This week we are paying homage to our founder Katy’s Sri Lankan heritage. Colomboscope is a dynamic interdisciplinary arts festival in Colombo, running to the end of the month. This is the ninth edition of Colombo’s acclaimed contemporary arts festival, taking place from 21 – 31 January 2026 across multiple free and public venues in Colombo, Sri Lanka, such as Barefoot Gallery, Colpetty Town House, Musicmatters, Radicle Gallery and the Rio Complex, Colomboscope encourages audiences to move fluidly between spaces, encounters and perspectives, emphasising participation, reciprocity and collective presence.

Titled Rhythm Alliances, this edition, curated by Hajra Haider Karrar with artistic director Natasha Ginwala, explores rhythm in its many forms — from the energising and recurring to the haunting, turbulent and imagined. Rather than presenting a static exhibition, the festival unfolds as a living composition of sound, movement, performance, film and immersive events that together create a communal “score” of artistic creation and dialogue.

Over 50 artists and cultural practitioners participate in Rhythm Alliances, presenting new commissions, performances and site-responsive projects that address rhythms of remembrance, dissent and renewal. The programme invites audiences to consider how sonic counter-currents and embodied experiences — from drumming and listening to choreography and film — can make complex social realities audible, forge connections across communities, and imagine shared futures. An exciting forum for dialogue, resistance and creative alliance-building in the heart of South Asia.

New Contemporaries 2026 at South London Gallery is a major group exhibition spotlighting the freshest voices in the UK contemporary art scene in the Main Gallery and Fire Station Galleries. It forms part of the annual New Contemporaries programme, a long-standing initiative (founded in 1949) that supports early-career and emerging artists through exhibitions, mentoring, residencies and professional development, and has historically showcased artists who go on to shape contemporary art practice.

This year’s exhibition brings together 26 artists selected from an open national call by a panel of established practitioners: Pio Abad, Louise Giovanelli and Grace Ndiritu. The varied roster includes practitioners working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image and more, reflecting the breadth of contemporary artistic approaches happening across the UK today. The works on display engage with a range of pressing themes and concerns. Many respond critically to dystopian futures, the climate crisis, gentrification, displacement and systems of power, while others explore our relationship with digital technologies, memory, belonging and identity.

Collectively, the works reveal how emergent artists are negotiating the complexities of our social, environmental and technological worlds through inventive and experimental artistic forms. Free to visit and open to the public without booking, New Contemporaries 2026 offers an exciting opportunity to encounter work by the next generation of UK artists at a pivotal moment in their careers. Following its London run, the exhibition will travel to MIMA in Middlesbrough in May–August 2026.