Latest news with #DoHoSuh
Time Out
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House
Reflecting on themes of memory, migration and the home, South Korean conceptual artist Do Ho Suh is internationally renowned for his vast fabric sculptures and meticulous architectural installations. This year, he's finally presenting a major exhibition at Tate Modern, in the city he currently lives, showcasing three decades of his work including brand-new, site-specific pieces. The exhibition begins with Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home (2013–2022), a full-scale rendering of Suh's childhood hanok house in Korea, made of delicate off-white paper. Created through traditional rubbing techniques, the imprint of every surface, from the walls, floors, and fixtures, is captured in the material. This isn't simply a house – it's a lived experience, transposed onto graphite and fibre. The structure feels both solid and spectral, as if memory itself had drifted into the gallery and taken form. As the exhibition progresses, Suh leans further into his exploration of the spaces we carry within us. In Nest/s (2025), visitors walk through a corridor of interconnected translucent 'rooms' in vivid colours, where every detail, from light switches to radiators, is precisely rendered. Suh allows the viewer to activate the work through their movement, transforming it into a shifting, porous membrane. This structure leads to Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024), a life-size outline of Suh's current home in the UK, filled with domestic fixtures from the many places he has lived. Colour-coded and installed at their original heights, these familiar objects form a layered, disorienting map of Suh's past, becoming a quiet, spatial autobiography. Suh suggests that the idea of a perfect home is an illusion Suh is fascinated by graphs, mapping, ordering and measuring to distill ideas. His Bridge Project takes the themes present in the interior installations and magnifies them onto a global scale. The work imagines a bridge, connecting the cities he's lived in (Seoul, New York and London) and points to its midpoint in the Arctic Ocean: a place that is claimed by no one yet threatened by all, somewhere charged with climate anxiety, colonial histories and statelessness. In this speculative space, Suh suggests that the idea of a perfect home is itself an illusion. The void becomes a space of resistance, against fixed borders, national identities and the politics of belonging. Each element of the exhibition, from the drawings to the installations and films, is individually compelling. But the space itself feels compressed; the works are densely arranged and you can't help but feel that each piece would benefit from more room to breathe. As it stands, the intimacy of Suh's practice risks being overwhelmed by the tightness of the display. That said, his message is clear. In an age defined by global migration and shifting borders, the home is a charged space: at once personal and political, defining a threshold between private and public, past and present. His intricately rendered fabric and paper reconstructions of the houses he's inhabited go beyond architectural replication: they chart emotion, displacement and adaptation, and they do so beautifully.
New York Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Artist Who Keeps Remaking His Childhood Home
The artist Do Ho Suh's London studio is a mazelike series of spaces within a Victorian warehouse complex in the northern Islington neighborhood. In one room, a wall is covered in monochromatic mesh maquettes of sculptures that resemble his former homes in Seoul, New York and Berlin. In another, spools of rainbow-toned fiber line workbenches and shelves; Suh, 63, and his team of about a dozen will pull from them to create his shaggy 'thread drawings,' which depict bodies and architectural structures that dissolve into masses of fine lines, embedded in handmade paper. On the other side of a central, winding staircase is the room where the artist does his mechanical work: At a wooden table, a robotic arm hovers above a prototype of one of his house-inspired sculptures in red thermoplastic polyester, a material that's become one of Suh's signatures. Just as each part of his studio tells a different story about his practice, many of Suh's house sculptures combine rooms from various times and places in the artist's life. These works, which have defined his three-decade career, are typically life-size, made from gauzy, colorful fabric with an ethereal quality. 'Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home' (2013), for example, mimics a Russian doll: A replica of Suh's childhood home in Seoul is engulfed by a true-to-size fabric imitation of the three-story Providence, R.I., townhouse where he lived when he first moved to the United States in 1991. For 'Staircase-III' (2010), he created a red, semitransparent polyester and steel staircase