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Anna Ancher: Painting Light is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to the Danish painter Anna Ancher (1859–1935) and features over 40 paintings drawn from Danish institutions such as the Skagens Museum and the Hirschsprung Collection, moving from Ancher’s early realist works to later, more experimental treatments of light and form, showing how she masterfully bridged academic traditions and modernist impulses.

Ancher grew up in the fishing village of Skagen, where she became the only native member of the celebrated “Skagen Painters” community. Her work is characterised by a profound attention to light: in interiors, in everyday domestic scenes, and in the rugged Danish landscape. The exhibition emphasises how light becomes almost a character in its own right in her paintings—whether it’s the shimmering afternoon rays in Sunlight in the Blue Room or the pale northern glow of Skagen’s coast.

While widely celebrated in Denmark, Ancher remains relatively unknown in the UK. This exhibition addresses that gap, offering British audiences a chance to discover her bold use of colour, her sensitive portrayals of interior life, and her quietly radical position as a woman artist forging an international career at a time when women faced staunch constraints. Illuminating and contemplative, it’s the perfect show for the winter season.

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Dates
04 November 2025 — 08 March 2026

Viewing Woolwich Print Fair at Woolwich Works

The landmark 10th edition of the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair takes place this week at the historic Royal Arsenal in London. This year’s theme is “Art That Leaves an Imprint” — perfectly captures the fair’s mission to showcase the dynamic and evolving nature of modern and contemporary print art. With over 1,000 original works on display, the fair reaffirmed its position as the UK’s leading event dedicated exclusively to contemporary printmaking.

One of the defining aspects of the 2025 fair is its unique 50/50 model, dividing the exhibition space equally between specialist galleries and independent artists selected through an open call. This format maintains a balance between established names (such as Tracey Emin, David Shrigley, Grayson Perry and the like) and emerging talent, encouraging discovery, experimentation and dialogue. Don’t miss the fair’s much-anticipated “Curated Hang” of independent artists chosen from thousands of submissions, reinforcing Woolwich’s role as a vital launchpad for new creative talent.

The tenth edition of the fair also boasts an engaging programme of talks, demos and tours, and in an evolving market, Woolwich has developed practical and pragmatic solutions such as free entry for under 16s, complimentary UK shipping for unframed works, and financing options through the Own Art scheme – just some of the ways the fair are supporting the collecting infrastructure around the medium and making it more widely accessible. Here’s to another decade!

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Dates
13 November 2025 — 16 November 2025

Viewing OOH LA LA: Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas at Sadie Coles

Sadie Coles stages an electric encounter between two of Britain’s most vital artists in OOO LA LA, a co-commissioned exhibition by Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects. Set across the two gallery spaces at 8 and 38 Bury Street, the show brings together works by artists with attitude, Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas.

Hambling and Lucas share a birthday – both were born on 23 October – which sparked a long friendship, forged when they met while celebrating their birthdays at the legendary Colony Room Club in Soho in 2000. They both now live in rural Suffolk. Although their practices differ sharply — Hambling’s sweeping, emotionally charged oil paintings of sea, memory and loss; Lucas’s pointed, irreverent sculptures and assemblages of everyday detritus — the show teases out the affinities beneath the difference. At its heart lie questions of mortality and exuberance, of life lived vividly in the face of the inevitable.

Lucas’s work with stuffed tights, fried eggs and worn-furniture — her iconic “Bunny” series — deliberately revives the old and domestic into a state of urgent freshness. Hambling, by contrast, has said painting can produce an “eternal present tense,” making the moment of creation and experience indistinguishable. Viewed together, their works operate as a conversation in space: Hambling’s canvases pulse with immediacy, while Lucas’s sculptures anchor us in the corporeal, the dirty-fingered, the absurd. The personal infuses the formal: both artists use friends, lovers and things close at hand as raw material.

Their friendship, occasionally slyly referenced in the show (each has represented the other in their work), becomes part of the art-making. OOO LA LA is a lively collision of two practised voices still urgent, still mischief-ready.

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Dates
20 November 2025 — 24 January 2026
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Photo: © David Parry/ Royal Academy of Arts

Happenings RA Summer Party

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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