auditory tableaux, inviting visitors to explore Potter’s enduring influence on contemporary culture. Accompanied by a programme of screenings and talks, the exhibition will highlight Potter’s belief in television as a powerful medium for artistic and political expression.
Date: 10 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1A Nelsons Row, London SW4 7JR. Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Umbilical)
Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Umbilical) opens on the 11th of September, 2025 until the 2nd of November, 2025 at Timber Yard ©2025 Conrad Shawcross.
#FLODown: British artist Conrad Shawcross will unveil The Nervous System (Umbilical) at the Timber Yard in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. His largest and most intricate rope-making machine to date, the 10-metre-tall, 12-metre-wide structure will use forty interlocking arms to create a rope that spirals like a record of time, chaos and cosmic motion. Part of Shawcross’s long-running “Rope Makers” series, the work explores planetary orbits, unstable systems and the fragility of natural cycles. Two earlier rope machines, Yarn (2001) and Ode to the Difference Engine (2007), will also be shown, offering insight into Shawcross’s decades-long investigation into time and the universe.
Date: 11 September – 2 November 2025. Location: Timber Yard, Here East Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park 14 East Bay Lane London E15 2GW. Price: Free. hereeast.com
Lawrence Lek: Life Before Automation
![Lawrence Lek, NOX, 2023 [Still] CGI videos x 4, video game, soundtrack dimensions variable. Credit: © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and LAS Art Foundation, Berlin](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c9534c4af4683461d462c6b/2f15b4ec-3ef7-4628-ae21-d9a9d2538e44/Lawrence+Lek%2C+NOX%2C+2023+%5BStill%5D+CGI+videos+x+4%2C+video+game%2C+soundtrack+dimensions+variable.+Credit%3A+%C2%A9+Lawrence+Lek.+Courtesy+the+Artist+and+LAS+Art+Foundation%2C+Berlin)
Lawrence Lek, NOX, 2023 [Still] CGI videos x 4, video game, soundtrack dimensions variable. Credit: © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and LAS Art Foundation, Berlin
#FLODown: Life Before Automation, by London-based artist Lawrence Lek, presents an ambitious exploration of artificial intelligence, technology, and speculative futures. The exhibition interweaves film, installation, video games, and sound to create immersive “worlds for non-humans,” centring on Lek’s Sinofuturist vision where AI and technological influence shape society.
Date: 26 September – 14 December 2025. Location: Goldsmiths CCA, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW. Price: Free. goldsmithscca.art
Betty Ogundipe: LOVE/FIGHT
Betty Ogundipe, Untitled (2022), Copyright the artist, Courtesy of Tache Gallery.
#FLODown: A solo exhibition by London-based multidisciplinary artist Betty Ogundipe will debut at Tache Gallery, showcasing her new and recent works in the exhibition LOVE/FIGHT. The show presents large-scale paintings, photography, textile, sculpture, and video that explore Black womanhood through the lenses of militant femininity, new wave feminisms, and feminine resilience, portraying both strength and struggle. On display will be works including the diptych Enjoy and Cheerleader, which reimagine the cheerleader with cultural critique and intellectual depth, alongside the Fight series, reflecting survival, endurance, and self-expression through conflict. Ogundipe’s work combines figurative storytelling with social commentary, examining the interplay between visibility and vulnerability in contemporary culture.
Date: 18 September – 23 October 2025. Location: Tache Gallery, 33 Percy Street, London W1T 2DF. Price: Free. tachegallery.com
Joshua Bratt: Seen
Exhibition by acclaimed photojournalist and portrait photographer Joshua Bratt to open at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in September 2025.
#FLODown: Joshua Bratt’s Seen is a portrait exhibition at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Headquarters, showcasing 22 intimate photographs of blind and partially sighted people across the UK, including notable figures such as Lord Blunkett, Clive Jones, Dr Nicolas Bonne, and model Nan M. The series highlights each subject’s individuality, achievements, and passions, challenging viewers to see beyond disability. Bratt was inspired to create the project after realising how often people are defined solely by their sight loss, and he collaborated with RNIB to connect with subjects whose stories offer a broader understanding of life with visual impairment.
Date: 12–14 September 2025. Location: RNIB’s Grimaldi Building, 154a Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JE. Price: free timed slots available. rnib.org.uk
Naeem Mohaiemen: Through a Mirror, Darkly
Naeem Mohaiemen, Still from THROUGH A MIRROR, DARKLY, three-channel film, 2025. Courtesy of Artangel.
#FLODown: Artangel presents Through a Mirror, Darkly, a three-channel film by Naeem Mohaiemen that revisits the 1970s in the United States, a decade marked by hope, protest, and political upheaval. Focusing on the Kent State and Jackson State shootings, the work contrasts the widely remembered deaths in Ohio with the lesser-known killings in Mississippi, exploring how memory, protest, and state violence intersect. Combining archival footage with contemporary memorial ceremonies, Mohaiemen reflects on the lasting impact of these events and the echoes of resistance and repression today.
Date: 21 September 2025 - 09 November 2025. Location: Albany House, 94-98 Petty France, London SW1H 9EA. Price: Free. artangel.org.uk
Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell
Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell, Another Country Is Possible, 2025.
#FLODown: Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell’s solo exhibition at Incubator will explore the intersections of personal and collective knowledge within larger systems of power. Employing sculpture, image, and text, her work examines the boundaries of emotional, institutional, and historical structures, revealing subtle ruptures beneath their surface. Drawing from her Caribbean and Nepalese heritage, Campbell’s multidisciplinary approach, rooted in photography and film, offers a reflective and sharply observed exploration of how meaning is constructed and deconstructed over time.
Date: 10 September – 5 October 2025. Location: Incubator Gallery, 2 Chiltern Street, Marylebone, London W1U 7PR. Price: Free. incubatorart.com
