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Viewing Chantal Joffe: The Dog’s Birthday at Skarstedt Paris

The Wick Culture - Me and Esme in a Korean Restaurant, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Me and Esme in a Korean Restaurant, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

The Wick Culture - Reading in Bed, 2025, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Reading in Bed, 2025, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

The Wick Culture - Richard in the Bath, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Richard in the Bath, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Me and Esme in a Korean Restaurant, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Reading in Bed, 2025, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Above Richard in the Bath, 2024, Chantal Joffe. © Chantal Joffe, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro. Photos by Jack Hems.

Chantal Joffe: The Dog’s Birthday

Skarstedt Paris
April 3 – May 31 2025

British painter Chantal Joffe – a recent Monday Muse at The Wick – has a new solo exhibition at Skarstedt’s Paris gallery, running to May 31. The Dog’s Birthday sees Joffe’s work return to the French capital for the first time since 2001, paintings concerned with domestic duties and the passage of time.

“I made this show,” Joffe has said, “thinking about Paris – about Vuillard in particular and how he painted in apartments his family lived in, and how the family dramas play out against the changing wallpaper and the newspaper reading of the everyday – and how for him colour is tone and tone is everything.’

As well as formal concerns, there is also mourning, grief and a sense of grappling with time in these paintings, that psychological pull that often underscores Joffe’s portraits and self-portraits – several of the latter are also included here. It is an exhibition that gets at the very meaning of painting itself, and its complex relationship with memory and mortality.

Viewing The Power of Trees at Kew Gardens

The Wick Culture - Horizontal–Vaakasuora by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above Horizontal–Vaakasuora by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

The Wick Culture - Susan Conroy, Ginkgo Biloba. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above Susan Conroy, Ginkgo Biloba. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

The Wick Culture - The Power of Trees at Kew Gardens. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above The Power of Trees at Kew Gardens. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above Horizontal–Vaakasuora by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above Susan Conroy, Ginkgo Biloba. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

Above The Power of Trees at Kew Gardens. Image courtesy of Kew Gardens

The Power of Trees

Kew Gardens
12 April – 14 September 2025

The latest seasonal show at Kew is now open, and ode to the enduring power and beauty of trees, in nature, art and culture. Kew itself is home to 14,000 trees – and is the perfect place to honour them as a muse to artists over the centuries.

A range of works is on show until September at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, a hub for botanical art opened a decade ago by Sir David Attenborough to house the astonishing collection of Dr Shirely Sherwood, with Kew’s own collection numbering more than 200,000 pieces of Botanical art.

A highlight of The Power of Trees is a multi-sensory piece by Finnish visual artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Horizontal–Vaakasuora, a portrait of a 30-metre spruce found in Finland’s boreal forest. With sound effects evoking the tree’s natural habitat, it’s a captivating and poignant piece, and a testament to the grandeur and majesty of one of our greatest natural wonders.

Viewing Amoako Boafo at Gagosian London

The Wick Culture - Amoako Boafo, Amidst Tulips, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Amidst Tulips, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

The Wick Culture - Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Joe Humphrys, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Joe Humphrys, Courtesy Gagosian

The Wick Culture - Amoako Boafo, Shoulder Stand, 2023. Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Shoulder Stand, 2023. Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Amidst Tulips, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Joe Humphrys, Courtesy Gagosian

Above Amoako Boafo, Shoulder Stand, 2023. Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. © Amoako Boafo, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Amoako Boafo: I Do Not Come to You by Chance

Gagosian
April 10–May 24, 2025

Amoako Boafo needs no introduction: the 40 year-old Ghanaian portraitist is celebrated around the world for his luminous, bold and original figurative paintings. He’s partnered in the past with Dior (a collaborative collection was released in 2021), and has painted on Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship. His works today regularly achieve seven figures at auction.

Boafo joined Gagosian in 2022, and this exhibition – his first UK solo show – is on view at the gallery’s Grosvenor Hill location. It is also his first solo exhibition in the UK. It’s title, I Do Not Come to You By Chance, is after Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s 2009 novel – a humorous and poignant story of the conflicts and contradictions of contemporary life. The title places Boafo’s portraits too in the realm of rich contemporary African storytelling, able to make the personal feel epic and the universal feel intimate.

He has taken over the large galleries with paintings, but also an installation recreating the courtyard of his childhood home in Ghana, made with architect Glenn DeRoche. The exhibition includes a large number of new and recent self-portraits, including with the artist’s young son, and paintings of friends and family – their tactility and texture comes in part from Boafo’s innovative technique of painting with his fingers. “I make paintings that allow me to celebrate where I come from and what I aspire to be, while sharing unique perspectives and understanding”, the artist says.