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

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Viewing The Cult of Beauty at the Wellcome Collection

The Wick - 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time, Juno Calypso, 2013, courtesy the artist and TJ Boulting. Image: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

Above 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time, Juno Calypso, 2013, courtesy the artist and TJ Boulting. Image: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

The Wick - The Disobedient Nose: Fig. 1. The reconstruction of a nose 2022, Shirin Fathi, 2022 © Shirin Fathi. Image credit: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

Above The Disobedient Nose: Fig. 1. The reconstruction of a nose 2022, Shirin Fathi, 2022 © Shirin Fathi. Image credit: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

Above 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time, Juno Calypso, 2013, courtesy the artist and TJ Boulting. Image: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

Above The Disobedient Nose: Fig. 1. The reconstruction of a nose 2022, Shirin Fathi, 2022 © Shirin Fathi. Image credit: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

The Cult of Beauty at the Wellcome Collection
Euston Road, London

26 October 2023 to 28 April 2024

Beauty is a slippery idea, something that philosophers, mathematicians, scientists and the rest of us have spent centuries obsessing over and trying to define. The Cult of Beauty at the Wellcome Collection shows how it is not – as the saying goes – in the eye of the bolder. In fact, the objects and artworks in this thought-provoking exhibition reveal how standards of beauty have been set by dominant groups within the rigid boundaries of status, wealth, race, age and gender, among others.

The show will make you question beauty norms and consider more inclusive definitions. Along the way you’ll discover some surprises, like, did you know that beauty spots are thought to have evolved from ‘mouches’ worn by men and women to hide syphilis scars? The height of fashion, apparently.

Some of the intriguing contemporary artworks include The Disobedient Nose, in which Shirin Fathi explores the pressures Iranian women face to undergo cosmetic surgery, and Xcessive Aesthetics’ experiential installation, which shows the opportunities nightclub bathrooms can offer as spaces for experimentation and community building. Next time you hit the town, perhaps you’ll look at your own perfectly imperfect face in the mirror anew.

Viewing Gucci Cosmos at 180 The Strand

The Wick - Gucci Cosmos. Photography: Angnese Bedini

Above Gucci Cosmos. Photography: Angnese Bedini

Above Gucci Cosmos. Courtesy Gucci

Above Gucci Cosmos. Photography: Angnese Bedini

Above Gucci Cosmos. Courtesy Gucci

Above Gucci Cosmos. Photography: Angnese Bedini

Above Gucci Cosmos. Courtesy Gucci

Above Gucci Cosmos. Photography: Angnese Bedini

Above Gucci Cosmos. Courtesy Gucci

Gucci Cosmos
180 Studios, 180 The Strand

11 October to 31 December 2023

Fashionistas listen up. The art of fashion is here. Travelling exhibition, Gucci Cosmos, has touched down at London’s 180 The Strand and wow it’s making a buzz – as you can see before you even reach the show, thanks to the buses zipping around the capital adorned with Cosmos colours.

Curated by fashion critic Maria Luisa Frisa and first shown in Shanghai, it takes viewers on an immersive tour of the Italian fashion house’s past, present and future. Stage design master Es Devlin, hailed for her technological and artistic innovations, conceived the sets for its first outing and has rebooted the installation for London. With her help, Gucci Cosmos aims to entrance and discombobulate in equal measure.

The journey charting a 102 colourful history of fashion begins with a recreation of the red-lacquered elevator of The Savoy, where the house’s eponymous founder Guccio Gucci worked as a humble bellboy as a young man at the end of the 19th century, before leading visitors through a maze-like series of revolving doors opening onto different rooms and worlds. Highlights include a space filled with floating flowers and bees to evoke Gucci’s signature ‘Flora’ motif, and ‘Zoetrope’, recalling Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 moving-image invention, in which ghostly horse animations appear on equestrian-inspired pieces from Gucci’s archives. You’ll definitely want to be FROW for this exhibition.

Doing London Creates: a campaign to celebrate the capital’s culture

The Wick - Zak Ové's The Mothership Connection, 2021, at Frieze Sculpture Park 2023. Photography: Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind / Frieze.

Above Zak Ové’s The Mothership Connection, 2021, at Frieze Sculpture Park 2023. Photography: Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind / Frieze.

Spotlighting London’s cultural magnetism

The great and the good of the artworld came together in pilgrimage during Frieze Week to launch London Creates, a campaign to give fresh momentum to our great capital’s visual arts scene and celebrate its place at the centre of the world’s cultural map. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the UK’s art market remains bigger than the rest of Europe’s combined and London is bursting with the greatest concentration of artists of any city in the world, alongside a rich ecosystem of top arts universities, and more than 200 museums and 800 galleries. Museum directors are the new rockstars in town.

Created in conjunction with the GLA Mayor’s Office led by Justine Simons, Evening Standard’s culture champion Editor in Chief Dylan Jones and Jane Boardman of M&C Saatchi, the goal is clear – spotlighting the contribution that culture makes to our economy (some £58 billion a year) and to people’s quality of life. All hail the big smoke as the city of culture. Leading artists, gallerists, museum directors, auction houses and media editors will be part of the mission as London Creates flies the flag for the capital’s culture. The Wick is proud to be an official partner, continuing our mission to open up expert art world perspectives and incubate fresh talent, alongside world leading visual artists and creatives.