inspired by the apartment in New York's Chelsea neighborhood that he rented for almost twenty years starting in the mid-1990s, though this version hangs upside-down from the ceiling. Suh's works are as much about precise re-creation — incorporating details as small as light switches and plug sockets — as they are about distortion. Ultimately, they capture how the act of relocation can influence memory. Though Suh is the son of an artist — the influential Seoul-based abstract ink painter Suh Se-ok, who died in 2020 — he had early ambitions to be a marine biologist, in part because of his fascination with an anonymously created 10-panel painting of groups of fish swimming together that his parents displayed in their home. When he began making art, he similarly fixated on how temporary homes and communities are made and then left behind. He learned traditional painting techniques at Seoul National University in the 1980s, then went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at Rhode Island School of Design and Yale, where his work became more sculptural. Suh made his first true-to-scale duplication of his childhood house in 1999: 'Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home/London Home/Seattle Home' is fully collapsible, constructed entirely from silk organza in the same light jade green as the original ceilings of that dwelling, which his father built in the 1970s, itself a replica of a 19th-century, Yi dynasty residence. As Suh puts it, 'I make highly personal spaces public.' For his major survey exhibition at Tate Modern in London, which opens this week, Suh has created a new piece, 'Nest/s' (2024), that places eight semitransparent fabric rooms and passageways from his different homes in one long line. Visitors can walk through the work, which Suh calls a 'time and space entanglement' — the structures' edges overlap, much like the artist's memories of each place. The exhibition also includes the 2018 video 'Robin Hood Gardens,' which was filmed at a Brutalist housing project of the same name in Britain in 2017, just before it was demolished, its tenants having been forcibly removed. A translucent screen divides that video's projection from other nearby works in the show, allowing some of its light to leak onto the external walls of Suh's replica of his childhood home, 'Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home' (2013-22). The blurring between the two works mirrors the artist's practice as a whole: deeply personal, yet also porous, making room for the presence — and interpretation — of strangers. In March, seated at a large table in his studio, Suh answered T's Artist's Questionnaire. What's your day like? How much do you sleep, and what's your work schedule? I'm not the kind of artist who will come to the studio at 8 a.m. and work all day. For about eight years, until two years ago, I had to wake up [early] to take my two daughters to school. But I've never been a morning person; now, I wake up when I want to wake up. What's the first piece of art you ever made? The oldest piece that still exists is one I made when I was four. I scribbled [random markings] on one of my mother's cabinets. It's fading, but I know where it is. My first 'real' art was probably 'The Work,' a set of painted, folding screens I made in graduate school [at Seoul National University] in 1987. What's the worst studio you ever had? It was in Dumbo, [Brooklyn], around 2000. It was a shithole, I have to say. There were dogs running around in the streets outside. People were mugged all the time. The building was huge, and there were rats everywhere. I was there for three or four years but I didn't know my neighbors until right before I moved out. They were making porn films! I came out of the studio and there was a lady passing by, completely naked. Strange things happen in New York. What's the first work you ever sold? For how much? An etching that I made [at Seoul National University] called 'Heaven and Earth.' It sold for probably around $30. When you start a new piece, where do you begin? It feels like I have a carousel or Ferris wheel spinning in my mind all the time, with ideas that have already been conceived and are waiting to find the moment to come out. How do you know when you're done? My work is completed as soon as I conceive the idea. The rest is just making it happen — [that's when] I face obstacles. But the important thing in my practice is how much of the purity of the idea is in the final piece. The last thing I want is to create a piece that's been compromised. That's my rule, which makes my team mad. How many assistants do you have? In the traditional sense I probably have two to three assistants. They help with physical things. But I hardly ever call them assistants; they're team members. The rest of my team is about nine people, and they're all young professionals who have their own expertise [like mechanical production and studio management]. I can't make