Ah, 2025: new year, new you, new exhibitions to look forward to. And it looks set to be a stellar year for shows at London’s major art institutions. There’s boundary-pushing conceptualism, pointilist perfection, abstraction, modernism, pop and so much painting it’ll make you wish for more of that boundary-pushing conceptualism instead.
So much art to see, so little time, but these exhibitions are the ones we reckon you can’t afford to miss.
12 London art exhibitions we can’t wait to see in 2025
Ithell Colquhoun: ‘Between Worlds’ at Tate Britain
Over the past few years we’ve been awash with Wicca, wallowing in witchcraft and overwhelmed with the occult. To capitalise on the trend for all things pointy hatted and spiritual, Tate Britain is finally giving much-overlooked radical English artist Ithell Colquhoun a major show. Colquhoun was a practicing occultist who used myth, magic and surrealism to explore the idea of divine feminine power through painting, drawing and tarot.
Ithell Colquhoun: ‘Between Worlds’ is at Tate Britain, Feb-May 2025. More details here.
Donald Rodney at Whitechapel Gallery
In his far too short career, Donald Rodney (1961-1998) created an incredibly varied body of work, using a huge breadth of mediums to confront the prejudices that course through British society. The works here tackle themes of racial identity, chronic illness and colonial history, and are a fascinating window into the issues that mattered in 1990s Britain, and still resonate today.
Donald Rodney is at Whitechapel Gallery, Feb 12-May 4. More details here.
Ed Atkins at Tate Britain
Atkins specialises in a deeply unsettling approach to the human condition. Largely through CGI videos and writing, this English artist picks apart the emotions, the struggles, the realities of everyday life. This isn’t easy, simple, approachable art, it’s uncomfortable, awkward, and often totally brilliant.
Ed Atkins is at Tate Britain, Apr 2-Aug 25 2025. More details here.
Jenny Saville: ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ at the National Portrait Gallery
Somehow, inexplicably, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major museum exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. I say inexplicably, because since the 1990s – when she was part of Saatchi’s infamous, groundbreaking ‘Sensation’ exhibition – Saville has been one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the country. She is the natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.
Jenny Saville: ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ is at the National Portrait Gallery, Jun 20-Sep 7 2025. More details here.
Rachel Jones at Dulwich Picture Gallery
Young painter Rachel Jones has become one of the most powerful voices in contemporary abstraction, using her hyper-colourful visual language – filled with references to mouths and teeth – to explore ideas of identity. We’ve reviewed her many times, and even had her as one of ‘Future of London Art’ stars back in 2023. And now, she’s going to be the first ever contemporary artist to have a solo show in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main exhibition space.
Rachel Jones is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Jun 10-Oct 19 2025. More details here.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley at Serpentine North
Video games are the medium for Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’; this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is at Serpentine North, from Sep 12 2025. More details here.
‘Radical Harmony’ at the National Gallery
If you thought the National Gallery answered every question that could possibly be asked about what came after the impressionists in their huge blockbuster ‘After Impressionism’ show in 2023, you thought wrong. Because they’re coming back for another go with ‘Radical Harmony’, which will feature the work of the neo-impressionists, including pointilist masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. It’s enough to drive you dotty.
‘Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists’ is at the National Gallery, Sep 13 2025-Feb 8 2026. More details here.
Kerry James Marshall at the Royal Academy of Arts
Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting.
Kerry James Marshall is at the Royal Academy of Arts, Sep 20 2025-Jan 18 2026. More details here.
Peter Doig: ‘House of Music’ at Serpentine South
Peter Doig is one of the greatest living painters, an artist whose approach to hazy, memory-drenched figuration has had an enormous impact on the visual landscape of today. For his show at the Serpentine, he’s going well beyond the canvas, filling the gallery with speaker systems to explore the impact of music on his work. Does DJ-set-meets-art-exhibition sound like your idea of hell? Mine too, but it’s Doig, so it just might work. Maybe.
Gilbert and George: ‘21st Century Pictures’ at the Hayward Gallery
It’s not that long ago that British art bigwigs Gilbert & George grew so frustrated with what they saw as a lack of attention from the UK’s art institutions that they set up their very own museum dedicated to themselves. That big whinge seems a bit premature now that the Hayward is giving them a big exhibition looking at their work since the turn of the millennium, a period that has seen them satirising everything from hope and fear to sex and religion.
Gilbert and George: ‘21st Century Pictures’ is at the Hayward Gallery, Oct 7 2025-Jan 4 2026. More details here.
‘Nigerian Modernism’ at Tate Modern
Modernism wasn’t just born in the minds of European intellectuals, it was a movement with international roots – ones which continue to be overlooked. But Tate Modern is going some way towards righting that historical wrong with this deep dive into the art made in Nigeria around the years of its independence from Britain. Radical, experimental and finally getting some attention.
‘Nigerian Modernism’ is at Tate Modern, Oct 8 2025-May 11 2026. More details here.
Wayne Thiebaud at the Courtauld Gallery
Wayne Thiebaud treated the basic kitsch of American life as if it was the most important subject matter in the whole history of art. His bold, gorgeous, luscious still lifes of hot dogs, pies and ice creams were a stunning precursor to pop art, an exercise in elevating the everyday to almost divine levels. Delicious.
Wayne Thiebaud is at the Courtauld Gallery, Oct 10 2025-Jan 18 2026. More details here.
Can’t wait? Here are the top 10 exhibitions you can see right now.
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