Art exhibitions opening in London in April 2026
London’s art scene is set to kick off April with exhibitions showcasing both established and emerging voices from across the globe. From the opening of V&A East with an exhibition celebrating the influence of Black artistry on British music, to Veronica Ryan’s four decades of striking sculptures and textiles at Whitechapel Gallery, Donald Locke’s five-decade survey at Camden Art Centre, and Nhu Xuan Hua’s captivating explorations of memory and family history at Autograph. Here is our guide to art exhibitions opening in London in April to be on your radar.
Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations
Portrait of Veronica Ryan in Along a Spectrum, 2021, Spike Island, Bristol. Courtesy Alison Jacques and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photo Lisa Whiting
#FLODown: Celebrated artist Veronica Ryan presents over 100 works created across the last forty years, including sculptures, textiles, and works on paper. The exhibition, opening at Whitechapel Gallery, features recently rediscovered 1980s sculptures in plaster and beaten lead, along with vivid drawings. Ryan’s art reflects memory, personal stories, history, trauma, and recovery, often inspired by the natural world, where seeds and pods suggest protection, growth, and change. She combines traditional materials with crafts like crochet and quilting to create rich, textured, moving artworks.
Date: 1 April – 14 June 2026. Location: 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. Price: TBC. Book now
Gabriel Abrantes: Bardo Loops
Gabriel Abrantes, Bardo Loops, 2024. Animation, sound, colour. Commissioned by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Francisco Fino
#FLODown: Gasworks presents Bardo Loops, the first UK solo exhibition by artist and filmmaker Gabriel Abrantes. The installation is presented across four screens, featuring animated ghosts who argue, reconcile, and sing laments, blending autobiographical fragments with wider themes such as climate change and anxieties around a digitally dominated future. Each two-minute loop shows the spectres trapped in endless arguments, often against catastrophic backdrops like wildfires or hurricane-ravaged coastlines, reflecting contemporary concerns about loss, health, and the overwhelming effects of social media and AI. Through deceptively simple ghost forms, Abrantes invites viewers into a darkly humorous yet poignant reflection on human vulnerability.
Date: 16 April - 14 June 2026. Location: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH. Price: Free. Book now
Donald Locke: Resistant Forms
Timehri Rock #40, 2009. Mixed media, ceramic, twigs. Image courtesy of The Anthony Shaw Collection/York Museums Trust. Photo: Tom Meyer
#FLODown: Camden Art Centre will open a major survey of Guyanese-British artist Donald Locke (1930–2010), presenting five decades of work from the late 1960s through to his final pieces created in Atlanta. The exhibition traces Locke’s artistic journey across Guyana, the UK, and the United States, highlighting his important contributions as a post-war artist of the Windrush Generation, an often under-recognised figure in the UK. On display are early biomorphic ceramics, mixed-media sculpture, paintings from the Plantation Series, large-scale works combining found materials, and late pieces reflecting the assemblage traditions of the American South. Across all media, Locke consistently examined themes of history, identity, and subjugation while experimenting with form, materials, and style. This London presentation includes new works on paper and ceramics, alongside loans from York Art Gallery and the Donald Locke Estate, marking the first time the full scope of his practice is shown in the capital.
Date: 10 April - 30 August 2026. Location: Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG. Price: Free. Book now
Nhu Xuan Hua: Of Walking on Fire
Nhu Xuan Hua, The one who couldn’t talk, 2021. Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Anne-Laure Buffard, France.
#FLODown: Autograph in London will host the first solo exhibition of French-Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua, curated by Bindi Vora. Spanning both gallery spaces, the exhibition will feature newly commissioned works that explore memory, family history, and the ways stories are communicated, or withheld, across generations. Hua reimagines archival photographs from her family’s time in Vietnam and early years in Europe, creating dreamlike, digitally-altered compositions that blur recognition and distortion. Drawing on her own experience growing up in Paris with immigrant parents and navigating linguistic and cultural silences, her work reflects the fragility of memory and the complexities of diasporic identity.
Date: 16 April – 19 September 2026. Location: Autograph, Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA. Price: Free. autograph.org.uk
Racheal Crowther
Racheal Crowther, production image, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London in partnership with Temple Bar Gallery Studios, Dublin, and Bétonsalon, Paris. Photo: Harry Mitchell. Courtesy of the artist.
#FLODown: London-based artist Racheal Crowther presents her first institutional solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, examining systems of governance, surveillance, and institutional power and how they intersect with structures of care. Her practice repurposes technical equipment and industrial objects that carry traces of memory, revealing the failures of bureaucracy and the ways institutional structures shape everyday life. For this exhibition, Crowther investigates the politics of scent as a tool of influence and social control, considering how sensory manipulation operates across different contexts, from commercial environments designed to shape behaviour to its use within military and policing systems.
Date: 17 April – 14 June 2026. Location: Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Road, London, E3 5QZ. Price: Free. chisenhale.org.uk
The Music is Black: A British Story
Harry Hammond, Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing at Drury Lane Theatre, 1959 © Photo by Harry Hammond.
