Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in London

Panel discussion with Frieze Masters director Emanuela Tarizzo and Spotlight section curators Sofia Gotti and Devika Singh Research-led curating in an art fair context Panel discussion with Frieze Masters director Emanuela Tarizzo and Spotlight section curators Sofia Gotti and Devika Singh This event is now fully booked. Should you need any assistance with your booking, please email researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk Held on occasion of the upcoming edition of the Frieze Masters fair (14-18 October 2026), the panel discussion will offer the opportunity to discover some of the highlights of this year’s Spotlight section. With a particular emphasis on art from across the Global South, the section will be the largest to date since its inception in 2012. The curated section will bring together solo presentations of artists working in the 20th century, with a focus on pioneering artists active in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North and West Africa and across Asia. Spotlight will explore new research into these figures and showcase works produced between the 1950s and the late 1970s. While some artists have become established figures in their places of work, their art remains rarely seen in London. The event will begin with an introduction to Frieze Masters by director Emanuela Tarizzo, followed by presentations by Spotlight section curators Sofia Gotti and Devika Singh. We will conclude with a conversation exploring the challenges and opportunities of presenting pioneering international artists within the context of an art fair. Among the questions that will be considered are: how do art historical and curatorial frameworks help address disparities of knowledge about artists? How can art fairs function as sites of research, knowledge exchange and critical inquiry? And how can they be part of broader ecologies of support among artists, scholars, curators, and galleries? Organised by Dr Sofia Gotti, Lecturer in Curating, the Courtauld and Dr Devika Singh, Senior Lecturer in Curating, the Courtauld

The UK’s first exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli spans the 1920s to today, celebrating the innovative designer's influence. It traces the fashion house’s groundbreaking origins and its evolution under current creative director Daniel Roseberry.

In Aardman’s 50th anniversary year, peek behind the scenes of your favourite stop-motion animations and find out how Aardman brings clay to life. Visit Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph as many times as you like with your exhibition pass.

This fall at Hauser & Wirth London, Cindy Sherman will debut photographic works from her new Fabric Matrons series that explores identity as a continual process of construction over a lifetime. Shaped by a visual vocabulary of elaborately draped fabrics, the protagonists in Cindy Sherman’s images appear to dissolve into their surroundings, heightening the tension between concealment and display to examine how women negotiate visibility in different phases of life. Through these staged scenes, the artist foregrounds the performance—and perception—of both femininity and beauty, probing the societal expectations and enduring pressure to fashion and maintain a public image over time. The works on view mark a sophisticated evolution in her

Step into the life and legacy of Frida Kahlo: revolutionary artist and global icon Discover the extraordinary story of how Frida Kahlo became one of the most influential artists of all time, a cultural phenomenon, and an

Fall in love with Renoir and his Impressionist paintings at the National Gallery.

Tim Walker’s Fairyland is an exploration of queer identity, community, and love through the lens of one of Britain’s foremost photographers. Walker rose to prominence in the 1990s with his unique style of whimsical photography inspired by fairytales and adventures. He has photographed famous faces including Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys, Hunter Schafer, Miriam Margolyes and Frank Ocean, with his work featured in international magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, LOVE, Another Man and i-D. In preparation for this exhibition, he has spent the past five years photographing dozens of activists, performers, artists, and writers in his inimitable style. These new pictures are the result of Walker’s quest to connect with queer trailblazers in Britain and beyond. This exhibition will take visitors on a journey into Walker’s inner world – a vivid tapestry woven from his many inspirations and influences. Exuberant portraits and fantastical landscapes combine to create an unforgettable celebration. Walker’s creativity runs free, and his Fairyland is a place where everyone has the freedom to be themselves. The exhibition is curated by Susanna Brown and is accompanied by a new book featuring contributions written by Travis Alabanza, Russell T Davies, Shon Faye, Lisa Power and Joelle Taylor.

