20 + art exhibitions to see in London in August 2025
August is often a quieter time of year, with many galleries taking a summer break, resulting in fewer new exhibitions opening across the city. For our August guide, we’re highlighting some of the shows launching in London this month, as well as several excellent exhibitions that are coming to a close. From Tai Shani’s major installation opening at Somerset House, to the final weeks of exhibitions including the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and Feel the Sound at the Barbican. Here’s our guide to the art exhibitions to catch in London this August.
Art exhibitions OPENING in August
Tai Shani: The Spell or The Dream
© Adam James Sinclair and Lotti V Closs, 2024
#FLODown: Tai Shani’s The Spell or The Dream is a major installation at Somerset House, featuring a striking 10m by 3m glass-encased sculpture of a sleeping figure, symbolising a liminal space between catastrophe and hope. Accompanied by a soundscape from Maxwell Sterling, the work explores themes of colonialism, crisis, and renewal. A 24/7 broadcast, The Dream Radio, extends the experience with contributions from artists, writers, and thinkers, encouraging collective dreaming and envisioning alternative futures. The programme also includes talks, performances, family events, and evening gatherings.
Date: 7 August – 14 September 2025. Location: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA. Price: Free. somersethouse.org.uk
Millet: Life on the Land
Detail from Jean-François Millet, 'The Angelus', 1857–9, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Bequest of Alfred Chauchard, 1910 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. Grand Palais Rmn / Patrice Schmidt
#FLODown: The National Gallery marks the 150th anniversary of Jean-François Millet’s death with Millet: Life on the Land, a showcase of his most iconic paintings and drawings. Born into a farming family, Millet revolutionised 19th-century French art by portraying rural labourers with realism and dignity. Highlights include L’Angelus (1859), showing a farming couple pausing to pray in a softly lit field. His honest depictions of peasant life greatly influenced artists like Van Gogh, Degas, and Pissarro, cementing his legacy as a pioneer of realism and early modern art.
Date: 7 August – 19 October 2025. Location: National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN. Price: Free. nationalgallery.org.uk
Art exhibitions closing in August
Victoria Miro : 40 years
Elmgreen & Dragset, Robert (Reflecting), 2024, Mirror polished stainless steel. 123 x 37 x 73 cm, 48 3/8 x 14 5/8 x 28 3/4 in
#FLODown: Victoria Miro celebrates its 40th anniversary with a landmark group exhibition showcasing the gallery’s entire roster of artists. Spanning its London spaces and waterside garden, the show features a mix of newly commissioned pieces alongside recent and historical works. The exhibition brings together long-established names and emerging voices, including artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Grayson Perry, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Paula Rego, Chris Ofili, and Flora Yukhnovich, among many others. Since its founding in 1985, Victoria Miro has played a pivotal role in contemporary art, championing diverse artistic practices across painting, sculpture, installation and more.
Date: 6 June – 1 August 2025. Location: Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW. Price: Free.
Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Dan Guthrie, production image, 2024, Courtesy of the artist.
#FLODown: Dan Guthrie’s exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, especially in rural areas, through moving images. The work focuses on the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in Guthrie’s hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire. Guthrie introduces the concept of ‘radical un-conservation,’ meaning acquiring an object with the intention of destroying it. The exhibition includes two new videos and launches an online platform (earf.info) that traces the clock’s history and ongoing debates about its future. The project raises important questions about what and how we memorialise.
Date: 6 June -17 August 2025. Location: 64 Chisenhale Road, London, E3 5QZ. Price: Free. chisenhale.org.uk.
Ed Atkins
Ed Atkins at Tate Britain © Tate. Image credit Josh Croll.
#FLODown: Ed Atkins’ major retrospective at Tate Britain presents a combination of digital art and personal narrative, featuring CGI avatars, video installations, drawings, and embroideries. Central works like Pianowork 2 (2023) and Nurses Come and Go, but None for Me (2024) focus on identity, grief, and the tension between virtual and physical realities. The exhibition offers a thoughtful reflection on human emotion and modern existence through innovative use of technology and intimate storytelling.
Click here for our review of Ed Atkinson at Tate Britain.