art without them. The way I try to run my studio is to be open and democratic. Have you assisted other artists before? I did for maybe two days when I was a graduate student. I studied at Columbia for one year before I went to Yale, and I helped my professor, [the American artist] Jon Kessler, organize his studio in New York. I supported myself financially by doing carpentry, graphic design, album covers and sometimes translations or interpretations [for example, between Korean shop owners and a film crew working with them]. What music do you play when you're making art? When I'm starting on drawings, I have to concentrate, so I don't listen to anything. When I feel like the work is going well, then I bring music in: I'll listen to my daughters' rock and pop school concerts over and over again. During in-between times, like when I'm tidying the studio, I listen to Buddhist chanting. When did you first feel comfortable saying you're a professional artist? I was having the hardest time right after Yale in the late 1990s. I moved to New York and was living in this tiny apartment and couldn't find a studio. There was a financial crisis in Korea and the money was slashed for all the projects I was doing there. My future wasn't clear at all. I was lying on my bed one day after I came back from this carpentry job and all of a sudden, I had this thought, 'I'm going to be an artist.' It probably should've been the time when I decided to give up, but I had clarity in that moment. What do you do when you're procrastinating? My father was a painter, and he was also a professor at Seoul National University. He was always late to class. He spent hours every day in his garden picking up pine needles one by one. I now find myself doing very similar things. I have a lot of downtime and people think I'm not doing anything creative. I do all the laundry at home, and I love folding it. But it's not really procrastinating; I could come up with an idea while I'm doing that. I don't think artists ever rest. I wish I could go on holiday and just switch off. There's this thin thread that artists are always trying to hold onto. What's the last thing that made you cry? Small cry or big cry? I have a lot of small cries, but my last big cry came totally unexpectedly in November. My father passed away four years ago, and the family donated his paintings to the local council [in Korea]. We're trying to build a small museum — it's 3,000 pieces of his own work and his collection [which includes pieces by the 18th-century Korean landscape painter Gyeomajae Jeong Seon and the 19th-century calligrapher Chusa Kim Jeong-hui]. It's been a long process, and in November, finally, the Korean government approved the funding. That was the biggest hurdle. When I heard that news I couldn't stop crying. I also cry every time I leave Korea and say goodbye to my mum. When I see the expression on her face. What do you pay for rent? Every month is different. We rent temporary spaces project by project. What do you bulk buy with most frequency? Probably toilet paper. And maybe espresso capsules. Do you exercise? Yes, mostly for my mobility. A little bit of stretching and weight training. Are you binging on any shows right now? 'Dance Moms.' It's torture. But the rest of my family loves it, so we watch it together. What are you reading? I just finished a book on beetles, 'Lucanidae of the World' (2023) by Dooseok Yi. He's an architect, not a professional biologist, but he is obsessed with distinguishing subspecies. The pictures are so beautiful. I'm also reading 'Einstein's Dreams' (1992) by Alan Lightman, a book about theoretical physics that tries to explain the origin of the universe and time. It's a simplified version, like physics for dummies. I want to be reborn as a physicist; I think they're close to unlocking the secrets of the universe. I've found so many similarities between quantum physics and Buddhism. What's your favorite artwork by someone else? I don't have a single one, but Felix Gonzalez-Torres is one of my favorite artists of all time. His stacks of candies and of posters that visitors could take for free were such a generous gesture. [In works like 'Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)' (1991), Gonzalez-Torres allowed viewers to remove pieces of the installations, as a way of symbolizing loss and the diminishment of loved ones living with H.I.V./AIDS.] I want to have a similar type of generosity: I let the viewer explore my work as freely as possible [by allowing them to walk through each structure]. Which work of your own do you regret, or would you do over in a different way now? I never feel 100 percent satisfied with the work, but I wouldn't use the word 'regret.' I think there's a reason every single work is there. Sometimes the idea is great, but I realize it won't answer all my questions. But that leads to other projects. It's a different mechanism than regret: It's motivation to keep making work.
