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

All, Art, Auctions, Exhibitions, Travel & Hospitality, Initiatives

Viewing Meriem Bennani: For My Best Family

The Wick Culture - Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs
2 Bouchras in Flip-Flops, 2024
Courtesy of the artists

Above Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs 2 Bouchras in Flip-Flops, 2024 Courtesy of the artists

The Wick Culture - Meriem Bennani
Research for Sole crushing, 2024
Courtesy of the artist

Above Meriem Bennani Research for Sole crushing, 2024 Courtesy of the artist

The Wick Culture - Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs
Stills from For Aicha, 2024
Courtesy of the artists

Above Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs Stills from For Aicha, 2024 Courtesy of the artists

Above Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs 2 Bouchras in Flip-Flops, 2024 Courtesy of the artists

Above Meriem Bennani Research for Sole crushing, 2024 Courtesy of the artist

Above Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs Stills from For Aicha, 2024 Courtesy of the artists

Meriem Bennani: For My Best Family

Fondazione Prada
31 Oct 2024 – 24 Feb 2025

It’s Halloween – and this week we’re all about the supernatural and otherworldly shows. First up is a weirdly wonderful project by Meriem Bennani, the Moroccan artist’s largest to date. For My Best Family creates a spooky atmosphere over two floors of Fondazione Prada in the form of a multi-sensory work examining how to be together.

A mechanical installation made up of 192 flip flops cheekily titled Sole crushing sees the shows march in eerie autonomy to a ballet-symphony-riot. It’s cathartic and chaotic, and intended to also evoke a state of delirium, something like the noise of a stadium, or the sounds of a Moroccan deqqa marrakchia.

Elsewhere, there’s a new film Bennani has made in collaboration with Orian Barki, set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, following the story of a Moroccan jackal filmmaker living in New York. The fiction within a fiction with its animated animal protagonists is both funny and touching, and contemplates how animation can be a potent vessel for meaningful messages in troubling times.

Viewing Asian Art Week London

The Wick Culture - Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th - early 18th century
Courtesy of Sotheby's

Above Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th – early 18th century Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The Wick Culture - Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Above Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Above Anonymous | Pheasants beneath wisteria | Edo period, late 17th – early 18th century Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Above Morita Shiryu (1912-1998) | Fuku | Showa period, 20th century

Asian Art Week London

Various Venues
30th October – 8 November, 2024

Taking place every Autumn for more than two decades Asian Art Week London aims to bring together leading international dealers and auction houses from the UK, Europe, USA and Asia in the UK capital, focusing on galleries and auction houses specialising in in a wide variety of ancient to modern Asian art, ranging from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Islamic and Middle Eastern and Himalayan to Central Asian, Southeast Asian regions.

Exhibitions showcase and offer for sale important Asian artworks, and are often accompanied by academically researched publications, while the many receptions, lectures and special events create a unique occasion to engage with Asian art. The 27th edition of the event begins on 30th October. At auction, we are especially excited about Sotheby’s online sale (29 October – 5 November) Art of Japan showcasing rare masterpieces spanning the 12th Century to today, including 17th-Century screens, and Senju Hiroshi’s waterfall painting, a Shadow Painting by Takamatsu Jiro, as well as minimalist white ceramics by Kurado Taizo.

Elsewhere, among the gallery participants, be sure to head to specialist dealer Raquelle Arzan’s presentation of Vietnamese contemporary and Indochine Art, and don’t miss a visit to new gallery, Ming Gu, on New Bond Street, established last year by Guming Song, to exhibit emerging and mid-career artists of East Asian heritage, bringing artists who are steeped in traditions and yet to challenge it with their modern interpretation. The annual Asian Art in London Gala Party takes place on Wednesday, October 30 at the V&A.

Viewing Barbara Walker Being Here

The Wick Culture - End of the Affair (2023) Barbara Walker © Barbara Walker. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024.

The Wick Culture - Barbara Walker, The Sitter, 2002 © Barbara Walker.
All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024.

Barbara Walker Being Here

Whitworth Art Gallery
4 October 2024 – 26 January 2025

Her paintings and drawings take months of research into neglected archives, and are the result of empathetic and intense observations; Barbara Walker’s arresting figurative works represent Black stories, histories and contributions to Britain in astonishing and evocative detail. “I’m very interested in visibility and non-visibility in terms of marginalised communities. I use erasure as a metaphor for how the Black community is overlooked, ignored, and even dehumanised by society.” Walker has said.

Being Here at The Whitworth is Walker’s first major survey, and presents over 70 extraordinary artworks made over 25 years, including rarely seen paintings, her Turner Prize nominated drawing series Burden of Proof (2022-23), and a newly commissioned printed wallpaper Soft Power (2024) inspired by the Whitworth’s collection and paying tribute to the Windrush generation, who Walker has continued to represent in her work. Also presented are major series Private Face (1998-2005), Louder Than Words (2006-09), Show and Tell (2008-15), Shock and Awe (2015-20), Vanishing Point (2018-ongoing).

Walker’s breath taking oeuvre ranges from delicate, intimate graphite drawings on archival documents to the monumental charcoal wall drawings she is celebrated for, but her themes are persistent and urgent – immigrant, Black life, and challenging what art history tells us about our past and present. An unmissable exhibition on one of the UK’s most important artists.