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

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Viewing Catherine Murphy: Recent Work

The Wick Culture - © Catherine Murphy. Courtesy the Artist, Peter
Freeman, Inc., New York / Paris and Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Photo: Al Nowak

Above © Catherine Murphy. Courtesy the Artist, Peter Freeman, Inc., New York / Paris and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Al Nowak

Sadie Coles HQ
8 Bury Street
London
SW1Y 6AB
2 September – 7 November

Look closer.

At Sadie Coles HQ this September, American painter Catherine Murphy makes the everyday difficult to dismiss. Recent Work, her second solo exhibition in London, brings together paintings rooted in the environments around her home and studio in Poughkeepsie, New York, continuing a practice that has found extraordinary potential in ordinary things since the 1970s.

An exacting observer, Murphy’s earlier association with still life has gradually given way to paintings with a stranger psychological undertone, where familiar objects are reframed and resized until they begin to appear unfamiliar. Nothing needs to be spectacular to earn her attention: a chequered shirt collapses into a landscape of folds, while the iridescent drum of a tumble dryer starts to resemble another world.

Murphy studies how light catches a surface or disappears into a recess, allowing the smallest details to determine the atmosphere of an image. Though her works can be unnervingly precise, there is plenty of imagination involved as well: observed scenes sit alongside imagined ones, and the longer you look, the less straightforward the domestic world becomes.

Murphy, whose work is held by major American collections including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, created paintings that linger over the things most of us pass without a second thought, giving them more time to be observed and studied – and perhaps we should too.

Viewing FT Weekend Festival 2026

The Wick Culture - Image courtesy of FT Live

Above Image courtesy of FT Live

Kenwood House Gardens
Hampstead Lane
London
NW3 7JR
5 September

Off the page.

FT Weekend Festival takes the weekend paper off the breakfast table and onto the lawn this September at Kenwood House. Across ten stages, Financial Times editors and journalists meet some of the biggest names in culture, literature, design, food, global affairs and business for a full Saturday of interviews and debate.

The cultural line-up alone could fill a weekend. Richard E. Grant, Michael Sheen and Fiona Shaw appear alongside classicist Mary Beard, fashion designers Paul Smith and Patrick Grant, artist and stage designer Es Devlin, curator Ekow Eshun and choreographer Wayne McGregor. Yotam Ottolenghi and Angela Hartnett bring food into the conversation, while Paul Theroux, Elif Shafak and Rose Tremain are among the writers heading to Hampstead. Further across the programme, Francis Fukuyama, Mariana Mazzucato, former US intelligence director Avril Haines and former MI6 chief John Sawers tackle some rather bigger questions.

There is plenty happening between stages too. Jancis Robinson hosts a tasting of English wines with Vineyards of Hampshire, while the Waterstones Festival Bookshop hosts book signings throughout the day. London Brass Allstars bring live music to the grounds, Jikoni is preparing picnic hampers for the occasion, and those arriving with four-legged company can even enter Best Pup in Show.

The appeal is in the freedom to construct your own issue of FT Weekend in real time: politics before lunch, an artist after it, perhaps some wine somewhere in between. Just expect choosing your timetable to become the first debate of the day.

Viewing Art Car Boot Fair 2026: PLAY FREE

The Wick Culture - Image courtesy of Art Car Boot Fair

Above Image courtesy of Art Car Boot Fair

Lewis Cubitt Square
King’s Cross
London
N1C 4DR
5 September

The art of the bargain.

The Art Car Boot Fair rolls back into King’s Cross this September, bringing its particular mix of art and car-boot chaos to Lewis Cubitt Square. This year’s theme is PLAY FREE, with over 100 artists setting up to sell work directly to visitors across one lively Saturday afternoon.

The fair has spent over two decades loosening the usual rules around buying art. Previous editions have seen Tracey Emin and Sir Peter Blake pitch up to meet collectors themselves, while the format makes room for artful conversation, haggling and the possibility of leaving with a great piece of art under your arm. For 2026, this spirit gets an extra push with 100 works made especially for the fair and priced at £100 each – an entry point that contemporary collecting very rarely allows for.

Among this year’s names is Jim Moir, better known to many as Vic Reeves, who brings his much-loved bird paintings to the fair. Rankin will also turn his camera on visitors, offering the chance to have a portrait taken by the photographer behind images of David Bowie, Kate Moss, Björk and Queen Elizabeth II. Other iconic artists including Helen Beard, Bob and Roberta Smith, Carrie Reichardt, Sara Pope and Mr Bingo are also taking part.

This year’s featured artist is Margo in Margate, whose stylised female portraits have built a devoted following and whose first solo exhibition at Brighton’s Helm Gallery sold out within 24 hours. While there, also look out for GG the Illustrator, whose ongoing project to paint every council estate in London turns familiar blocks and balconies into affectionate records of city life. The brilliantly theatrical #RenaissanceSelfie returns too, using everyday props to transform willing visitors into old-master sitters.

If the conventional art fair has ever felt a little too buttoned-up, this is the ultimate antidote. Get there early, talk to the artists and keep £100 handy – you might just walk away with something priceless.