Look, we know – the urge to hunker down and hibernate is never stronger than at this time of year. But as has been proven by actual science, two things are known to allay the mental doldrums that the gloomier months can bring: leaving the house, and art!
While the former may prove a challenge just for the sake of it, the UK currently brims with enough of the latter to make braving the cold feel worth it. Read on for Vogue’s selection of the season’s standout contemporary art shows, in London and beyond.
Institutions
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Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil. Installation view featuring Goavve at Tate Modern 2025. Copyright Máret Ánne Sara and Tate. Photography Jai Monaghan
Starting at the proverbial mothership, Tate Modern’s current programme has real range and verve. In the flagship space, you’ll find Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara’s Turbine Hall commission (until 12 April), an enveloping installation composed of reindeer hide, bone and industrial materials that contemplates the fragile relationship between the sustenance of traditional Sámi culture and the encroaching threat of exploitative energy and mining ventures in her native Norway. Theatre Picasso (until 12 April), a centennial commemoration of perhaps the most famous Picasso held in the Tate’s collection, “The Three Dancers”, sees its entire collection of the artist’s works “staged” by artist and writer Wu Tsang and writer and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca. The institution’s current standout, though, remains Nigerian Modernism (until 10 May), a landmark exhibition exploring Nigeria’s sprawling, globally-networked art history and legacy across the century in which the modern nation was built.
Upriver at Hayward Gallery, Chiharu Shiota’s Threads of Life (17 February – 30 May) – comprising world-swallowing three-dimensional webs of scarlet yarn – is worth booking in advance. And over at the National Gallery, that red thread continues – well, figuratively, at least. While the Trafalgar Square institution isn’t typically top of mind for contemporary art, Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua (until 5 April), an exhibition by 2025 artist-in-residence Ming Wong, is among the sharpest shows in town. Extending the centuries-long tradition of artist responses to the tale of Saint Sebastian, Wong’s multi-channel film installation takes 14 works held in the gallery’s collection, as well as Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebastiane, as a point of departure, articulating a wry, poetic and delectably campy response to the immortal tale of ecstasy, anguish and martyrdom.
Peter Doig: House of Music with Sound system by Laurence Passera / dsp London. Photography Prudence Cuming Associates. Courtesy of Serpentine
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Ibrahim Mahama, Parliament of Ghosts (2025). Photography Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Ibraaz
At the ICA, you’ll find The Drawing Drawing (27 January – 29 March), the first major UK institutional show by Brazilian artist Laura Lima, an interactive sculpture and performance installation that subversively riffs on the context of the life drawing class. Activated by a series of performances across its run, it’s one of a number of institutional shows this season championing movement-based work. At the Royal Academy, A Story of South Asian Art (until 24 February) celebrates the legacy and influence of Indian Modernist pioneer Mrinalini Mukherjee, while Premiums (until 22 April), exhibits works by second year students on the Royal Academy Schools’ prestigious postgraduate programme. And if you haven’t caught it already, head to Hyde Park for the final days of Peter Doig’s serene and meditative House of Music (until 8 February) at Serpentine. Featuring the Scottish painter’s saturated dreamscape animated by complementary music programming played on restored vintage analogue soundsystems, it’s a truly balmy counterpoint to the winter drear.
Turning to the newer institutions in town, Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts (until 1 March) is a real winner. Staged within the neoclassical central hall at Ibraaz, a private institution dedicated to platforming art and culture from the Global South, the Ghanaian artist’s arresting installation comprises 75 chairs sourced from households across their homeland, prompting contemplation around histories of migration and empire, and the role, manner and function of museums located at the historic hearts of empire in broaching them. Close by at Yan Du Projects, discover Living, Rehearsing… (until 4 February), another show in which the generative capacity of performance is spotlit, with a four night string of performances that will culminate in an installation gradually built across its run.
