Art shows to see in London, LA and Amsterdam this January

All of December, London’s GUTS Gallery has been exhibiting the works of the next generation of UK artists in the first of a two-part exhibition titled NEW NOW. Come January, the second half will launch, featuring the works of Peter Doyle, Elsa Rouy, Xu Yang, and more. The show coincides with a book by photographer Brynley Odu Davies (who co-curated the show with GUTS founder Ellie Pennick) of over 200 portraits featuring artists in their studios, published by Trolley Books. It’s simply titled ARTISTS, and is “a record of some of the best young artists working in the UK today”. It’s a much-needed, welcome, optimistic offering of the UK arts scene in a time of cuts to the arts sector. Grab a copy of the book and make sure to get down to see the future of the UK art scene all in one place while you can. 

Part 1 runs until 22 December, part 2 opens 12 January – 7 February 2024. ARTISTS is available from TROLLEY now

From Phyllida Barlow to Keziah Burt, 29 female sculptors who have contributed to art history from the 1960s until now are celebrated at London’s Saatchi Gallery. Across three chapters, If Not Now, When? explores ‘time’ and how it impacts women, such as Women’s Time, Tumbling Through Time, and The Time Is Now. Issues addressed include motherhood and care roles, climate change, injustice and discrimination, and more.

Until 22 January 2024

A stone’s throw from where TJ Boulting stands in London’s Fitzrovia, Lee Miller stood in Charlotte Street during World War II and photographed a wet, cordoned-off street with a sign warning of an unexploded bomb. It’s this image that the exhibition borrows its name – and sets the tone for Miller’s extraordinary, fearless career, from the Surrealist movement to her time as a war photographer, but especially her portraits of women, such as Leonora Carrington and Martha Gelhorn. The exhibition accompanies the launch of LEE, a film about Miller’s life starring Kate Winslet.

Until 20 January 2024

Few people blend so seamlessly between disciplines like Grace Wales Bonner. After her 2019 exhibition at London’s Serpentine, A Time For New Dreams, she returns as curator for Spirit Movers, on show now at New York City’s MoMA. For this show, she brings together David Hammons, Man Ray, Betye Saar, Agnes Martin, Terry Adkins, and Moustapha Dimé to present a series of works that “are not static objects or images but dynamic entities deeply connected to ritual, devotion, and collective experience” to offer a “deeply personal mediation on Black expression”.

Until 7 April 2024

Filmmaker Akinola Davies’ Tabanca takes us through Carnival from “inception to end” in an immersive film that mediates on “who Carnival continues to belong to”, screening at London’s Harlesden High Street. Invited by artist Alvaro Barrington to reflect on the annual London tradition, Davies presents a three-channel, 16 minutes and 16-second mediation that evokes a weekend that act as “a portal that transports the local community back to Caribbean islands abstracted through time.”

Until 27 January 2024

Shadowings: A Catalogue of Attitudes for Estranged Daughters is a solo exhibition of Peruvian-American artist Tarrah Krajnak at Amsterdam’s Huis Marseille. It spans two decades of Krajnak's work, featuring notable series like Master Rituals II: Weston’s Nudes, which earned her the 2021 Louis Roederer Discovery Award. Moving between the studio, fieldwork, archival intervention, and analogue darkrooms as production sites, Krajnak uses her camera for experimentation, self-portraiture and performance, appropriation through re-photographing other imagery, and challenging distinctions between fact and fiction, and the self and other.

Until 25 February 2024

Artists across history have depicted the human body in infinite ways, and Descending the Staircase draws from the MCA Chicago’s extensive collection to explore how. “From the fragmented, absurd, and surreal to the curated, self-aware, and media savvy”, the exhibition merges bodies with objects like puppets and masks, using materials such as nylon and wax to evoke the human form. Artists have long utilised living bodies in performances, addressing contemporary questions about the body's relation to labour, machines, advertising, and domestic life.

Until 25 August 2024

The title of Jenny Saville’s new exhibition, Ekkyklema, at Gagosian Davies Street, London, nods to a wheeled platform used in Greek dramas, symbolising Saville's exploration of our coexistence with material and digital realms. Influenced by colossal digital stadium screens, Saville compartmentalises body parts into angular panels reminiscent of desktop windows and the talking heads featured in news broadcasts. Saville blends figuration and abstraction throughout the show to explore the intersections of physical and electronic realities.

