Frieze Week Survival Guide 2025
Disclaimer: this ain’t no list, and it’s not paid PR.
What you’ll find below are reviews of 72 shows that have already opened, which we’ve actually seen in person. They’re helpfully sorted by location, although geography pedants will probably quibble with the clusters.
To help you know what you can skip and what’s not to miss, each entry has been given a rating:
👍🏻👍🏻 ROUNDUP-WORTHY — See it if you can!
👍🏻 IF YOU’RE IN THE AREA — Worth seeing, but don’t go out of your way.
👎🏻 NOPE — You can give these shows a skip.
If you enjoy this style of “one-line” reviews, why not sign up to the free weekly newsletter, which will bring you more of these every week along with art world editiorial, anonymous anecdotes, lists of interesting upcoming shows, and much more!
Happy arting, and enjoy Frieze Week!
CENTRAL
Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Mayfair, Soho, St. James’
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👍🏻👍🏻 Regent’s Park - Frieze Sculpture (Regent’s Park) — After four years of growth this annual event has been hit with shrinkflation. A mere 14 sculptures are on display (the lowest since a dozen in 2020) but they’re mostly strong and engaging with quite a bit of whimsy. I’ve loaded 9 images in my Outdoor Sculpture Trails Guide but this annual outing is something you should really visit in person if you can. 🗓️ Until 02 Nov
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👎🏻 Bomb Factory - Tomorrow (group show) (Marylebone) — The works are fine. There’s really nothing wrong with any of them. The problem is that it feels like everyone forgot it was their 10-year anniversary. The show looks like it had just as much curatorial thought as picking up a cheap mixed bouquet and a bottle of plonk at the petrol station on the way home. 🗓️ Until 31 Oct
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👍🏻 Alice Black - Kavitha Balasingham (Fitzrovia) — There’s a lovely backstory to the quilted textiles, but visually they’re just pretty decoration. The main show is the sculptures that only come in two sizes: teeny tiny or ginormous. 🗓️ Until 18 October
👎🏻 Gallery Rosenfeld - Teodora Axente (Fitzrovia) — These look like someone asked an AI to blend Terry Gilliam’s animation and David Cronenberg’s body horror into Renaissance painting. Once the WTF wears off you realise these are mostly visual gimmick. Just because you can paint it doesn’t mean you should. 🗓️ Until 24 Oct
👍🏻 Lungley - Stuart Brisley (Fitzrovia) — This gallery’s too small to stage performance art, but 92-year old Brisley didn’t just spend his career rolling around naked in paint. The works, spanning 65 years, prove he’s also a daft hand at acrylic, graphite, sculpture and watercolour. 🗓️ Until 25 October
👍🏻 Night Café - The Sweet Escape (trio show) (Fitzrovia) — Surrealism can often be unsettling, but this aptly titled show offers a set of painting, drawing, and sculptural works that are pleasantly soothing in their strangeness. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👍🏻 Niru Ratnum - Adham Faramawy (Fitzrovia) — You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a duo or even a group show. There’s a lot going on as regards style, substance and subject matter. Which might be why my range of enjoyment was just as wide. 🗓️ Until 25 October
👍🏻 Niso - Max Wechsler (Fitzrovia) — Foreign tongues often become white noise to the untrained ear, but for the eyes this artist has transformed words into beautiful but troubled textures. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👍🏻 Pipeline - Strings Attached | Chapter I (group show) (Fitzrovia) — The gallery is debuting their new, larger venue with a fascinating concept that often provides more rewards from the stories than it does from the aesthetics as I found the works, and unfortunately some quality, to be a mixed bag. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👍🏻 Tache Gallery - Betty Ogundipe (Fitzrovia) — Once you get in the ring you might get knocked back, but then again you might land a punch. And so it goes with this debut show of hit and miss works from a promising emerging artist. 🗓️ Until 23 Oct
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👎🏻 Arcadia Missa - Hannah Black (Mayfair) — Using homophonic connections to create nonsense poetry might be a way to stave off boredom but it certainly doesn’t enhance visual art. Words have very specific meaning so if you’re going to paint them onto canvas they should have impact. These just made me go “meh”. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👎🏻 David Zwirner - Victor Man (Mayfair) — These paintings are like those friendly ‘ol white folk in the movie Get Out: they’ll bore you to tears and the longer you study the more disturbing they become. 🗓️ Until 31 Oct
👍🏻👍🏻 Gazelli Art House - Subject to Change (group show) (Mayfair) — Don’t let the droll downstairs displays put you off. The more experimental upstairs works are a lot more fun and could actually make you excited about AI’s potential to impact art. You might even clap along to the T&Cs thanks to Jake Elwes’ brilliantly subversive install. 🗓️ Until 19 Dec