#FLODown: V&A East opens its new museum with the inaugural exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story, exploring the influence of Black artistry on British music and culture over the past 125 years. It traces musical traditions rooted in Africa and shaped by histories of enslavement, colonialism, migration, and innovation. The exhibition features more than 200 objects, including instruments, fashion, photographs, and personal items from artists such as Dame Shirley Bassey, Little Simz, Seal, Skin, Mis-Teeq, and Skepta. Curated by Jacqueline Springer, it also launches The Music Is Black Festival in partnership with BBC Music and East Bank cultural organisations. Click here to discover more.
Date: 18 April 2026 – 3 January 2027. Location: V&A East Museum, 107 Carpenters Rd, Stratford Cross, London, E20 2AR. Price: Weekday £22.50 / Weekend £24.50. Concessions available.Book now
Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style
#FLODown: Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, opening at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, will be the largest exhibition ever devoted to the late Queen’s fashion. Featuring approximately 200 items, including clothing, jewellery, hats, shoes, and accessories, with about half on display for the first time, the exhibition traces her wardrobe across all ten decades of her life. Highlights include her childhood bridesmaid dress by Edward Molyneux, iconic wedding and Coronation gowns by Norman Hartnell, and evening wear by Hardy Amies and Ian Thomas. The show also reveals the Queen’s involvement in the design process through sketches, fabric samples, and correspondence, and examines her diplomatic and off duty style, demonstrating how her sartorial choices shaped British fashion and influenced designers worldwide.
Date: 10 April - 18 October 2026. Location: The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA. Price: from £22. Concessions available. Book now
Click here to discover more fashion exhibitions to see in London in 2026.
Jack Scollard: Cruising Archaeology: The Pleasure Archive Research Centre
Jack Scollard, Cruising Archaeology, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and SMUT Press.
#FLODown: Jack Scollard’s Cruising Archaeology: The Pleasure Archive Research Centre, opening at Studio Voltaire, will present a distinctive exploration of queer cruising culture through found and curated objects from public cruising sites. Drawing on archival methods, photography, and publishing practices, the work reframes discarded items as artefacts that document queer intimacy, desire, and the ways LGBTQIA+ lives are preserved beyond conventional histories. Originating as an Instagram archive and later published as a book by SMUT Press, the project invites visitors to rethink how ephemeral personal experiences can be made visible in an art space, with the gallery itself conceived as a “cruising ground.”
Date: 22 April–5 July 2026. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1A Nelsons Row, London SW4 7JR.Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972–1982
Senga Nengudi, Performance Piece, 1977, (detail), Silver gelatin prints, triptych, overall dimensions 300.8 x 104.1 cm. Courtesy Sprüth Magers and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Photo Harmon Outlaw
#FLODown: Pioneering artist and educator Senga Nengudi presents a rare archival exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, coinciding with the exhibition by Veronica Ryan. The show features photographs, films, and archival materials documenting her performance-based works from a key decade in her career. Nengudi’s practice brings together sculpture, choreography, and performance, often using found objects such as hosiery, sand, rocks, seed pods, masking tape, and paper, which are activated through spontaneous or choreographed movement. Drawing on her background in dance, avant-garde collectives, and diverse cultural traditions, from Fluxus and the Gutai group to Yoruba mythology, Japanese Noh theatre, and jazz improvisation, her works offer powerful participatory experiences that remain influential in contemporary art.
Date: 1 April – 14 June 2026. Location: Whitechapel Gallery, 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. Price: Free. whitechapelgallery.org
Saelia Aparicio: A Joyful Parasite
Installation view: Saelia Aparicio, A Joyful Parasite (2025) at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead © the artist
#FLODown: A major solo exhibition by London-based Spanish artist Saelia Aparicio will open at Southwark Park Galleries, presenting A Joyful Parasite, an immersive installation combining sculpture, large-scale mural drawings, and narrative elements to explore the complex entanglements between bodies, environments, and systems of care. The exhibition incorporates conceptual, science fiction, and ecological themes, with works specially reconfigured for the distinctive architecture of the deconsecrated Grade II Listed Dilston Gallery.
Date: 18 April – 5 June 2026. Location: Southwark Park Galleries, Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA. Price: Free. southwarkparkgalleries.org
Ain Bailey: The Jamaica Project
Still from 5C Jacques Road: Part One, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
#FLODown: London-based composer, artist, and DJ Ain Bailey brings together her ongoing trilogy of films for an exhibition at Camden Art Centre, featuring works rooted in her personal history and relationship to Jamaica. The exhibition includes a newly commissioned film, 5C Jacques Road: Part One (2026), recorded during Bailey’s first visit to Jamaica in 2025, following her journey across the island through everyday scenes accompanied by field recordings and a new composition. The show also presents earlier works Untitled: Our Wedding (2022), centred on her parents’ wedding photo album with poetry and sound, and Version (2021), a sonic installation with suspended sculptures of Jamaica’s national fruit, the ackee, each representing a year since Jamaican independence in 1962.
Date: 10 April – 14 June 2026. Location: Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG. Price: Free. camdenartcentre.org