CNN
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
South Korea's unique housing culture has inspired a major new exhibition
There is something peculiar about entering a building only to be greeted by another one inside it, so it takes a moment to adjust upon arriving on the second floor of London's prestigious Tate Modern art gallery. Directly in front of the entryway is a 1:1 scale facsimile of Do Ho Suh's childhood home in Seoul, which he wrapped in mulberry paper and carefully traced in graphite to produce an intricate rubbing of the exterior. It is just one of many versions of home envisioned by the Korean artist over the past 30 years. Running at Tate Modern through to October, 'Walk the House' is Suh's largest solo institutional show to date in the UK, where he has been based since 2016. Before that, he lived in the US, having studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University in the 1990s. The exhibition's name stems from an expression used in the context of the 'hanok,' a traditional Korean house that can be taken down and reassembled elsewhere, thanks to its construction and lightweight materials. The buildings have become rarer over time, because of urbanization, war and occupation, which led to the destruction of many traditional homes in the country. Suh's own childhood home was an outlier amid Seoul's changing cityscape during the 1970s, which underwent rapid development after the Korean War left the city in ruins. It spurred the artist's ongoing preoccupations with home as both a physical space that could be dissolved and reanimated, but also a psychological construct that can reflect memory and identity. Among the show's exhibits are embroidered artworks, architectural models in various materials and scales, and film works involving complex 3D techniques. The detailed outlines picked up in Suh's hanok rubbing are echoed in two closely related large-scale pieces on display for the first time, both of which visitors can walk inside. 'Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul' (2024) takes various 3D fixtures and fittings from homes Suh has lived in around the world and maps them onto a tent-like model of his London apartment. 'Nest/s' (2024) is a pastel-hued tunnel, again based on different places he has called home, this time splicing together incongruous hallways — an environment that holds symbolic meaning for the artist. 'I think that the experience of cultural displacement helped me to see these in-between spaces, the space that connects places. That journey lets me focus on transitional spaces, like corridors, staircases, entrances,' Suh told CNN at the show's opening. The exhibition also features 'Staircase' (2016), a 3D structure that was subsequently collapsed into a red, sinewy 2D tangle. 'I think in general we tend to focus on destinations, but these bridges that connect those destinations, often we neglect them, but actually we spend most of our time in this transitional stage,' Suh said. There's a translucent quality to much of the work on display. Fine, gauzy textiles are used directly within many of the pieces, as well as in the form of a subtle room divider — the closest thing to an internal wall in the main space. 'For the first time since 2016, the galleries of the exhibition will have all their walls taken down in order to accommodate the multiple large-scale works that will be materialized within them, as well as the multiple times and spaces that those works carry,' said Dina Akhmadeeva, assistant curator for international art at Tate Modern, who co-curated the show with Nabila Abdel Nabi, senior curator of international art at the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. 'In doing so, the open layout will form not a linear passage or narrative, but instead encourage visitors to meander, return, loop back, evoking an experience closer to the function of memory itself.' Suh's emphasis on spatial interventions poses creative challenges for curators as well as the institutions that hold these works. One such example is 'Staircase-III' (2010), acquired by the Tate back in 2011, which often needs to be adapted to wherever it is shown by measuring new panels to fit each space. 'I wanted to disturb the habitual experience of (encountering) an artwork in a museum,' said Suh by way of explanation. Akhmadeeva added that the approach challenged the 'idea of permanence — of the work and of the space around it.' Removing the gallery walls also reflects Suh's interest in peeling environments back to their foundations. 'It's just the bare space that the architects originally conceived,' he said. Suh's work often focuses on spatial experiences rather than material goods because, just like the rooms and buildings we inhabit, an empty space behaves like a 'vessel' for memories, he explained. 