👍🏻 Messums London - The Ground Beneath (group show) (Mayfair) — You’ll walk in and go “Wow!” and though a few of the works/artists are now on my radar this is mostly a show that’s vastly greater as a sum of parts. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
👍🏻 Modern Art - Karlo Kacharava (Mayfair) — I love discovering new artists and I love browsing through their sketchbooks. Alas, this one died unexpectedly young, so this is a bittersweet promise of what might have been. 🗓️ Until 29 Nov
👍🏻👍🏻 Royal Academy of Arts - Kerry James Marshall (Mayfair) — Some of the works are so layered that you’d need degrees in Art, America and Black History to fully understand every aspect, but there’s plenty of visual treats to savour even if you don’t get all the references. 🗓️ Until 18 Jan 2026 (£ Ticketed)
👍🏻👍🏻 Royal Academy of Arts - Kiefer/Van Gogh (Mayfair) — Did MOMA say no? It’s more likely the RA didn’t even attempt to get Starry Night on loan. You don’t get a lot of Van Gogh for your £17 entry fee, and the drawings are better than the paintings, but seeing Kiefer quite literally overwhelm the three rooms of the RA’s smaller galleries is an imposing reminder of the power of his work. 🗓️ Until 26 October (£ Ticketed)
👎🏻 Sadie Coles - Helen Marten (Mayfair) — Autumn is stew season and these hotchpotch works remind me of the time I put way too many chillies, old veg and offcuts of meat into the Le Creuset. It wasn’t pretty to look at and even harder to digest. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
👍🏻 Sprüth Magers - Kaari Upson (Mayfair) — The latex casts of curios salvaged from a burnt neighbour’s house aren’t all that interesting, but the two video works will fill both your WTF and NSFW quotas for the week. I went because I have an unhealthy obsession with her mattresses and this show has three! 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👍🏻👍🏻 Stephen Friedman Gallery - Alexandre Diop (Mayfair) — Looking at these makes me feel like Neo decoding The Matrix. There’s an overwhelming amount of stuff on every canvas and yet every chaotic composition is crystal clear, vibrantly alive and full of expressive energy. Bonus points for including benches so you can spend time studying them. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👎🏻 Tiwani Contemporary - Ugonna Hosten (Mayfair) — There’s a lot of talent in these ambitious drawings but somebody clearly skipped their lessons about shadow, depth and perspective. Like pre-Renaissance paintings these are visually flat, and with so many overlapping ideas they’re a bit too muddled and confusing to look at. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👍🏻👍🏻 Unit London - Don’t Look Back (group show) (Mayfair) — Technically now a teenager, Unit appears to be going through their awkward museum phase (complete with a pop-up gift shop from Margate gallery Quench) with this exhibition featuring artworks from 1994 to 2025. The stated goal is to explore the 90s influence on today’s contemporary makers and it raises questions about nostalgia and timelessness. But more specifically, it offers one possible option for what future London gallery experiences might be. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
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👎🏻 Saatchi Yates - Marina Abramovic (St. James‘) — Another sales & marketing campaign disguised as an art exhibit. This time it’s still images taken from old performance art videos, framed and sold for £1,800 each. Bargain, especially for the artist who had to do absolutely nothing to make this show happen but will likely clear a cool £1mil if the gallery sells out. 🗓️ Until 31 Oct
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👍🏻 Smallest Gallery in Soho - Alex Ford (Soho) — Go on, admit it: You love to surreptitiously stare dismissively at sunburnt Brits behaving badly when you’re abroad. Now’s your chance to do that for the low low price of a bus ticket to Soho. 📝 Read my interview with the artist. 🗓️ Until November
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👍🏻👍🏻 Korean Cultural Centre UK - Strolling Through Korean Gardens (Charing Cross) — It’s just like Outernet, except with a lot less bombast and no hordes of tourists watching through their smartphone cameras. The benches must be art because they’re uncomfortable AF but this is otherwise a fantastically meditative way to spend 18 minutes of your day escaping central London chaos. 🗓️ Until 14 Nov
EAST
Bethnal Green, Cambridge Heath, Clerkenwell, Farringdon, Holborn, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Whitechapel… basically anything else east of Goodge Street
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👍🏻 Wellcome Collection - 1880 That (Euston) — Responding to the ripple effects of the 1880 Congress on Education of the Deaf, which led to sign language being suppressed, this is a playful and fascinating examination of the misunderstandings that can happen between spoken and signed languages. 🗓️ Until 16 November (Free)
