Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur
The wonderful Wallace Collection is showing a big, bold and beautiful exhibition of the work of British artist Sir Grayson Perry. Staged to mark the artist’s 65th birthday, this is the largest exhibition of contemporary works ever held at the Wallace. For his most ambitious show to date, Perry has selected treasures from the museum to create a new body of work in response to their richness, diversity and craft. This creative outpouring includes ceramics, metalwork, tapestries, prints, drawings, furniture, textiles, digital art and wallpaper. Delusions of Grandeur interrogates the nature of craft-making and our drive for perfectionism with highly intricate handcrafted objects juxtaposed with works made using the latest digital technology. Through these contrasting approaches, Perry asks us to consider some of art’s big questions around artistic authenticity and the role of art, and the artist, into the future.
The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square London W1, to 25 October 2025.
Breaking Lines at The Estorick Collection
The Estorick Collection takes a close look at 20th century experimental poetry in this new exhibition. Comprising two complementary displays, Breaking Lines: Futurism and the Origins of Experimental Poetry and Dom Sylvester Houédard and Concrete Poetry in Post-war Britain, this really is a fascinating exhibition. Although now more associated with the visual arts, Italian Futurism was actually founded by a poet, Filippo Tommaso (F T) Marinetti, who famously said poetry exists “for the lyrical and spontaneous expression of intuitions about life”. There is a particular focus here on works that reflected the movement’s desire to “redouble the expressive force of words”. Houédard, a Benedictine monk and theologian, was one of the masters of concrete poetry who wrote extensively about new approaches to creativity, spirituality and philosophy. His work helped shape post-war British poetry and was important in the global experimental poetry movement. The Estorick Collection is housed in a lovely Grade II listed Georgian town house in the heart of Islington and has six galleries. Be sure to take a look at the impressive permanent collection while you’re there.
Breaking Lines is at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London, to 11 May 2025.
Egon Schiele: Portraits on Paper
Hidden away up the stairs at 21 Conduit Street you’ll find a remarkable exhibition at the Omer Tiroche Gallery. The Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele made a controversial body of work that still influences artists today. The Tate describes him as “a radical artist who used a distinctive drawing style to create intimate and unapologetic portraits”. Painting in the early 1900s, Schiele often found himself on the wrong side of the law for his sexually explicit figurative paintings. Many of these were confiscated by the police and in 1914 he was imprisoned for public immorality. The 14 works on display here date from 1910 until his death in 1918 and are both moving and dramatic. He did receive some public and critical acclaim towards the end of his life and was on the brink of serious success when he succumbed to the fatal Spanish flu pandemic that swept through Vienna, tragically dying just three days after his wife and unborn child. This is a really is a memorable exhibition.
Omer Tiroche Gallery, 21 Conduit Street, London, to 2 May 2025.
Sony World Photography Awards 2025
See the very best new photography at the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition opening at Somerset House this month. This prestigious showcase brings together more than 300 powerful images, including wildlife, nature, architecture, sport, portraiture and documentary storytelling. The exhibition features images from around the world including South Africa, Peru, China, Iceland, the US and here in the UK. There is also a special presentation of works by acclaimed US photographer Susan Meiselas, President of the Magnum Foundation. Many of these important images have never been exhibited in the UK before now and explore her trademark concerns of identity, culture and hidden narratives.
Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House on the Strand, 17 April – 5 May 2025.
Richard Caldicott: Table of Contents
More fabulous photography is on display at Atlas Gallery this month with Richard Caldicott’s solo show Table of Contents. This is an impressive survey of 25 years’ work by the British artist from his earliest Tupperware series to his newest work Performance Pieces. These works question the interplay of perception, abstraction and the material quality of images as he invites the viewer to re-examine the everyday through his particular lens. See how he transforms the mundane into the extraordinary and transcends the traditional limitations of photo-based art. London’s Atlas Gallery was founded in 1994 and is one of the world’s leading galleries dealing exclusively in photography.
Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, Marylebone, to 26 April 2025.
Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo
The French artist, writer, and politician Victor Hugo is probably best known today as the author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, two of the most important novels of the 19th century. This beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts shows his wonderful touch as a visual artist, with over 70 works on paper that have rarely been seen in the UK. These are remarkable drawings, from caricatures to dramatic landscapes and experiments in abstraction. Be sure to see the very moving photograph of Victor Hugo sitting atop The Exile’s Rock in Jersey (when, yes, the family were in exile) taken by his son Charles Hugo. The large drawing The Lighthouse at Casquets, Guernsey, is hauntingly eerie, and the giant Octopus is just amazing. From figurative works to complete fantasies, this is a divine exhibition.
Astonishing Things is at the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly to 29 June 2025.
Oxford Literary Festival
Hop on to the Oxford Tube (which is actually a bus…) to enjoy one of the world’s leading book talk-fests. Organisers say tickets are selling at record levels this year, so get in quick to see your favourites at the world’s meeting place for readers and writers. A few highlights this week include Harriet Walter, known for her roles in Succession and Killing Eve, but also as a masterful classical actor who says “I worship Shakespeare”, as she reimagines what the Bard’s great women characters may have really wanted to say; acclaimed historian David Starkey explaining why history should be the very foundation of our civilisation; philosopher A C Grayling discussing making peace in the culture wars; and Ben Macintyre, a popular chronicler of modern history, telling the remarkable true story of the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 and the daring rescue led by the SAS.
The Oxford Literary Festival is on now until 6 April 2025.
Citra Sasmita: Into Eternal Land
Indonesian artist Citra Sasmita transforms The Curve at the Barbican Centre for her first solo exhibition in the UK, a stunning new commission entitled Into Eternal Land. Working fluidly across painting, sculptural installation, embroidery and scent, Sasmita will invite visitors on a symbolic, multisensory journey through the 90-metre long gallery to explore ideas of ancestral memory, ritual and migration. The exhibition speaks to universal and urgent concerns: connecting with ancestral traditions, grappling with the power and precarity of the natural world, and proposing the possibility of feminist resistance. This really is a superb exhibition as panoramic scroll paintings, the artist’s reinterpretation of traditional Kamasan paintings, unfurl along the curved walls of the gallery, depicting women undergoing transformation and reincarnation. Wander and behold!
The Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, to 21 April 2025.
Faces on stage – April
There’s always an opportunity to see a famous face from film and television live on stage in London. This month catch Stanley Townsend, star of the Netflix hit Kaos, in Retrograde at the Apollo, stage and screen star Brian Cox taking the lead as Johann Sebastian Bach in The Score at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and Nicola Walker, Stephen Mangan and Erin Doherty in the three-hander Unicorn at the Garrick Theatre. Plus Cate Blanchett’s The Seagull wraps up this week with a string of sold-out performances at the Barbican Theatre.
Don’t miss in March – your monthly guide to the brightest and best arts in London
