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


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Viewing James Vaulkhard: The Sublime & The Consumed at Blond Contemporary

Back in London this week’s pick is a new exhibition by Kenyan-born artist James Vaulkhard. Inspired by the ideals and ambitions of the Hudson River School painters, Vaulkhard went on a 5,000 mile road trip across the American landscape. The results, transcribed into a new body of striking paintings, makes up this show, titled, The Sublime & The Consumed at Blond Contemporary, curated by MC Llamas.

Vaulkhard’s new works see the artist push further into an abstract language, while exploring the history and evolution of landscape painting and the American sublime. They also become a deeply personal reflection on the state of America today, reflected in the landscape and in Vaulkhard’s observations and encounters during his travels.

Vaulkhard’s combines classical techniques, employing oil paint, oil stick and pastel, with an avant-garde approach to colour and line. The expressive, textured surfaces of his works evoke dynamic stories about modern day America, a place of contradictions and tensions. Find out more about Vaulkhard’s work and inspirations in this week’s Spotlight at The Wick.

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Dates
11 April 2025 — 09 May 2025

Viewing David Hockney 25 at Fondation Louis Vuitton

The blockbuster opening everyone is talking about this week is David Hockney’s magnificent and monumental take over at Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris. Hockney has been involved in every detail of making the exhibition, and it shows, from the sublime hang and layout of more than 400 works drawn from collections all over the world, staged across 11 rooms to immersive video installations and more.

This is the biggest show Hockney has ever had, and offers an unprecedented view of the artist’s trajectory and seven-decade career, with particular focus on his prolific production in the last 25 years – when Hockney has returned to live and work in the UK and France. It also includes iconic early works (swims and ponds abound), sixty spectacular portraits, and works made in London only recently completed and shown for the very time in public, proving Hockney’s unending passion for painting now, aged 87.

Journeying through the phenomenal British artist’s range of interests form opera to nature to people’s interior worlds, his mastery of both portrait and landscape painting genres and his dazzling use of colour, makes this exhibition riveting from start to finish. In both scale and sheer volume of works, it’s an unparalleled Hockney moment not to be missed.

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Dates
09 April 2025 — 31 August 2025

Viewing David Remfry RA at Beverley Gallery

David Remfry is the celebrated British painter best known for his large-scale watercolour paintings, in particular the works he made in the 1980s and 1990s, captured liberated friends and the colourful characters he met during 17 years spent living and working at the storied Hotel Chelsea, New York City.

This major retrospective at East Riding Museum indeed marks a homecoming for 82-year-old Remfry – whose career began in Yorkshire, where he studied at Hull College of Arts and Crafts, before moving to London after he graduated in 1964. The show charts a dazzling career and life through five decades of painting and drawing in Yorkshire, London and New York, acknowledging Remfry’s contributions to the development of British art (he received an MBE for Services to British Art in America in 2001).

From Remfry’s first solo show in 1973 to his solo show to his portraits of people and their beloved dogs, to more recent paintings returning to oil, his work remains consistently full of life, of love – and of course, dancing, a subject he has also devoted many works to, a form of joyful rebellion and freedom.

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Dates
29 March 2025 — 21 June 2025
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The Wick Culture - Yeonjoon Yoon, Gavin Poole, Conrad Shawcross, Tristram Hunt at UMBILICAL

Happenings Conrad Shawcross: UMBILICAL at Here East

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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
The Wick Culture - Shezad Dawood

Happenings Chain of Hope at Saatchi Gallery

Happenings