👍🏻 Lightroom - Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs (King’s Cross) — Dinosaurs! Need I say more? Read my full review. 🗓️ Until 25 Jan 2026 (£ Ticketed)
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👎🏻 New Art Projects - Wake (group show) (Islington) — If you’re the kind of pervert that likes buying used knickers then this is the art show for you. And also, how did you end up subscribed to my newsletter? (NB: They’re coated in resin, but still… ick!) 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
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👍🏻 Beers - Adam Baker (Farringdon) — You can draw a direct line between the lonely-in-a-crowd nightlife scenes and the disaffected nudes that look like they’re lamenting an ill-advised Grindr rendezvous. If Edward Hopper was a gay hedonist… 🗓️ Until 08 Nov
👍🏻👍🏻 Ginny on Frederick - Rebecca Ackroyd (Farringdon) — How do you distract visitors away from the fact that beeswax casts melted into antique chamber pots look like they’re floating in piss? With a random selection of imagery from the moon landing to the Muppets. What does it all mean? I was too amused to care. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
👍🏻 South Parade - Joshua Leon (Farringdon) — There’s a few things to look at but it’s the gallery intervention that you’re supposed to experience; an attempt to convey through environment, rather than text, the medical frustrations the artist must navigate daily. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
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🤷🏼♂️ Barbican (Art Gallery) - Dirty Looks (Barbican) — It’s a haute couture catwalk not an art exhibition, so if you want to know if it’s any good bring along a fashionista friend. I enjoyed it but I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t get free entry. 🗓️ Until 25 Jan 2026 (£ Ticketed)
👍🏻👍🏻 Barbican (2nd Floor Gallery) - Giacometti x Mona Hatoum (Barbican)— Subtle it ain’t, and the relentless brutality is an unsettling reminder of the horror humanity perpetuates. Cup half empty? Nope. The outlook of this show is hollowed-out bleak and the glass is cracked. 🗓️ Until 11 Jan 2026 (£ Ticketed)
👍🏻 Barbican (Curve) - Lucy Raven (Barbican)— The 41 minute fly-thru video of the aftermath of a dam detonation is strangely compelling, unlike the pointless centrifuge sculpture that only serves to remind me that Bond rode one in Moonraker. 🗓️ Until 04 Jan 2026 (FREE)
👍🏻 Barbican (Library) - My Eyes. Our World. (Group show) (Barbican) — None of these are gonna win photo of the year, but it’s a pleasant experience viewing this member’s exhibition from the City of London & Cripplegate Photographic Society. 🗓️ Until 29 Oct (FREE)
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👎🏻 Art Space Gallery - After the Flood (group show) (Old Street) — The works may be current-ish but the styles look and feel incredibly dated, which makes sense once you know they’re from a set of well established painters that do what they do very well and aren’t about to change for the trends. 🗓️ Until 17 Oct
👍🏻 Cross Lane Projects - The Discontents: Part II (group show) (Old Street) — A good excuse to catch a sample of Matthew Collings’ drawings if you can’t get to his solo show in Lisson Grove. Most everything else is fine but forgettable. 🗓️ Until 18 Oct
👍🏻👍🏻 Victoria Miro - Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (Old Street) — The disjointed compositions, filled with suspicious figures navigating shadows, dare you to study them and reward you the deeper you explore, but it’s the double take sculptures that truly turned my head. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👎🏻 Victoria Miro - Stan Douglas (Old Street) — Seemingly not content with Shakespeare’s take that “what’s past is prologue”, Douglas continues his practice of flipping racial dynamics through the re-envisioning of historical works to give agency to the oppressed. The technical execution is faultless, but I can’t help but wonder if these ‘what if?’ exercises would be both more impactful and engaging if they targeted contemporary scenarios. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
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👍🏻 Nicoletti - Ilê Sartuzi (Hoxton) — I’m not sure if this is art or just an overly elaborate stunt to make a socio-political statement but I’m not sure where else you’d present it except in a gallery. Like any good sequel, this show adds a few unexpected twists to the legacy of the coin that was “stolen” from the British Museum last year. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
👎🏻 Standpoint Gallery - Material Language (group show) (Hoxton) — There’s one or two good works / fascinating experiments, but as a cohesive show it’s a very random and disjointed experience. 🗓️ Until 18 Oct
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👍🏻👍🏻 SLQS - Damaris Athene (Shoreditch)— Do you prefer shock & awe or slow looking? There’s no need to choose in this solo that offers jaw-drop-and-gawk wow factor alongside two sets of layered abstracts that present subtle new perspectives from every angle. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