'Over the years and the time that you've spent in the space, you project your own experience and energy onto it, and then it becomes a memory.' The artist does occasionally focus on ornaments and furnishings, however, as seen in his monumental film, 'Robin Hood Gardens' (named after the East London housing estate it captures), which used photogrammetry to stitch together drone footage taken inside the council building awaiting demolition. It marked a rare instance of Suh documenting both residents and their belongings. The film illustrates the subtle politics of Suh's practice. 'Often in my case, the color and the craftsmanship and the beauty in my work distract from the political undertone of it,' he said. Issues such as privacy, security, and access to space are intimately connected to class and public policy, but his commentary is covered in a soft veil of fabric or the gentle rub of graphite. The latter is also used in 'Rubbing/Loving: Company Housing of Gwangju Theater' (2012), which reflects on the deadly Gwangju Uprising of 1980. The artwork resembles the shell of a room that is unravelled to form a flat, vertical structure, like a deconstructed box. It is based on a rubbing that was taken by Suh and his assistants while blindfolded — a nod to the censorship of the military's violent response and its absence from South Korean collective memory. The exhibition is bookended by pieces that address sociopolitical questions. 'Bridge Project' (1999) explores land ownership among other issues, while 'Public Figures' (2025), an evolution of a piece Suh made for the Venice Biennale in 2001, is a subverted monument featuring an empty plinth, directing focus to the many miniature figurines upholding it. For Suh, it was intended to address Korea's histories of both oppression and resilience. While these two exhibits may feel distinct, for Suh, all of his work interrogates the boundaries between personal and public space, and the conditions that force transience or enable permanence. The tension between public and private was thrown into sharp relief during the pandemic, when lockdowns forced people to spend most of their time indoors. Although Suh 'scrutinized' all corners of his home during this time, the lockdowns didn't materialize in his practice in the way one might expect. Instead, it elicited a more tender reflection on what is often the making of a home: people. It explains why, among the substantial, often colorful structures in the exhibition, there are two small tunics made for (and with) his two young daughters, adorned with pockets holding their most cherished belongings, such as crayons and toys. 'As a parent, it was quite a vulnerable situation. Other families, I cannot speak for them, but it really helped us to be together,' said Suh.
CNN
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
South Korea's unique housing culture has inspired a major new exhibition
There is something peculiar about entering a building only to be greeted by another one inside it, so it takes a moment to adjust upon arriving on the second floor of London's prestigious Tate Modern art gallery. Directly in front of the entryway is a 1:1 scale facsimile of Do Ho Suh's childhood home in Seoul, which he wrapped in mulberry paper and carefully traced in graphite to produce an intricate rubbing of the exterior. It is just one of many versions of home envisioned by the Korean artist over the past 30 years. Running at Tate Modern through to October, 'Walk the House' is Suh's largest solo institutional show to date in the UK, where he has been based since 2016. Before that, he lived in the US, having studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University in the 1990s. The exhibition's name stems from an expression used in the context of the 'hanok,' a traditional Korean house that can be taken down and reassembled elsewhere, thanks to its construction and lightweight materials. The buildings have become rarer over time, because of urbanization, war and occupation, which led to the destruction of many traditional homes in the country. Suh's own childhood home was an outlier amid Seoul's changing cityscape during the 1970s, which underwent rapid development after the Korean War left the city in ruins. It spurred the artist's ongoing preoccupations with home as both a physical space that could be dissolved and reanimated, but also a psychological construct that can reflect memory and identity. Among the show's exhibits are embroidered artworks, architectural models in various materials and scales, and film works involving complex 3D techniques. The detailed outlines picked up in Suh's hanok rubbing are echoed in two closely related large-scale pieces on display for the first time, both of which visitors can walk inside. 'Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul' (2024) takes various 3D fixtures and fittings from homes Suh has lived in around the world and maps them onto a tent-like model of his London apartment. 'Nest/s' (2024) is a pastel-hued tunnel, again based on different places he has called home, this time splicing together incongruous hallways — an environment that holds symbolic meaning for the artist. 