Date: 2 April - 25 August 2025. Location: Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG. Price: £18. Concessions available. Book now
Feel the Sound
Temporary Pleasure, Joyride, 2025, concept. Image courtesy of the artist.
#FLODown: Feel the Sound at the Barbican is a multi-sensory exhibition exploring sound beyond hearing, through the body, memory, movement, and emotion. Spread across indoor and outdoor spaces, it features eleven installations, including six new commissions. Highlights include a holographic choir, a reimagined underground club, an AI-generated memory archive, and a neuroscience-inspired piece visualising emotional responses to music. Outdoor works, such as poetic kite structures, reveal sound’s invisible dimensions, while other pieces combine ancient traditions with futuristic sonic environments. Together, they offer a fresh perspective on how sound is experienced and understood.
Date: 22 May – 31 August 2025. Location: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £20 +BF. Concessions available. Book now
Claudio Parmiggiani
Untitled, 2023, Senza titolo, private collection, Switzerland, Courtesy Tornabuoni Art. Photo: Moritz Bernoully - Courtesy Archivio Claudio Parmiggiani
#FLODown: Claudio Parmiggiani’s exhibition at the Estorick Collection, is the first institutional UK show dedicated to the pioneering Italian artist. Spanning fifty years of his practice, it features his signature Delocazioni works, ghostly images created with smoke and soot that explore memory, absence, and the passage of time. These atmospheric impressions of books, windows, and musical instruments are shown alongside sculptural assemblages and works on paper, offering a poetic reflection on Parmiggiani’s lifelong engagement with the fragility of presence.
Date: 28 May -31 August 2025. Location: Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN. Price: from £9.50. Concessions available. Book now
Milly Thompson: My Body Temperature is Feeling Good
Milly Thompson, Deep Vogueing, 2020, acrylic, gouache and permanent ink on canvas, 284x200cm
#FLODown: The largest UK exhibition of the late Milly Thompson’s work at Goldsmiths CCA showcases her vivid paintings, videos, and artist books. With wit and irony, she tackles the middle-aged female body, desire, and consumer culture. The exhibition also includes her collaborative projects, such as the satirical fashion magazine Vuoto (2012), offering a interdisciplinary view of her artistic legacy.
Date: 5 June- 24 August 2025. Location: Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, St James's, London SE14 6AD. Price: Free. gold.ac.uk
Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara, Stop the Bombs, 2019. © Yoshitomo Nara, courtesy Yoshitomo Nara Foundation
#FLODown: The Hayward Gallery delves into the imaginative world of Yoshitomo Nara in the largest European retrospective of the renowned Japanese artist. Featuring over 150 works across drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics, the exhibition offers an intimate look into Nara’s creative universe. Known for his emotionally charged portraits and rebellious spirit, Nara addresses ideas of resistance, isolation, home, and spirituality, drawing influence from nature, mythology, the peace movement, and punk music. This expanded presentation, including early sculptures and new paintings, builds on the touring exhibitions from the Guggenheim Bilbao and Museum Frieder Burda.
Click here for our review of Yoshitomo Nara at the Hayward Gallery.
Date: 10 June -31 August 2025. Location: Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Rd, London, SE1 8XX. Price: from £20. Concessions available.Book now
Ugo Rondinone: the rainbow body
Installation view, Ugo Rondinone, the rainbow body, Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly Street, 22 May - 02 August 2025. © Ugo Rondinone. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London.Photo: Katie Morrison
#FLODown: Ugo Rondinone’s exhibition the rainbow body at Sadie Coles HQ transforms the gallery into a radiant environment shaped by ideas of transcendence, time, and introspection. The space is filled with rainbow colours, reflecting a series of figurative sculptures based on Rondinone’s 2010 nude series. These life-sized, seated or crouching dancers, assembled from visibly joined segments, are shown in moments of stillness, their prismatic surfaces referencing the Buddhist concept of the “rainbow body,” where the physical form dissolves into light at the height of spiritual attainment. Accompanying them are candle sculptures arranged like votive offerings, drawn from the artist’s ongoing still.life series, and suggesting both transformation and the passage of time. A stained-glass clock with no hands concludes the display, presenting a sense of suspended time and pointing to a deeper cosmic continuity.
Date: 22 May - 2 August 2025. Location: Sadie Coles 62 Kingly Street W1B 5QN. Price: Free.