👍🏻 Emalin - Jonathan Okoronkwo (Shoreditch) — You can smell the decommissioned engine oil (literally) and taste the grime of the scrapyard (metaphor) in these larger than life tributes to the mechanical beauty that underpinned the early automotive industry. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
👍🏻 Gilbert & George Centre — DEATH HOPE LIFE FEAR … (Shoreditch) — The latest release from the archives is a lot more rewarding if you watch the accompanying documentary. Those day-glo hyper-saturated works from 1984? All hand made and hand coloured. Those strange patterns from 1991? All body fluids, including piss, spit, and spunk. 🗓️ Until February 2026
👍🏻 Hales - Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (Shoreditch) — With works spanning from the 50s to the 90s, this is an enticing teaser showcase of British abstraction and atmospheric landscapes from a prominent member of the St Ives School ahead of a Tate retrospective opening next year. 🗓️ Until 18 Oct
👎🏻 Ilenia - Javier Barrios (Shoreditch) — I love the hellfire palette and the guy sure can draw, but if being scared by plant monsters is your thing then you’re better off watching Alien Earth. 🗓️ Until 08 Nov
👎🏻 Kate MacGarry - Helen Cammock (Shoreditch) — The overall hang is visually impactful and I adored the cute little ceramic animals, but most of the poetry/word based works read like greeting cards that are trying too hard. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
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👍🏻👍🏻 Public Gallery - Mine, Yours, Ours (trio show) (Spitalfields) — Towering hooded figures join you to watch the giant entrance video; a room of pleasant scents contradicts semi-obscured sweaty bondage imagery; a printer in a basement display that feels like a Severance outtake pumps out gobbledygook that makes Jack Torrance look like a Pulitzer candidate. It’s chaotic, confounding and cool. The kind of Frieze Week show I’ve been patiently waiting for. 🗓️ Until 19 Oct
👎🏻 Public Gallery - Gut Friendly (duo show) (Spitalfields) — The undiluted oil on raw jute canvasses are just about engaging, but not enough. And the sculptures unfortunately look like organic air fresheners or other remnants no one cleaned out of the former textile shop the gallery now uses as an annex (but has left untouched). 🗓️ Until 19 Oct
👍🏻 Union Pacific - Chason Matthams (Spitalfields) — Not quite pop art, but the unconventional colour palettes applied to antique cameras, shells and stones will certainly hold your attention for far longer than a traditional still life deserves to. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
👍🏻 Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix - Kuamen (Spitalfields) — The sculptures amused me. The wall words confused me. The video in the basement moved me (to the beat) and the technically exceptional paintings blew my mind. Hard to believe it’s all from the same artist. 🗓️ Until 28 Nov
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👍🏻 Hypha Studios (Bank) — For the next twelve months a former gym and two failed retail shops at 1 Poultry will be enticing busy city workers to stop and smell the roses admire the art as they rush back and forth to Bank Station. The Turn @ Hypha 1, Inside Out @ Hypha 2 and Material Actions @ Hypha 3 and three wildly different group shows, and each is worth a visit. 🗓️ Until 01 Nov
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👎🏻 IMT - Maggie Roberts (Cambridge Heath) — The ancient manifestation grid and eco warrior text made me feel like I’d gatecrashed an Earth Day mystics retreat. (Two corresponding workshops are indeed scheduled.) I did, however, enjoy the oversized hooded cloak that makes Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat look dull and restrained. 🗓️ Until 26 Oct
👍🏻 Neven - On Fragile Systems (duo show) (Cambridge Heath) — You’ll be forgiven for thinking the two large photographic works are plasma tellies on pause, and they go great with the three mixed media abstracts. This gallery has aspirations much grander than its compact footprint allows and I always leave wanting more. 🗓️ Until 18 Oct
👎🏻 Soft Opening - Jasmine Gregory (Cambridge Heath) — Everything is a sign when you are lost, so anyone struggling in a relationship should probably avoid these 16 giant paintings of the word DIVORCE. Come to think of it, everyone should avoid this show. 🗓️ Until 15 Nov
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👎🏻 Herald St - Lucia Di Luciano (Bethnal Green) — Are these repetitive ink patterns rainy day doodles or brilliantly ahead of their time? Dunno, but they certainly aren’t “necessary”, as the handout claims. 🗓️ Until 08 Nov
