5 London Exhibitions Worth Seeing Over The Holidays

From painting to photography, to immersive experiences, here are our top exhibitions picks worth a visit before the end of the year. 

As we begin to whine down on the lead-up to the holidays, we are often given the opportunity to engage in activities that can help us recharge and inspire our creative minds. Whether you are staying around in the big city for the festive season or about to head home (in a car or on a plane) here are Oddigy’s top five exhibitions worth visiting before the end of the year. 

The New Black Vanguard 

Running till: 22 January 2022

Location: Saatchi Gallery 

Overview: “The New Black Vanguard presents artists whose vibrant portraits and conceptual images fuse the genres of art and fashion photography in ways that breakdown long-established boundaries. The Images open up conversations around the representation of the Black body and Black lives as subject matter. Collectively, the works celebrate the Black creativity. Seeking to challenge the idea that Blackness is homogenous, the works serve as a form of visual activism delivered by emerging talents who are creating photography in vastly different contexts - be it in New York or Johannesburg, Lagos or London. The results - often made in collaboration with Black stylists and fashion designers - present new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race, beauty, gender and power.” - Saatchi Gallery

Why it’s worth going: This exhibition curated by Antwaun Sargent is a wonderful celebration of the Black gaze in its many forms, expressions and representations. 

More Info

An Alternative History of Photography

Running till: 19 February 2022

Location: The Photographers Gallery

Overview: “The history of photography is often told as a chain of relationships connecting one great maker to the next. However, the real history is much more complicated: it is a vast web of interconnected stories stretching from East Asia to West Africa, and from New Zealand to Uzbekistan, and a complex interchange of fine art, scientific, anthropological, documentary and amateur traditions. With over 130 works from the Solander Collection, An Alternative History of Photography invites you to look again at well-known works and new discoveries by major artists, alongside forgotten greats, regional champions and unknown artists.” - The Photographers Gallery

Why it’s worth going: This exhibition invites you to encounter a diverse range of photographic works across many decades and locations. It is a beautiful curation of how the medium of photography has been used to express and document a vast range of perspectives, eras and cultures.  

More Info

Universal Everything - Lifeforms

Running till: Until 30 December 2022

Location: 180 The Strand

Overview: “Lifeforms at 180 Studios brings together 14 projects within a series of habitats designed by Ab Rogers Architects. Their largest show to date is constantly unique. An amalgam of unpredictable, generative pieces and installations that mirror and shift with time and the public’s interactions. The works draw from the history of visual culture – from Futurist’s attempt to depict the body in motion to Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential 19th century film experiences.” - 180 The Strand

Why it’s worth going: An exciting immersive experience that invites its viewers to explore a fascinating subterranean world of hyperreal lifeforms. 

More Info

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - Fly In League With The Night

Running till: Until 26 February 2023

Location: Tate Britain 

Overview: “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British artist and writer acclaimed for her enigmatic portraits of fictitious people. This exhibition brings together around 70 works from 2003 to the present day in the most extensive survey of the artist’s career to date. The figures in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are not real people – she creates them from found images and her own imagination. Both familiar and mysterious, they invite viewers to project their own interpretations, and raise important questions of identity and representation.” - Tate Britain 

Why it’s worth going: Yaidom-Boakye states, ‘I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about.’ This exhibition offers an extensive and generous range of the artist’s oeuvre d'art over the last two decades. Her alluring portraits contain a range of fictional personalities that leave the viewer in charge of interpreting each of their stories. 

More Info

Soheila Sokhanvari - Rebel Rebel

Running till: Until 26 February 2023

Location: The Curve, Barbican

Overview: “Rebel Rebel, the first major UK commission by Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari, celebrates and commemorates feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran. Sokhanvari transforms the Curve into a devotional space, populated with exquisite miniature portraits of glamorous cultural figures from Iran. The project spotlights the rarely told histories of these women, who pursued creative careers in a culture enamoured with Western style but not its freedoms.” - Barbican

Why it’s worth going: A stunning portraiture collection of iconic Iranian women whose fate and careers were left in the hands of the revolution. This exhibition highlights and questions the role of feminine autonomy and artistic censorship in moments of political upheaval. 

More Info

Words by Stephanie Alcaino

Images by Stephanie Alcaino

December 13, 2022