Michaela Yearwood-Dan: No Time for Despair
Michaela Yearwood-Dan We’ll be free (someday) 2025 Oil, acrylic, paper and glass beads on plastic and canvas 240 x 200 cm / 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 in Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Marianne Boesky Gallery © Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Image credit Deniz Guzel
#FLODown: Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s No Time for Despair at Hauser & Wirth is a multi-sensory exhibition centred on joy, community, and resilience. Her debut with the gallery features paintings, ceramics, sculptures, and installations that reflect on femininity, queer identity, and emotional connection. From expansive landscapes to intricate details, the works form a richly layered experience. A meditative sound piece, created with composer Alex Gruz, introduces a subtle musical thread that complements the visual elements. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s call for artists to resist silence in dark times, the exhibition is a compelling expression of beauty, defiance, and collective care.
Date: 13 May – 2 August 2025. Location: Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET. Price: Free.
Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha
Huma Bhabha, 2022. Image credit: Photo by Daniel Dorsa. Courtesy David Zwirner.
#FLODown: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha at the Barbican Centre, bringing together the work of contemporary artist Huma Bhabha and renowned 20th-century sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Launching the Barbican’s new, more intimate gallery space, the show spans nearly a century of sculpture, with pieces in plaster, bronze, terracotta, assemblage, and found materials. Bhabha’s post-apocalyptic figures are shown in conversation with Giacometti’s iconic postwar forms, both artists examining the human body as a vessel for trauma, memory, and transformation.
Date: 8 May - 10 August 2025. Location: Level 2, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London,EC2Y 8DS. Price: £8 + BF. Book now.
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer, Raben 2019. Emulsion, oil, acrylic, straw and gold leaf on canvas 280 x 760 cm | 110 1/4 x 299 3/16 in. © White Cube
#FLODown: Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition at White Cube Mason’s Yard features recent works inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s landscapes, reimagining motifs like sunflowers and wheat fields through materials such as ash, gold leaf and dried vegetation. Infused with poetry, myth and history, the pieces reflect on cycles of life, decay and renewal. The show coincides with Kiefer/Van Gogh at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Dates: 25 June – 16 August 2025. Location: White Cube Mason’s Yard, 25–26 Mason’s Yard, London SW1Y 6BU. Price: Free.
Summer Exhibition 2025
Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2024. Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry
#FLODown: The Royal Academy’s 257th Summer Exhibition will come to a close in August. This year’s edition has been curated by internationally acclaimed architect Farshid Moussavi RA. The theme, ‘Dialogues’, explores how art can open conversations around ecology, identity, and society, with architecture integrated throughout the show for the first time. Highlights include large-scale installations by Alice Channer, Antonio Tarsis, and Tamara Kostianovsky, as well as works by leading Royal Academicians such as Grayson Perry, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Shonibare, and Jenny Holzer, who is exhibiting for the first time. The show features contemporary art and architecture across disciplines, with many works available to buy in support of artists and the RA Schools.
Click here for our review of the 2025 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Date: 17 June – 17 August 2025. Location: Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: From £23; concessions available; under 16s go free. Book now
José María Velasco: A View of Mexico
José María Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hill of Santa Isabel (1877), Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL, Mexico City. Image: Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City © Reproduction authorised by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura
#FLODown: José María Velasco: A View of Mexico at the National Gallery is the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to Mexico’s leading 19th-century painter. Marking 200 years of UK–Mexico diplomatic relations, it showcases Velasco’s sweeping landscapes of the Valle de México, capturing both natural beauty and industrial change. A polymath as well as an artist, Velasco’s work reflects his interest in science, history and nature.
Dates: 29 March – 17 August 2025. Location: Sunley Room, National Gallery, London. Price: from £12. Concessions available. Book now
Caspar Heinemann: Sod All
Caspar Heinemann, Sod All, 2025. Installation view at Studio Voltaire. Images courtesy of the artist, Cabinet Gallery, and Studio Voltaire. Image credit Sarah Rainer.