👍🏻 Rose Easton - Łukasz Stokłosa (Bethnal Green) — As a set, the haunting and desolate paintings give off an empire-past-it’s-prime vibe but individually very few held my attention. What kept me lingering is the exceptional hang, proving once again that thoughtful curation, considering not just what you show but how, always elevates the art. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
WEST
Chelsea, Kensington, Hyde Park, Lisson Grove, Notting Hill, Victoria
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👍🏻👍🏻 Handel Street Projects - Matthew Collins (Edgware) — A stark visualisation of inner monologues that range from angry to amused. Read my full review. 🗓️ Until 24 OcT
👍🏻 Palmer Gallery - Andy Holder & The Grubby Mitts (Edgware) — Is this an art exhibition or an album launch listening party? Read my full review. 🗓️ Until 21 Oct
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👍🏻 Muse at 269 - Eleni Maragaki (Portobello Road) — Visually enticing, compelling pricing, and clever interactive displays that let you directly engage with the abstracted landscapes in these striking black & white lino cuts. 🗓️ Until 19 Oct
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👍🏻 Serpentine Galleries - Peter Doig (Hyde Park) — The artist has said this show might “annoy a lot of people who just want to see the art”because sitting and soaking up the atmosphere is more important than what’s on the walls. Enhanced with live DJs spinning Doig’s collection on vintage equipment, I’m excited to see what this complete re-think of the white-walled gallery experience might inspire other London venues to do. 🗓️ Until 08 Feb 2026 (Free)
👍🏻 Serpentine Pavilion 2025 by Marina Tabbasum (Hyde Park) — Like most year’s entries this one is much better looking from within, but the sterile space makes sitting inside feel a bit like waiting to be called to see your GP. 🗓️ Until 26 October
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👍🏻 Tate Britain - Edward Burra (Pimlico) — Like a slow-burn binge watch this show gets a lot better once you slog your way through the first few rooms of early cartoonish caricatures. Experiencing American jazz and the Spanish Civil War inspired the artist into a visual language that was much more macabre and engaging, albeit derivative and filled with problematic politics. 🗓️ Until 19 October (£ Ticketed)
👎🏻 Tate Britain - Ithell Colquhoun (Pimlico) — This show is included with your Edward Burra ticket in a 2-for-1 offer no one needed or asked for. 🗓️ Until 19 October (£ Ticketed)
SOUTH
Anything South of the Thames.
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👎🏻 Sunday Painter - Tomas Harker (Nine Elms) — You can’t fault the quality and some of the compositions will definitely hold your attention, but this is yet another highly skilled painter turning found imagery into large scale mono/duo-chromatic works with an ethereal, mysterious vibe. It’s a trend I find impersonal, distant and cold. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
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👍🏻👍🏻 Newport Street Gallery - Triple Trouble (Vauxhall) — I find Connor Hirst’s curating lazy and repetitive so it’s a smart move to show three artists that often face the same criticism, but what really pains me is how bloody brilliant it all is. The three-way collabs clearly provided the necessary adrenalin shot to reinvigorate tired and wearisome artists/styles that have long outlasted their sell-by date. This is by no means high art, and it’s quite possibly one giant piss-take, but it is a lot of fun. 🗓️ Until 29 Mar 2026
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👍🏻 Corvi-Mora / Greengrassi (Kennington) — Alessandro Pessoli fills the downstairs space with happy pink pastel visuals that can’t distract you from what are haphazard rants statements about clowns, politics, pregnancy, child soldiers and various other random targets. Upstairs it’s a lot more soothing thanks to the tropical scenes from Che Lovelace. 🗓️ Until 20 Dec
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👍🏻👍🏻 Tate Modern - Do Ho Suh (Southwark) — Semi-transparent ‘ghostly memories’ of architecture steal the show in an exhibition of works about ‘home’.Read my full review. 🗓️ Until 19 Oct (£ Ticketed)
👎🏻 Tate Modern - Emily Kam Kngwarray (Southwark) — On a cost-per-dot basis it’s the most economical art ticket in town but £20 adult is still too much to spend on this ‘seen one and you’ve seen ‘em all’ show. 🗓️ Until 11 Jan 2026 (£ Ticketed)
👍🏻👍🏻 Tate Modern - Theatre Picasso (Southwark) — It’s a curatorial stretch to correlate Tate’s mostly second rate collection of Picassos to the theatre, but the side-by-side staging of his wide range of styles, leading you through a dynamic “backstage” journey, makes for an incredibly engaging experience. 🗓️ Until 12 Apr 2026 (£ Ticketed)
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👍🏻 Soup - All The Small Things II (group show) (SE17) — The gallery’s second showcase of works perfectly sized for tiny London flats includes sculpture, multi-media, two DIY clipboards and plenty of paintings from 14 exciting emerging artists and up-and-comers to keep your eye on. 🗓️ Until 25 Oct
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