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


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Viewing Beyond the Streets London

Landing at the Saatchi Gallery this February is Beyond the Streets, the most comprehensive graffiti and street art exhibition to open in the UK. Curated by graffiti historian Roger Gastman and installed across all three floors of the Saatchi Gallery, it brings together work by over 100 international artists to examine the powerful impact of graffiti and street art across the world.

Each of the exhibition’s chapters will explore pivotal moments in the history of street art, from the emergence of punk to the birth of hip-hop. New works will be shown alongside large-scale installations, original ephemera and fashion pieces inspired by this avant-garde movement. Highlights include FUTURA2000’s legendary 30 ft painting made on stage with The Clash and a graffiti-filled installation titled The Vandal’s Bedroom by American artist Todd James. Also noteworthy is Trash Records, an interactive installation within a fully recreated record shop.

‘We really hope to inspire through a curious lens that digs into the nooks and crannies of all these subcultures and the massive role London played in bringing them to light on a world stage,’ said Gastman. We couldn’t be more excited. Hop to it.

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Dates
17 February 2023 — 09 May 2023

Viewing Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle

The Barbican’s much anticipated new exhibition puts an influential but largely undervalued artist firmly in her place as one of the most important portrait painters of the 20th century. Born in 1900, Alice Neel painted figuratively in New York during a period in which it was deeply unfashionable to do so. ‘One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by, right hot off the griddle… the vitality is taken out of real living,’ she said.

The largest UK exhibition of Neel’s work to date presents paintings spanning her 60-year career alongside archival material, including photography, letters and film. Crowned the ‘court painter of the underground’, she favoured subjects who were unfamiliar in art, among them pregnant women, queer performers, and Black and Puerto Rican children.

You’ll see these alongside portraits of famous faces including Joe Gould, Sam Brody and Frank O’Hara, and intimate depictions of friends, lovers and neighbours. No matter the subject, Neel painted with an untrammelled energy that reveals the humanity of her subjects.

Largely unrecognised for her work during her lifetime, Neel has since come to be championed for the candour with which she looked at the world. At last, it seems she is finally getting the widespread institutional recognition she deserves. Run, don’t walk.

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Dates
16 February 2023 — 21 May 2023

Viewing Two Worlds Entwined: Annie Morris and Idris Khan

‘Two Worlds Entwined: Annie Morris and Idris Khan’ will explore the artistic practices of British contemporary artist couple Morris and Khan within the historic and intimate setting of Newlands House gallery. Wander through floor boarded rooms of mustard honey hues throughout the iconic Georgian house to view over 60 works from the artists as they invite you into their creative realm – where their multi-disciplinary works sit side by side in stunning juxtaposition.

Presented in vibrant and playful hues, Annie Morris’ stack sculptures punctuate the space. The stacks of spheres are strong but also delicate and fragile: a duality seen frequently in Morris’ work referencing personal experiences around still birth and her journey of grief and latter creativity. Symbols and characters repeat across Morris’ body of work through her needlework and drawing, with her now known ‘Flower Woman’ a bulbous figure exploring mother and child appearing in drawings, tapestries and even armchairs.

Drawing also on personal experience, Idris Khan, draws inspiration from his own journey – investigating layered experience of memory and creativity as well as the history of art and music. His work draws reference upon philosophical and theological texts, including explorations around religion. Khan captured the attention of the wider art world with Every…page of the Holy Qur’an. In this work, photographs of each page of the holy book are layered to create an illegible pattern. It speaks of an ambivalence toward his birth religion, an anxiety about his past but still a need to connect with it.

Curated by Maya Binkin, she says of Morris and Khan, “Their lives are entwined, yet their practices are separate. The dynamics of this relationship will be present in the exhibition… As in most relationships, there is love and conflict cemented together.”

Playful and contemplative, this is a must see. Well worth the train ticket.

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Dates
11 February 2023 — 07 May 2023
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