London art guide – quick links
Beautiful Little Fool
Book now for the world premiere run of Beautiful Little Fool, the new musical about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The show tells the couple’s story through the eyes of their adult daughter Scottie as she rediscovers the lives, and writings, of her brilliant, tempestuous and infamous parents.
With lyrics and music by Hannah Corneau – who also stars as Zelda – and book by Mona Mansour.
Beautiful Little Fool is at the Southwark Playhouse Borough from 15 January to 28 February 2026.
Akram Kahn’s Giselle
Don’t miss Akram Khan’s wonderful re-imagining of Giselle, a timeless tale of love, betrayal, and revenge brought to the stage by the English National Ballet.
With Khan’s masterful choreography, a back-drop of haunting visuals, and a thunderous live score, this is a stunning example of contemporary balletic story-telling at its best. With just six performances at the iconic London Coliseum, this is sure to be a sell-out. See our review of Akram Khan’s 2024 Giselle here:
Akram Khan’s Giselle with the ENB is at the London Coliseum, 15–18 January 2026.
The Long Now: Saatchi Gallery at 40
Celebrating four decades of groundbreaking contemporary art at Saatchi, The Long Now is an expansive group show that takes its name from a concept of championing long-term thinking and challenging the ‘throwaway’ culture.
Newly created works are here alongside historic pieces that remain relevant and meaningful. Spanning two floors and nine exhibition spaces, The Long Now includes new commissions, installations, paintings and sculpture, and culminates with Richard Wilson’s landmark work 20:50.
Filling its gallery space with recycled engine oil, 20:50 creates a captivating and strangely disorienting illusion. Originally made in 1987, this is a defining piece of British contemporary art that talks to today’s concerns about the climate crisis and environment.
The exhibition is infused with themes of fragility and climate change; reflections on the digital age; and concerns about transformation, agency, and the role of the viewer. I especially loved Allan Kaprow’s YARD, with its discarded tyres sitting beneath Golden Lotus (Inverted) by Conrad Shawcross. It’s not often you see a classic vintage car hanging above you as a kinetic sculpture.
There really is so much to see here and many monumental artworks that will stay with you.
The Long Now is at Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, just off Sloane Square, to 1 March 2026.
Symphony Kūkai: A Modern Meditation on Ancient Eastern Wisdom
For one night only, experience a unique musical fusion from around the world and across the centuries. The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir join with the Central Conservatory of Music Choir of China and conductor Takuo Yuasa for Symphony Kūkai, a genre-defying work by composer Zou Ye that includes traditional Japanese and Chinese instruments.
This is the only large-scale symphony inspired by esoteric Buddhism. The six-movement choral-symphonic work tells the story of Kūkai’s life. He was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet, who lived from 774–835, and founded the Shingon School of Esoteric Buddhism.
Shifting between quiet reflection and expressive grandeur, the work includes lyrics written by Kūkai over a thousand years ago.
One performance only, Friday 30 January 2026, at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank.
Hastings Contemporary
Head down to East Sussex to see three fascinating exhibitions at Hastings Contemporary. Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold is a bold exhibition by artist and climate activist Isabel Rock, including large-scale drawings, printmaking, sculpture, and short stories.
Rock imagines a surreal post-human future shaped by the forces of climate collapse. This new world order is filled with mutant hybrid species of giant slugs, feral rats, engorged pigs, and many-legged crocodiles. There’s humour to be found here amongst the ruins of human civilisation but the artist’s message is deadly serious.
The exhibition’s title is taken from the WB Yeats’ poem The Second Coming; the following line is ‘mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.
There’s also an exhibition by local artist Sophie Barber that mixes popular culture with folklore and the surreal. Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry brings together the local and the legendary, the past and the present, to highlight the things that really matter.
And Michael Landy CBE RA is showing some intensely personal drawings in his show Look. Made in 2004-2005, these drawings relate to his experience of cancer and his father’s accident; they are accompanied by a new self-portrait and a series of etchings.
