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

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Viewing Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear

The Wick Culture - Wales Bonner Spring Summer 2015 Afrique. Photo Dexter Lander

Above Wales Bonner Spring Summer 2015 Afrique. Photo Dexter Lander

The Wick Culture - Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A, featuring Randi Rahm look worn by Billy Porter (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Above Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A, featuring Randi Rahm look worn by Billy Porter (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Wick Culture - Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Above Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Above Wales Bonner Spring Summer 2015 Afrique. Photo Dexter Lander

Above Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A, featuring Randi Rahm look worn by Billy Porter (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Above Installation view of Fashioning Masculinities at V&A (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

19 March — 6 November 2022
The V&A, London
https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fashioning-masculinities-the-art-of-menswear

Landing at the V&A this month is the museum’s first major exhibition celebrating the power, artistry and diversity of masculine attire and appearance. Through around 100 historical and contemporary looks and 100 artworks, displayed thematically across three galleries, it traces how menswear has been fashioned and refashioned over the centuries. It will also explore how designers, tailors and artists, as well as their clients and sitters, have constructed and performed masculinity across the ages.

Shown alongside classical sculptures, Renaissance paintings and iconic photographs from the V&A’s own collection will be historical and contemporary looks by the likes of Harris Reed, Grace Wales Bonner and Raf Simons. Also on display will be a film of Matthew Bourne’s Spitfire (1988) performed by New Adventures dancers, which takes place in the world of men’s underwear advertising and mail order catalogue photography.

‘Rather than a linear or definitive history, this is a journey across time and gender,’ explains co-curator Claire Wilcox. ‘This will be a celebration of the masculine wardrobe, and everyone is invited to join in.’ Book your tickets now.

Viewing Rachel Jones: say cheeeeese

The Wick Culture - say cheeeeese (Production Image) (2022). Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Kyle Thurman (from the Instagram @kyle_thurman_)

Above say cheeeeese (Production Image) (2022). Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Kyle Thurman (from the Instagram @kyle_thurman_)

Above Rachel Jones

Above say cheeeeese (Production Image) (2022). Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Kyle Thurman (from the Instagram @kyle_thurman_)

Above Rachel Jones

12 March–12 June 2022
Chisenhale Gallery, London
https://chisenhale.org.uk/exhibition/rachel-jones/

Since she graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019, art world darling Rachel Jones has gone from strength to strength. In 2021 she featured in Hayward Gallery’s celebrated Mixing It Up exhibition and mounted her first solo show at Thaddaeus Ropac, which was described by The Art Newspaper as ‘one of the most acclaimed new painting shows in recent years.’ At auction, her work commands six-figure sums.

Now, she’s enjoying her first institutional show at Chisenhale Gallery in London. For her Chisenhale commission, Jones has used oil pastels and oil sticks to produce a new body of paintings on canvas and a series of stickers for the inner gallery walls and exterior doors. You’ll see her now-familiar motifs — teeth and mouths — reimagined to incorporate bold, hand-drawn lines over dense blocks of colour.
Jones’s clashing marks, shapes and tones prompt the viewer to contemplate what emotional responses are assigned to a colour or a form, for example, to reconsider yellow’s association with happiness. Rachel Jones is going places and this exhibition shows why.

Viewing Damien Hirst: Natural History

The Wick Culture - Damien Hirst, Analgesics, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, Analgesics, 1993

The Wick Culture - Damien Hirst, School of Thought, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, School of Thought, 1993

The Wick Culture - Damien Hirst, Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, Analgesics, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, School of Thought, 1993

Above Damien Hirst, Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded, 1993

9 March–summer (no set end date)
Gagosian Britannia Street, London
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2022/damien-hirst-natural-history/

Enter Gagosian Britannia Street and you’ll come face to face with sharks, sheep, fish and calves. They are preserved in formaldehyde of course, but the effect is still somewhat unsettling. But that’s what Damien Hirst intended: ‘I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it,’ he once said of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a fourteen-foot tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde.

Currently installed across the Britannia Street gallery are more than 20 iconic examples spanning a 30-year period. Shown alongside early works, including The Impossible Lovers (1991), a cabinet filled with glass jars containing preserved cow’s organs, are his complex tableaux such as The Pursuit of Oblivion (2004), in which animal carcasses are joined by other objects including knives and a chain mail glove.

Part of Hirst’s takeover of Britannia Street gallery, Natural History is the first ever show dedicated to his formaldehyde sculptures. It highlights the artist’s ongoing interest in the link between art and science, while also exploring Hirst’s meditations on life, death, faith and fact. Love it or hate it, this exhibition will get under your skin.