'I think that the experience of cultural displacement helped me to see these in-between spaces, the space that connects places. That journey lets me focus on transitional spaces, like corridors, staircases, entrances,' Suh told CNN at the show's opening. The exhibition also features 'Staircase' (2016), a 3D structure that was subsequently collapsed into a red, sinewy 2D tangle. 'I think in general we tend to focus on destinations, but these bridges that connect those destinations, often we neglect them, but actually we spend most of our time in this transitional stage,' Suh said. There's a translucent quality to much of the work on display. Fine, gauzy textiles are used directly within many of the pieces, as well as in the form of a subtle room divider — the closest thing to an internal wall in the main space. 'For the first time since 2016, the galleries of the exhibition will have all their walls taken down in order to accommodate the multiple large-scale works that will be materialized within them, as well as the multiple times and spaces that those works carry,' said Dina Akhmadeeva, assistant curator for international art at Tate Modern, who co-curated the show with Nabila Abdel Nabi, senior curator of international art at the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. 'In doing so, the open layout will form not a linear passage or narrative, but instead encourage visitors to meander, return, loop back, evoking an experience closer to the function of memory itself.' Suh's emphasis on spatial interventions poses creative challenges for curators as well as the institutions that hold these works. One such example is 'Staircase-III' (2010), acquired by the Tate back in 2011, which often needs to be adapted to wherever it is shown by measuring new panels to fit each space. 'I wanted to disturb the habitual experience of (encountering) an artwork in a museum,' said Suh by way of explanation. Akhmadeeva added that the approach challenged the 'idea of permanence — of the work and of the space around it.' Removing the gallery walls also reflects Suh's interest in peeling environments back to their foundations. 'It's just the bare space that the architects originally conceived,' he said. Suh's work often focuses on spatial experiences rather than material goods because, just like the rooms and buildings we inhabit, an empty space behaves like a 'vessel' for memories, he explained. 'Over the years and the time that you've spent in the space, you project your own experience and energy onto it, and then it becomes a memory.' The artist does occasionally focus on ornaments and furnishings, however, as seen in his monumental film, 'Robin Hood Gardens' (named after the East London housing estate it captures), which used photogrammetry to stitch together drone footage taken inside the council building awaiting demolition. It marked a rare instance of Suh documenting both residents and their belongings. The film illustrates the subtle politics of Suh's practice. 'Often in my case, the color and the craftsmanship and the beauty in my work distract from the political undertone of it,' he said. Issues such as privacy, security, and access to space are intimately connected to class and public policy, but his commentary is covered in a soft veil of fabric or the gentle rub of graphite. The latter is also used in 'Rubbing/Loving: Company Housing of Gwangju Theater' (2012), which reflects on the deadly Gwangju Uprising of 1980. The artwork resembles the shell of a room that is unravelled to form a flat, vertical structure, like a deconstructed box. It is based on a rubbing that was taken by Suh and his assistants while blindfolded — a nod to the censorship of the military's violent response and its absence from South Korean collective memory. The exhibition is bookended by pieces that address sociopolitical questions. 'Bridge Project' (1999) explores land ownership among other issues, while 'Public Figures' (2025), an evolution of a piece Suh made for the Venice Biennale in 2001, is a subverted monument featuring an empty plinth, directing focus to the many miniature figurines upholding it. For Suh, it was intended to address Korea's histories of both oppression and resilience. While these two exhibits may feel distinct, for Suh, all of his work interrogates the boundaries between personal and public space, and the conditions that force transience or enable permanence. The tension between public and private was thrown into sharp relief during the pandemic, when lockdowns forced people to spend most of their time indoors. Although Suh 'scrutinized' all corners of his home during this time, the lockdowns didn't materialize in his practice in the way one might expect. Instead, it elicited a more tender reflection on what is often the making of a home: people. It explains why, among the substantial, often colorful structures in the exhibition, there are two small tunics made for (and with) his two young daughters, adorned with pockets holding their most cherished belongings, such as crayons and toys. 'As a parent, it was quite a vulnerable situation. Other families, I cannot speak for them, but it really helped us to be together,' said Suh.