Modern Painting from the Courtauld and Reuben Collections features a selection of outstanding works by Cézanne, Modigliani, Léger, Picasso, Magritte, and others. Highlights on display include early 20th century paintings from the Courtauld’s collection, including Paul Cezanne’s Turning Road (1905), a landscape conjured through near-abstract patches of colour, and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nude (c.1916), a painting that upended conventional approaches to the subject of the female nude. These set the stage for works from the Reuben Collection by artists who charted new directions, including Cubist paintings by Fernard Léger and Man Ray’s monumental Black Widow [Earlier titled Invention-Nativity and Nativity ], 1915, last exhibited in the UK more than 50 years ago A group of paintings by Pablo Picasso, including two portraits of his partners, Portrait of a Woman ( Marie-Thérèse in a Blue Beret), 1937, and Head of a Woman (Dora Maar), 1939, will be shown alongside his remarkable Still Life with Basket of Fruits and Flowers (1942). The Reuben Collection holds a significant collection of works by the Surrealist artist René Magritte, including L’empire des lumières (The Dominion of Light) and L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend). Both date from the 1950s and are characteristically elusive juxtapositions that offer the promise of new and unexpected meanings.

A landmark collaboration between the V&A and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane. Rising Voices offers an unparalleled view of the Asia Pacific region’s dynamic creative landscape. Foregrounding First Nations perspectives and diverse artistic approaches, the exhibition features rare works by over 40 pioneering creatives.

Lorna Simpson will return to the UK for the first time in eight years with an exhibition of new works at Hauser & Wirth London that reveal the symbiotic relationship between her paintings, collages and wider oeuvre. Coming to prominence in the 1990s for her pioneering approach to conceptual photography, Lorna Simpson’s masterful paintings have become a defining facet of her creative output following her turn to the medium in 2014. From multi-panel compositions and large-scale paintings to sculpture, the works on view are anchored by the artist’s sustained engagement with found defunct photographic news archive photography, particularly from Ebony Magazine.

Experience the powerful work of Ana Mendieta, whose legacy changed the course of contemporary art

The first solo exhibition in Europe of the celebrated New York-based painter Salman Toor. The exhibition focuses on Salman Toor’s exploration of human interactions and the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, both culturally and emotionally. The exhibition will bring together 19 of the artist’s most iconic, thought-provoking and at times humorous paintings, never-before-seen in Britain, that represent people in shared moments of friendship and love, as well as experiencing solitude and alienation. While Toor’s figures and scenes are fictional, they are rooted in his personal experiences and memories. Speaking of his works, he says they “depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility”. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor trained in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York. He has had major exhibitions internationally, including his acclaimed first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020-21). More recently, he participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). The Courtauld’s exhibition will be Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe. Toor’s work is rooted in a deep engagement with and admiration for the Old Masters, in particular Baroque and 18th century painting, and the Courtauld is a museum he particularly enjoys. One of the principal works in the exhibition, The Bar on East 13th (2019), revisits the Courtauld’s celebrated painting by Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery. Showcasing Toor’s mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter, the display will include Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), acquired by the Courtauld in 2024.

This fall at Hauser & Wirth London, Cindy Sherman will debut photographic works from her new Fabric Matrons series that explores identity as a continual process of construction over a lifetime. Shaped by a visual vocabulary of elaborately draped fabrics, the protagonists in Cindy Sherman’s images appear to dissolve into their surroundings, heightening the tension between concealment and display to examine how women negotiate visibility in different phases of life. Through these staged scenes, the artist foregrounds the performance—and perception—of both femininity and beauty, probing the societal expectations and enduring pressure to fashion and maintain a public image over time. The works on view mark a sophisticated evolution in her engagement with fashion imagery, with many pieces incorporating fabrics and other elements drawn from Chanel’s extensive archives. Sherman’s dialogue with the fashion house dates back to her Ominous Landscapes series (2010 – 2012), in which her characters wore archival garments and accessories. The new series on view in London embraces an intensified sense of theatrical styling, drawing on the visual codes of editorial photography to disrupt the glamour of fashion with deliberate artifice and fabrication.

Discover how pictorialism developed across the world from the 1880s to the 1960s in this exhibition at Tate Modern. Explore the birth of art photography through a range of works by international artists.