#FLODown: Caspar Heinemann’s first solo institutional exhibition in the UK, Sod All, at Studio Voltaire, explores the intersection of spiritual, political, and sexual countercultures through folk art and vernacular architecture. Known for his speculative fiction and queer narratives, Heinemann presents miniaturised dioramas and a major site-specific installation that suspends sculptures from the ceiling, challenging the audience’s perspective. The exhibition builds on his ongoing exploration of land politics, folk revival, and spiritual histories, following an onsite production residency.
Date: 7 May - 3 August 2025. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1A Nelson’s Row, London SW4 7JR. Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
Emily Kam Kngwarray: My Country
Installation view, Emily Kam Kngwarray: My Country, Jun 6 – Aug 8, 2025, Pace Gallery, London © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency
#FLODown: Emily Kam Kngwarray: My Country, now on view at Pace Gallery, traces the evolution of one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, from her early organic batik designs to her later vibrant dot paintings and minimalist compositions. Rooted in her cultural and spiritual connection to her ancestral Country, Kngwarray’s work reflects on land, ecology, and the Dreaming. The exhibition features rarely seen paintings and textiles, as well as works by artists she inspired, highlighting her lasting influence on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.
If you are unable to see this exhibition before it closes, a major Emily Kam Kngwarray retrospective is currently on view at Tate Modern.
Date: 6 June – 8 August 2025. Location: Pace Gallery, 5 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HQ. Price: Free.
Kathleen Ryan: Roman Meal
KATHLEEN RYAN. Sliced Bread (Golden Hour), 2025. Agate, labradorite, aventurine, argonite, jamesite, copper malachite, citrine, calcite, zeolite, magnesite, amazonite, celestite, prehnite, turquoise, quartz, rhyolite, carnelian, garnet, jasper, serpentine, pink opal, ruby in zoisite, amethyst, quartz, amber, marble, acrylic, steel pins, polyurethane foam, aluminum, and king-size mattress. 80 x 80 x 35 inches (203.2 x 203.2 x 88.9 cm). © Kathleen Ryan. Photo: Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy Gagosian
#FLODown: Roman Meal at Gagosian, Davies Street, presents two new large-scale sculptures by Kathleen Ryan in her solo debut at the gallery. The works, Fender Bender and Sliced Bread (Golden Hour), continue her ongoing Bad Fruit series, featuring oversized, decomposing food items encrusted with semi-precious stones. Ryan explores utility, excess, decay, and beauty through surreal, often humorous reinterpretations of everyday discarded objects.
Date: 5 June - 15 August 2025. Location: Gagosian, Davies Street, London W1K 4BJ. Price: Free.
Leigh Bowery!
Installation Photography © Tate Photography (Larina Annora Fernandes).
#FLODown: Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern, celebrates the bold and innovative career of Leigh Bowery, an Australian-born artist, performer, and designer. Known for challenging norms in art, fashion, and performance, Bowery redefined ideas of identity, gender, and aesthetics. The exhibition showcases his extravagant costumes, paintings, photography, and video, reflecting his impact on the alternative club scene and contemporary art.
Click here for our review of Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern.
Date: 27 February – 31 August 2025. Location: Tate Modern, Natalie Bell Building, Level 3 Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £18 / Free for members. Book now
Infinities Commission: Christelle Oyiri
Image credit: Christelle Oyiri. Photo © Chris Lensz
#FLODown: Christelle Oyiri, a Paris-based artist, DJ, and producer, has been named the inaugural recipient of Tate Modern’s new Infinities Commission, which celebrates innovative contemporary art. As part of this honour, she has created a visionary new artwork for The Tanks, Tate Modern’s distinctive performance and installation space. Oyiri’s multidisciplinary practice uncovers hidden stories within contemporary culture, media, identity, lost mythologies, youth subcultures, and diasporic histories.
Date: 17 June – 25 August 2025. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG.tate.org.uk
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style
Exhibition Photography © Luke Hayes for the Design Museum
#FLODown: Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style at the Design Museum, explores 100 years of swimming through over 200 objects that highlight its cultural, social, and technological impact. The exhibition features iconic pieces like Pamela Anderson’s “Baywatch” swimsuit, the first British woman’s Olympic solo swimming gold medal, and Tom Daley’s Speedos from Tokyo 2020.
Date: 28 March – 17 August 2025. Location: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London, W8 6AG. Price: from £14.38 – £16.18. Book now
