Our top picks of exhibitions together with cultural spaces and places, both online and in the real world.

All, Art, Auctions, Exhibitions, Travel & Hospitality, Initiatives

Viewing Asian Art Week London

The Wick Culture - Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th - early 18th century
Courtesy of Sotheby's

Above Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th – early 18th century Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The Wick Culture - Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Above Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Above Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th – early 18th century Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Above Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Asian Art Week London

Various Venues
30th October – 8 November, 2024

Taking place every Autumn for more than two decades Asian Art Week London aims to bring together leading international dealers and auction houses from the UK, Europe, USA and Asia in the UK capital, focusing on galleries and auction houses specialising in in a wide variety of ancient to modern Asian art, ranging from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Islamic and Middle Eastern and Himalayan to Central Asian, Southeast Asian regions.

Exhibitions showcase and offer for sale important Asian artworks, and are often accompanied by academically researched publications, while the many receptions, lectures and special events create a unique occasion to engage with Asian art. The 27th edition of the event begins on 30th October. At auction, we are especially excited about Sotheby’s online sale (29 October – 5 November) Art of Japan showcasing rare masterpieces spanning the 12th Century to today, including 17th-Century screens, and Senju Hiroshi’s waterfall painting, a Shadow Painting by Takamatsu Jiro, as well as minimalist white ceramics by Kurado Taizo.

Elsewhere, among the gallery participants, be sure to head to specialist dealer Raquelle Arzan’s presentation of Vietnamese contemporary and Indochine Art, and don’t miss a visit to new gallery, Ming Gu, on New Bond Street, established last year by Guming Song, to exhibit emerging and mid-career artists of East Asian heritage, bringing artists who are steeped in traditions and yet to challenge it with their modern interpretation. The annual Asian Art in London Gala Party takes place on Wednesday, October 30 at the V&A.

Viewing Barbara Walker Being Here

The Wick Culture - End of the Affair (2023) Barbara Walker © Barbara Walker. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024.

The Wick Culture - Barbara Walker, The Sitter, 2002 © Barbara Walker.
All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024.

Barbara Walker Being Here

Whitworth Art Gallery
4 October 2024 – 26 January 2025

Her paintings and drawings take months of research into neglected archives, and are the result of empathetic and intense observations; Barbara Walker’s arresting figurative works represent Black stories, histories and contributions to Britain in astonishing and evocative detail. “I’m very interested in visibility and non-visibility in terms of marginalised communities. I use erasure as a metaphor for how the Black community is overlooked, ignored, and even dehumanised by society.” Walker has said.

Being Here at The Whitworth is Walker’s first major survey, and presents over 70 extraordinary artworks made over 25 years, including rarely seen paintings, her Turner Prize nominated drawing series Burden of Proof (2022-23), and a newly commissioned printed wallpaper Soft Power (2024) inspired by the Whitworth’s collection and paying tribute to the Windrush generation, who Walker has continued to represent in her work. Also presented are major series Private Face (1998-2005), Louder Than Words (2006-09), Show and Tell (2008-15), Shock and Awe (2015-20), Vanishing Point (2018-ongoing).

Walker’s breath taking oeuvre ranges from delicate, intimate graphite drawings on archival documents to the monumental charcoal wall drawings she is celebrated for, but her themes are persistent and urgent – immigrant, Black life, and challenging what art history tells us about our past and present. An unmissable exhibition on one of the UK’s most important artists.

Viewing Lee, Directed by Ellen Kuras

The Wick Culture - Lee Miller dehusking corn in the garden of Farleys House, East Sussex, circa 1960
Roland Penrose/Lee Miller Archives

Above Lee Miller dehusking corn in the garden of Farleys House, East Sussex, circa 1960 Roland Penrose/Lee Miller Archives

Above Lee

Above Lee Miller dehusking corn in the garden of Farleys House, East Sussex, circa 1960 Roland Penrose/Lee Miller Archives

Above Lee

Lee

The Cinema in the Power Station
Battersea Power Station

Lee – released last month in the UK – is the highly anticipated and critically acclaimed film telling the story of Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, the fashion model turned World War II journalist and photographer, who was a war correspondent for Vogue magazine. It’s a remarkable, thrilling account of an artist who changed the way we see.

Miller is played by Kate Winslet, who also produced the film – it took eight years to make. The cast includes Marion Cotillard, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor and Alexander Skarsgård, and follows Miller through a dramatic decade in her career, when Miller abandoned her role as a model and muse in New York and went to the frontline in Europe to document the horrors inflicted by the Nazi regime. She was one of the few women at the time to do so.

Miller’s dramatic, sometimes surrealist images of camps, conflicts, and at hospitals that would have an enduring impact and legacy (the American photographer died in 1977) but were not without personal consequences. The film evokes Miller’s dedication, magnetism and humanity – something seen in her photographs too. A major exhibition on Lee Miller opens at Tate Britain in October 2025.