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


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Viewing Wolfgang Tillmans at Christie’s London

Hotfoot it down to Christie’s London to see a beautiful collection of fifteen photographs by German photography giant Wolfgang Tillmans, all coming to the market for the first time from a well-established private collection. This is an exclusive chance to preview the works ahead of going up for auction during Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale, opening online for bids from 26 February with a live auction on 6 March.

The Way We Look includes an iconic Tillmans studio portrait of Kate Moss wearing a red dress – Kate sitting – estimated at 12 – 18,000 GBP. Other works – all from the 1990s, one of Tillmans’ most prolific and important periods – move between the artist’s observations of social political transformations of the decade, and his inimate, apparently desultory still life scenes, to early experiments with camera-less photography and abstraction that became increasingly important in his later oeuvre.

We’re intrigued to see what these reach at auction later this month. Meanwhile, this is a chance to get a rare and concise insight into the Turner-Prize winning artist’s world and ongoing, intertwined interests. As the artist once said: “within me it is all one continuum. I’m not just drifting around, taking a picture here and there. Each type of work is carefully considered in its own right. On the other hand, the great advantage is my liberty to do all these things.”

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Dates
12 February 2025 — 21 February 2025

Viewing Mickalene Thomas at The Hayward

Mickalene Thomas’ work is an act of joyful reclamation—one that tugs at the seams of historical representations until they unravel. As this newly-opened two-storey UK debut of the American artist at the Hayward proves, Thomas’ has radically insisted on love, on beauty, and on female empowerment.

Black female agency is at the centre of Thomas’ work and in this show, her figures – usually based on women in the artist’s own life and inner circle – are larger than life, and literally dazzling, rhinestones embedded in their surfaces.

Beyond these better known sides of Thomas’ work this show also delves more into her sculptures and installations, positioning her within a tradition of Black American artists experimenting with unconventional materials and forms. Thomas’ personal references are often cribbed from the 1970s, the decade of her childhood and one she often returns too, replicating furnishings, wallpaper and bric-à-brac to restage domestic environments that evoke comfort and safety.

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Dates
11 February 2025 — 05 May 2025

Viewing Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses at David Zwirner

In his astonishing career – spanning from the 1970s to today – the German photographer Thomas Ruff has covered many of art’s major genres, from the nude to landscape to architectural photography, working in series, attempts to understand and unravel the ‘grammar of photography’. Photography, in essence, is Ruff’s subject and muse.

At this new exhibition – Ruff’s first London solo since his 2017 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition – Ruff unveils two recent series for the first time, explorations into photographic abstraction. At first, they look like charcoal drawings – as Susanna Brown, curator, points out. A staggering two metres tall, they reveal themselves as smoky, hazy photographs only on closer inspection.

Ruff employed an experimental process to produce these giant photographic abstractions, in a purpose-built studio. He arranged compositions of glass objects, such as mirrors and lesnes, on a whiteboard before exposing them to multiple beams of light. Working more like a scientist than an artist, Ruff explains ““There’s not one way of making photographs. There are thousands of possibilities you can choose from…. I am just interested in the result and if the result is worth discussing.”

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Dates
30 January 2025 — 22 March 2025
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