Hastings Contemporary is in the heart of Hastings Old Town and overlooks the seafront on the quaintly named Rock-a-Nore Road.
These exhibitions are on now at Hastings Contemporary to 15 March 2026.
Jane Brown Play Shadow
Also in Sussex, Newlands House Gallery, in the pretty Medieval market town of Petworth, is showing a fascinating collection of photographs by Jane Brown, one of Britain’s most acclaimed photographers.
Play Shadow highlights Brown’s unique approach to portraiture, a skill honed to perfection over six decades as a photographer with The Observer. These remarkable black and white images really are more than just a picture of the subject – they also capture the very essence of the person and the mood of the moment.
The introduction by curator Dr Loucia Manopoulou in the excellent catalogue opens with ‘Few photographers of the twentieth century have embodied the quiet poetry and immediacy of portraiture quite like Jane Brown (1925 – 2014)’ and every work on display here echoes that sentiment.
The portraits are primarily of people from the arts, from Samuel Beckett to David Hockney, Lauren Bacall, and the artist Brassai. Look out for the delightful 2006 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II taken to mark her 80th birthday; the magical black-tie picnic at Glyndebourne 1955; and a sultry Mick Jagger taken in 1977.
Jane Brown Play Shadow is at Newlands House Gallery Petworth to 15 February 2026.
London Art Fair
Kick off your 2026 art collecting at The London Art Fair, still at the Business Design Centre in Islington where it was founded back in 1989.
The Fair showcases the best of Modern British Art whilst embracing an increasingly international and contemporary outlook. Discover new artists and buy artworks from over 120 galleries from here and overseas.
There are also curated displays and a full program of talks and events. This year, the Fair is hosting the National Trust as its museum partner. The Trust is showing pieces from two of its modernist masterpieces:
The Homewood in Esher and 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, offering a rare opportunity to see many pieces that have never before left their historic homes. Through its curated sections, special collaborations, and thought-provoking talks program, the London Art Fair reaffirms its role as a cornerstone of the UK art market – a place to discover notable pieces, deepen existing connections and start the collecting season in style.
The London Art Fair is at the Business Design Centre, Islington, 21 – 25 January 2026 with a preview day on 20 January 2026.
Souvenir at Fitzrovia Chapel
The Fitzrovia Chapel is hosting Souvenir, a new exhibition by its inaugural Curators-in-Residence, the award-winning artists and filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.
Drawing on strategies of filmmaking and storytelling, Souvenir is the first in a trilogy of exhibitions the duo will curate at the Chapel this year. Central to the exhibition is the novella Souvenir (published by White Rabbit Books), a haunting eulogy to the London of the late 1970s and early 1980s by Michael Bracewell that encapsulates the twilight of one era and the dawn of the digital era. With this as its touchstone, the exhibition suspends visitors in an atmospheric state, harnessing the Chapel’s ethereal space as a kind of living keepsake.
The Fitzrovia Chapel is a jewel of Byzantine-inspired architecture with a glimmering and profound interior right in the heart of London.
9 January 2026 to 8 February 2026 at The Fitzrovia Chapel, 2 Pearson Square, London, admission free.
Faces
There’s always an opportunity to see a famous face from film and television live on stage in London. This month, see the wonderful Patricia Hodge and Robert Bathurst in The Rivals at Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, to 24 January; Keala Settle stars in Mrs President at Charing Cross Theatre from 23 January; Olivier Award winner Sheridan Smith stars in Alan Ayckbourn’s darkly comic psychological drama Woman In Mind alongside comedian Romesh Ranganathan at the Duke of York’s Theatre; and Emmy and Tony Award-winner Billy Crudup stars with Olivier Award-winner Denise Gough in High Noon at Harold Pinter Theatre; and see Toby Jones with David Harewood and Caitlin FitzGerald in Othelloat Theatre Royal Haymarket to 17 January.