For Salman Toor (b.1983), drawing is an integral part of his artistic life. To coincide with the exhibition Salman Toor: Someone Like You, this focused display of a substantial group of works on paper, made with ink, charcoal, and gouache, showcases the artist’s mastery of drawing and the way in which it informs his practice as a painter. Having started drawing as a child, figure-drawing classes were a crucial part of Toor’s undergraduate training. Informed by his close study of art history, particularly of baroque works, Toor’s arresting drawings are characterised by his striking treatment of light as well as his rendering of real and implied movement to create pictures charged with a sense of dynamism and inner life. Toor often works on variations of recurring motifs. Among the works included in this presentation are examples of his distinctive drawings of individuals and groups of figures at border control checks, as well as still-lifes such as Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), which capture the fascination and greed connected to histories of accumulation and plundering. At times, the artist has reworked historical paintings that especially affected him into new narratives and compositions, such as in his drawing Three Mascots (2023), after Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s grisaille The Three Soldiers (1568). Although they are derived from his imagination, Toor’s drawings are often based on memories, especially the faces of friends and acquaintances. Toor has said that drawing someone is a way of connecting, ‘like praying for someone, or thinking about them, creating a fantasy of them’.

visitors into active participants Playful and mesmerising, this immersive exhibition celebrates the visionary work of [LINK text='Julio Le Parc' href='https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/julio-le-parc-1494']. Featuring his striking interactive installations, shimmering light sculptures, and large-scale geometric paintings, the show spans an extraordinary career from the late 1950s to the 2020s. He is best known for his pioneering kinetic sculptures, which use light, movement and mirrored surfaces to surprise and draw in the viewer. Le Parc wanted to make viewers feel active, with their acts of looking and experiencing bringing each artwork to life; to make more democratic art that everyone can easily enjoy. The show also explores the depth and diversity of Le Parc’s talent, with trailblazing installation art plus canvases and works on paper experimenting with colour combinations and dynamic visual effects. Born in Argentina in 1928, Le Parc moved to France in 1958, where he settled. He was part of the vibrant artistic scene of 1960s Paris, a time of radical innovation and boundless creativity, but always maintained strong connections to Latin America.

Discover an overlooked innovator of the Bloomsbury group, Winifred Gill. This display will spotlight the artist Winifred Gill (1891-1981), through works held in the Courtauld’s collection. Although a gifted artist and a central figure at Roger Fry’s avant-garde Omega Workshops, Gill’s contributions have since remained largely overlooked. She studied at the Slade before joining the Workshops as a designer, maker and, for a time, business manager. On display will be a number of Gill’s inventive toy designs for the Omega Workshops, as well as a remarkable still life painting made around this time that is deeply characteristic of the Bloomsbury style in its bold response to colour and form. Later prints will show how Gill’s style developed in the 1920s while working as a teacher of arts and crafts in the pioneering Bristol and Manchester University Settlements. Sketchbooks and printing materials will offer a deeper understanding of her practice.

The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize showcases the work of talented young photographers, gifted amateurs and established professionals in the very best of contemporary photography. The competition celebrates a diverse range of images and tells the fascinating stories behind the creation of works, from formal commissioned portraits to more spontaneous and intimate moments capturing friends and family. The selected images, many of which are on display for the first time, explore both traditional and contemporary approaches to the photographic portrait whilst capturing a range of characters, moods and locations.

'You have to see the real thing… seeing a real painting is the only way to do it.'

Claude Monet Nymphéas 1914-1917 Legs Michel Monet, 1966. Inv. 6085 © Musée Marmottan Monet / Studio Christian Baraja SLB Enjoy the exquisite works of one of history’s best-loved artists Tate Modern’s first ever exhibition focusing exclusively on Claude Monet brings together breathtaking paintings from lenders across the globe, including rarely seen works from private collections. Based mainly in France, Monet lived through an era which saw the rise of railways, industrialisation, the modern city, and the adoption of standardised timekeeping. Drawing on new research, the show explores how Monet responded to these seismic changes through his work. The exhibition centres on Monet’s profound and evolving relationship with time. We see how he echoed the rapid pace of modern life by capturing the fleeting, instantaneous ‘impressionist’ moment, through works such as Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877). We are also shown, in celebrated series such as Poplars on the Epte (1891–1897), Monet’s attempts, through variations of the same subject, to capture a specific, transient instant in time. Finally, the show reveals Monet’s enduring relationship with nature and how, as a subject in perpetual movement, it shifts with the passing years and seasons. We see his retreat into his beloved garden in Giverny, resulting in the creation of the world-famous Water Lilies cycle.