Until 10 February 2024

It’s been more than three decades since Mapplethorpe’s untimely death, but his chokehold on the art world continues. Subject Object Image, showing at London’s Alison Jacques, showcases 13 years of the provocateur’s work, beginning in his Hasselblad 500-era of 1976 and stretching to the final year of his life, with much of the work not widely exhibited before. The show confronts the objectification that Mapplethorpe has been accused of head-on, leading with a 1983 quote from the artist himself: “It’s a different subject, same treatment, same vision, which is what it’s all about – my eyes as opposed to someone else’s… ” Expect still lifes and nudes, as well as his classic portraits of New York faces of the 70s and 80s, Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono included, as well as a selection of recollections from his subjects and their memories of being in front of Mapplethorpe’s camera.

Until 20 January 2024

A master of deconstructing our fascination and obsession with celebrity culture by editing found footage from televised sports and pop culture, Prologue to the Story of the Birth, at LA’S MoCA, celebrates 25 years of Paul Pfeiffer’s groundbreaking, multidisciplinary work exploring spectacle, belonging and identity. More than 30 words and a new commission will be included as the exhibition traces the global circulation of images, revealing how desire, heroism, and worship shape collective consciousness in art, religion, politics, and nationhood.

Until 16 June 2024

How do media spectacles influence perceptions of conflicts? Governments have used the media to propagate agendas since time immemorial. While Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media, at LA’s LACMA, is focused mostly on World War I, this retrospective historical context provides an understanding of current wars and conflicts. With 200 objects by artists, war photographers, filmmakers, and soldiers from across several continents, the exhibition “explores the intermingling of mass media and the artistic imagination”.

Until 7 July 2024

Jamaican-British photographer Armet Francis’s images are affirmations of life that celebrate the resilience of the African diaspora. Having migrated from Jamaica to Britain in the 1950s, Francis felt a profound sense of dislocation and political alienation. In 1969, he developed the idea of “The Black Triangle” – describing it as a “personal need to discover the dimensions of the experiences of Black people…the triangle first came to me in thoughts of the slave trade route, that is how I came to live in the Triangle: Africa, the Americas and Europe… I had to capture it through my camera, through my work… A man reacting to his destiny.” It has continued to guide his now 40-year personal exploration of the Black experience across Africa, the Americas, and Europe, and the photographs he has taken.

On show at London’s Autograph until 20 January 2024

Having already exhibited at Backpool’s Grundy Art Gallery, New Contemporaries heads to London’s Camden Arts Centre in January. Helen Cammock, Sunil Gupta, and Heather Phillipson chose the 55 artists exhibiting from the results of an open call. Alongside the exhibition – which “presents an important picture of emerging practices taking place across the UK today” – there will be a programme of workshops, talks, performances, and artist-led events.

From 19 January – 7 April 2024

Simon Wheatley likely took many of your favourite photographs documenting the grime scene. But Bound, a new zine and coinciding exhibition, documents the in-between moments from 1998 and 2015, from nappy changes to dog walks. Read about it in Wheatley’s own words and get down to Bernie Arts Centre in Tottenham, London, before the show ends.

Until 31 January 2024

Almost four decades ago, the world’s first art amusement park opened in Hamburg, Germany, with rides, games, and attractions designed by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Hockney. It was the brainchild of Austrian artist André Heller but has been packed away in shipping containers for the last three decades. Until Drake came along and saved it. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Now Luna Luna is up and running again in Los Angeles, and it looks as magical as you can imagine. For those who can’t attend, the original text has been reissued and translated from German to English.

Luna Luna is open now

A city-wide collaborative exhibition featuring 50 galleries across 23 London spaces, Condo, returns for the first time since 2020. The premise is simple: host galleries share their spaces with visiting galleries, either by sharing space or co-curating an offering. Founded by Vanessa Carlos of Carlos/Ishikawa, Condo – which has popped up worldwide, from Shanghai to NYC, Sao Paulo, Athens, and Mexico City – “encourages the evaluation of existing models, pooling resources, and acting communally to propose an environment that is more conducive for experimental gallery exhibitions to take place internationally”.

From 20 January – 17 February 2024

Zanzibar-born, British artist Lubaina Himid has spent over four decades highlighting marginalised histories, voices, and the legacies of colonialism and slavery, across her paintings, prints, drawings, and installations. In January, the Holburne will exhibit Lost Threads, in which Himid utilised 400 metres of Dutch wax fabric, symbolising the oceans and rivers that cotton, yarn, and enslaved individuals travelled on, in a profound exploration of textile production's paradoxes.

At The Holburne Museum, Bath, UK, from 19 January – 21 April 2024