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Don't miss these 7 fantastic new London art exhibitions arriving in May 2025
I know we say this every month, but May really is looking like a particularly great time for art-lovers – not least because you have two bank holidays to fill with shows, as well as two major institutional openings as the V&A East Storehouse opens its doors and the National Gallery unveils its refurbished Sainsbury Wing. Of course, there are a load of excellent art and photography exhibitions already on, but if you want to see what's brand-spanking new, look ahead for our round-up of the best exhibition openings this month. From the Tate Modern's eagerly anticipated Genesis Exhibition, where you can see Do Ho Suh's vast, architectural fabric installations in the flesh, to Alberto Giacometti's spindly human-like sculptures and another photography takeover of Somerset House, London is basically bursting with new things to see and ponder over. All you need to do is find the time to go. The best new London art exhibitions in May 2025 1. ' The Genesis Exhibition – Do Ho Suh: Walk the House ' at Tate Modern The home, migration, global displacement: these are all themes Do Ho Suh explores in his work, consisting of videos, drawings, and large translucent fabric installations of interiors, objects, walls and architectural structures. Often brightly coloured, skeletal and encompassing, this survey exhibition at Tate Modern will showcase three decades the celebrated Korean-born, London-based artist, including brand-new, site-specific works on display. 'The Genesis Exhibition – Do Ho Suh: Walk the House' at Tate Modern is open from May 1 until October 26. More details here. 2. 'Fake Barn Country' at Raven Row Organised by three Londoners to reflect a 'year of discussion', this exhibition is set to explore the shared approaches and creative dialogues between a wide selection of artists. Featuring works that recall specific shows at Raven Row itself, the art you'll see tends to play on realism, making use of found objects and reused materials – you might see everyday household items or DIY tools incorporated, for example. Expect to see works by artists including Terry Atkinson, Rachal Bradley and Andrea Büttner. 'Fake Barn Country' at Raven Row is open from May 8 until July 6. More details here. 3. 'Encounters: Giacometti' at Barbican Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti was a bit of a big dawg when it came to post-WWII figurative sculpture: you might recognise his creepily elongated human figures with stretched-out limbs and wiry arms, which seem lonely, fragile, alien. Often mediating on existential themes about the human psyche, and leaning into surrealist and cubist styles, he had a huge influence on artists working with the human form. This show at Barbican is a three-part series showcasing contemporary sculptors alongside his historic works, launching in May with an exhibition of works by Huma Bhabha, followed by Mona Hatoum in September and Lynda Benglis in February 2026. 4. 'Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road' at British Museum Japan's Edo period – from 1603 to 1868 – is thought to have been mostly a time of civic peace and development, allowing new art forms to flourish. In the later part of that era, Utagawa Hiroshige produced thousands of prints capturing the landscape, nature and daily life and became one of the country's most celebrated artists. This new exhibition at the British Museum offers a rare chance to see his never-before-seen works up close (this is the the first exhibition of his work in London for a quarter of a century), spanning Hiroshige's 40-year career via prints, paintings, books and sketches. The National Gallery is celebrating its 200th birthday, and to celebrate, they've gone and refurbished their Sainsbury Wing, which has been closed for two years and houses some absolute gems of art history: Byzantine altarpieces, early renaissance works and Paolo Uccello's three-part war scene epic 'The Battle of San Romano'. The refurbed wing will include a whole room dedicated to the theme of gold and all the entire National Gallery collection is also going to be rehung. Talk about fresh. 6. Photo London at Somerset House Not quite an exhibition, but an opening no less: this year marks the 10th anniversary of Photo London, the annual photo fair taking over Somerset House with galleries and exhibitors travelling from New York, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Hsinchu City to bring some of the hottest photography talents of the world right now, from the documentary to editorial, experimental and everything in between. This year features work from photographers like David Bailey, Antony Cairns, Jamie Hawkesworth and Joy Gregory. Photo London at Somerset House is open from May 15 until May 18. More details here. 7. 'Leonardo Drew: Ubiquity II' at South London Gallery Leonardo Drew's works are silent, but they may as well be loud: they're explosive, chaotic, large-scale installations that look like you're witnessing the aftermath of an earthquake. The American artist is taking over South London gallery for his first London solo show with a site-specific work in the main gallery, made with intentionally distressed wood which looks like it's 'been through extreme weather events'. Oh, and it's free.