Yuan Jai Jadeite Cabbage 1999. Ink and color on silk. 96 × 170 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space Experience the intricate beauty of this traditional art-form Ink is Tate’s first ever exhibition dedicated to the enduring and profoundly philosophical practice of ink painting. Serving as an introduction to this beautiful, intricate artform, the show highlights key ideas within the ink tradition, including its sense of historical continuity and relationship to the natural world. Organised around three themes ‘Life’, ‘the Garden’, and ‘Breath’, the exhibition features around 80 works. While ink painting is widely practiced across East Asia and its diasporas, the show focuses on key artists in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan who helped reinvent it for the twentieth century. Each found new ways to honour the tradition while pushing it forward - boldly experimenting, yet staying true to its core principles. By tracing the connections between these artists, Ink reveals a vibrant regional network and challenges familiar Western narratives of modern art, including ideas of originality, expressionism and the avant-garde.

Baya L’âne bleu 1948. Gouache and watercolour on paper. 1000 × 1500 mm. Collection Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Geneva / Tunis © Baya Estate, Courtesy Mennour, Paris. Photo: © AGUTTES – Rodolphe Alepuz Witness the bold and beautiful works of leading Algerian artist Tate Modern presents the UK’s first ever solo exhibition of the work of Algerian artist Baya (Mahieddine). Featuring more than 100 of her vivid gouache watercolours, alongside unique ceramic sculptures, this show traces Baya’s groundbreaking impact across cultural landscapes in North Africa and Europe during the 20th century. Forging an artistic and cultural identity in newly independent Algeria, Baya’s geometric patterns and bold colours were rooted in the creative and natural surroundings of her homeland, as well as its storytelling and musical traditions. Throughout her life, she defied attempts to categorise her work in terms like ‘surrealist’ or ‘naive’, instead claiming her distinctly modernist approach as simply ‘Baya-ism’.

Witness the powerful work of leading contemporary artist Nalini Malani Surveying the incredible six-decade career of contemporary artist Nalini Malani, this exhibition is characterised by its ability to evoke both beauty and discomfort. As a global storyteller based in Mumbai, Malani’s work is deeply influenced by her own lived experience as a child refugee of India’s Partition. Her practice centres on rewriting Western and Eastern history, myths and literature in a way that prompts viewers to question the world around them. With this exhibition, Malani addresses the complexity of our times and reveals the hopeful conviction that guides her practice: ‘The future is female, there is no other way’. Known in India since the late sixties for her pioneering multidisciplinary approach, Malani gained international recognition with signature monumental multi-media works and installations such as Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, and In Search of Vanished Blood. These works will be presented in the show alongside her recent iPad animation series Can You Hear Me? Designed specially with the artist, this is Malani’s largest survey exhibition to date, compromising almost 200 works. These include rarely seen watercolour diaries, black and white films, camera-less photography, large-scale video-based works, innovative reverse paintings and a newly-commissioned wall drawing and performance piece.

Lynda Benglis, Self 1970–6, printed 2010. Tate. © Lynda Benglis. Immerse yourself in the electrifying, rule-shattering world of Lynda Benglis is renowned for challenging conventions and reinventing materials. This approach is already evident in her celebrated ‘pours’, first made in the late 1960s, when she mixed latex and Day-Glo pigments and poured them directly onto the floor to dramatic effect. Over the following decades, Benglis has continued to push the boundaries of form and material across video, photography, sculpture, and installation, working with substances as varied as polyurethane foam, bronze, ceramic, paper and glitter, to create an oeuvre as surprising as it is radical. Tate Modern will present more than 50 works spanning the late 1960s to the present, showcasing the inventive aesthetic that has cemented the American artist's role as one of the most influential artists of our time.