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


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Viewing The Connaught Christmas Tree by Urs Fischer

The Connaught ushers in holiday magic with a spectacular new installation in Carlos Place – the 2025 Christmas tree designed by Urs Fischer. Towering at 31 feet (9.5 metres), a grand Nordmann fir stands tall on Carlos Place in Mayfair, its branches transformed into a living, luminous artwork.

Fischer’s vision draws on his celebrated 2022 People installation. Adorning the fir are dozens of glowing spheres – each one containing an LED-lit, AI-generated face – representing people from every background, each age, each corner of the globe. The effect is striking and hopeful, turning a traditional symbol of Christmas into a modern ode to unity and shared humanity.

The tree celebrates coming together and community, welcoming all who pass by to pause, reflect, and connect. In Fischer’s words, the hope is that “people who don’t engage with art get something out of it” – that a simple glance might spark wonder or connection.

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Dates
20 November 2025 — 07 January 2026

Viewing Louise Giovanelli: Decades at St Mary Le Strand

Get a dose of shimmering festive magic – Louise Giovanelli has wrapped the historic façade of St Mary Le Strand in a spectacular, temporary artwork titled Decades. From 19 November 2025 until 18 January 2026, the south-facing side of the 300-year-old baroque church will be transformed by Giovanelli’s signature blend of illusion, light, and historical resonance, a special commission for Create London and Westminster City Council.

Giovanelli – one of the most dynamic painters of her generation – has created an installation that drapes the church in a gigantic, shimmering curtain, a long-time subject of the artist who usually works in paint. The trompe-l’œil piece conceals and reveals a composite image of soft drapery, based on a silver curtain she saw in a working-men’s club – the Joy Division song Decades was playing when Giovanelli encountered it, hence the title.

Giovanelli is drawn to the way these drapes can “make people feel like celebrities”, she has said. More than just a visual spectacle, the work calls attention to heritage, memory, and transformation. By night, the curtain will glow softly. It re-animates a once-hidden architectural gem, inviting the public to pause, reflect – and perhaps see the familiar cityscape in a new light.

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Dates
19 November 2025 — 18 January 2026

Viewing Cato at Saatchi Yates

Step into Saatchi Yates in St James’s this week where the gallery presents a new solo exhibition by Cato — the London-based, Brighton-born painter also known as Toby Grant. Spanning barbershops, diners, home interiors and music-filled studios, the canvases test a gentle, yet powerful, re-imagining of Black communal life. Cato doesn’t simply document reality — he constructs intimate, imaginative spaces populated by figures drawn from his South London orbit.

Technically, the works combine airbrush softness with painterly clarity, often exaggerating hands or heads to amplify gestures, mood and emotion. Hues are saturated, figures glow — expressions freeze into moments of stillness that feel cinematic in their clarity. In one painting, a barber-shop scene captures a sense of ritual: reverent, communal, as though the chairs and mirrors are altars to memory and identity. In another, musicians rehearse in a cramped studio — paintbrushes, canvases, even a dusty Picasso book on a table hint at art history and legacy, rooting the everyday in both personal and universal context.

With each scene, Cato invites visitors to inhabit spaces — imagined, remembered, and re-envisioned — where Black London life is visible, dignified, and full of quiet resonance.

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Dates
13 November 2025 — 11 January 2026
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The Wick Culture - Anuk Rocha, 2026
Spotlight

Spotlight Anuk Rocha creates patchwork portraits from fleeting feelings

The Wick Culture - Yeonjoon Yoon, Gavin Poole, Conrad Shawcross, Tristram Hunt at UMBILICAL

Happenings Conrad Shawcross: UMBILICAL at Here East

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Gallery view of the 2025 Summer Exhibition
Photo: © David Parry/ Royal Academy of Arts

Happenings RA Summer Party

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Katy Wickremesinghe at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings Rachel Jones at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings
The Wick Culture - Katy Wickremesinghe at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings Rachel Jones at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Happenings
The Wick Culture - The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East
Storehouse, including over 100 mini
curated displays ‘hacked’ into the ends
and sides of the storage racking. Image by Hufton + Crow for V&A

Happenings V&A East Storehouse

Happenings