Latest news with #RavenRow
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.
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Between austerity and empathy': UK show celebrates late New York photographer Peter Hujar
The curators of an exhibition of one of New York's most important photographers, who captured gay life in the city during the 1970s, hope the show will shed new light on an artist whose work was deemed too 'difficult' in his lifetime. Eyes Open in the Dark, which opens at Raven Row in London on Thursday, is the largest UK exhibition of photographs by Peter Hujar, who has been acclaimed for the warmth and compassion of his images but was little known during his lifetime. Hujar died in 1987 of Aids-related pneumonia having published one book in his lifetime, Portraits in Life and Death, which received just four reviews. His sitters were some of the most culturally significant figures of 70s New York, including Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz. Hujar is about to be played on the big screen by Ben Whishaw in Ira Sachs' film Peter Hujar's Day, which premiered at Sundance on Monday and is based on a 37-page book of the same name written by his close friend Linda Rosenkrantz. It's an incredible turnaround for a photographer who, other than from a small, committed group of advocates including Nan Goldin, struggled for recognition in his lifetime and has only found it in the last decade. Hujar's biographer John Douglas Millar said there was a desire that at the Raven Row exhibition more of Hujar's later work was shown, which is completely different from the portraiture for which he has become known. For example, there is a particular focus on the photographer's work during one day in 1976. 'There's a single day on Easter Sunday when he made an extraordinary series of works,' Millar said. 'He shoots the faithful coming out of church uptown, then moves down to the west side piers where there was a cruising scene and an arts scene, and he ends the day by going to the top of the World Trade Center and takes an image of his world. He's moving across genres in a single day.' Millar said the series showed the range of interests that Hujar had, which spanned portraiture, architectural studies and erotica. Gary Schneider, a friend of Hujar and an artist, admitted Hujar could be unforgiving at times and was particularly short with gallerists, which could explain why his work is only now being sought out. Schneider said: 'He was considered a great photographer by a very small group of people around him. He did exhibit but he was very contentious – if someone put a foot wrong he would cancel them.' Raven Row's director, Alex Sainsbury, said: 'It's fair to say he was great at collaborating with the sitters but he wasn't good at working with anyone who ran a gallery or might promote his work.' Despite Hujar's spiky reputation he has been embraced by contemporary art fans, primarily because of the tenderness of his photographs, many of which were of downtown art figures who went on to die during the Aids crisis. 'There's an increased interest in empathy in art, people are looking for it and Peter's work has it,' Salisbury said. 'It has this knife-edge quality between austerity and empathy.' Millar said: 'What he's photographing is difficult for the mainstream to accept; he didn't fit in the 1970s. A lot of stuff he was shooting, especially his erotica, wouldn't have worked. He can get a much better reading now that it couldn't in the 1970s, it wasn't fashionable.' Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark runs from 30 January to 6 April.
