Art shows to leave the house for in July 2024

Templates for Liberation is Rheim Alkadhi’s first UK exhibition, which highlights the impacts of war and colonialism in Iraq and the wider region. Re-imagining global space and proposing ways to resist violence and injustice, the exhibition embodies the region's environmental and sociopolitical violence through sculptures made from transport tarpaulins that line the floor, walls, and drape from the ceiling as a reflection of transnational passage. An adjacent reading room, The Land and the People presents archival documents on Iraq’s colonial borders and resource extraction. It also holds historical records that evoke speculative narratives of anti-colonial rebels, with photographic portraits of these rebels to reclaim representation and envision the countless unrecorded insurgencies by nonconforming women, racialised and ethnic minorities, workers, communists, and others that exist outside of time, defy categorisation, and bring an anti-colonial strategy into the present.

From June 11 – September 8 2024, at The ICA, London

Nestled in a new location in central London’s Great Turnstile, go back to sleep, it’s just the wind debuts a surreal and dreamlike series from artist Noorain Inam where symbolic images and motifs of water explore notions of belonging and identity. Created over months spent in London and on the Cornish coast, spanning painting and video, Inam uses temporality to build narratives from experiences and objects. Inam evokes an eerie atmosphere that nods to fluidity, transformation, birth, renewal, clarity, and grief through surreal interiors and exteriors, colour, humour, and influences of miniature painting, feminist horror, and personal memories.

From June 22 – July 21 2024 at Indigo+Madder, London

Los Angeles-based artist William E. Jones debuts 14 paintings inspired by his novel I Should Have Known Better, the second in a trio I am currently reading (and loving). The exhibition, Saturn Comes Again, takes its name from the astrological phenomenon Saturn Returns, and is described as “perhaps the most dramatic and paradoxically surprising shift of his career”. Inspired by a character in I Should Have Known Better, his paintings intertwine his own journey through contemporary art, the Los Angeles art scene, and the broader cultural landscape shaped by economic and political forces. They also reflect his research practice, and viewers will find a range of subjects, some known, some not, including Lou Reed and Gerhard Richter, as well as images from gay pornography from the 1970s, each united in their ability to provoke – as Jones has done through his 40-year career across literature, film, and art.

From 2 July – 24 August 2024 at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

This double-bill exhibition featuring contemporary artist Nokukhanya Langa and American conceptual master Bruce Nauman explores the connection between their alternative methodologies, using absurdist text and puns to find meaning in the banal. Both artists are interested in the relationship between image and language, with Langa's sculptural canvases commenting on post-internet culture and Nauman's films highlighting mundane, repetitive actions. Their works collectively challenge power structures, explore futility, and question the nature of language and reality.

From June 19 – August 16 2024 at Saatchi Yates, London

Meditations on Love, curated by the Develop Collective for The Photographers’ Gallery, asks us to “consider how love is represented, preserved, and remembered” through an archive of photobooks, novels, and nonfiction. Designed as a reading room, the exhibition invites visitors to explore books and reflect on themes of resilience, community, friendship, subversion, identity, and queerness. Featuring works by Tami Aftab, Ollie Adegboye, Deana Lawson, Ewen Spencer, and more, it investigates love’s complex iterations, from tender to provocative, across a global landscape, from Palestine to Switzerland, Argentina to Taiwan, showcasing love’s enduring and revolutionary power.

From June 14 – September 22 2024 at The Photographers’ Gallery, London 

Exorcism: Inside Out is a solo exhibition by the seminal feminist surrealist Penny Slinger and coincides with the release of her iconic book, created nearly 50 years ago, An Exorcism: A Photo Romance. Often dubbed her “magnum opus”, An Exorcism features erotic collages staged in an empty mansion, blending personal embodiment and imaginative transgression. Described by Penny Slinger as a "surreal romance in photo collage", this work delves into themes of fetishism and sexploitation, tracing a young woman’s journey towards self-actualisation. Slinger’s original collages and her animated film An Exorcism - The Works (2019) will be shown in the UK for the first time. Inspired by Slinger’s 2019 project for Dior’s Haute Couture fashion show, the exhibition will transform the gallery into an immersive audio-visual environment.

From July 3 to September 7 2024 at Richard Saltoun Gallery, London

This new group show asks: “What do The Valleys mean to you?” From Ammanford to Pontypool, artists worldwide have been inspired by the South Wales Valleys since the 18th century. Now, these visions are being honoured in The Valleys exhibition, which showcases more than 200 artworks from the national collection, including painting, photography, film, and visual art. The exhibition highlights how The Valleys’ lives and landscapes were transformed by iron and coal and features over 60 artists, including Megan Winstone, Tina Carr, Bruce Davidson, Tom Wood, as well as works by collier artists and new photography acquisitions supported by Art Fund.

From May 25 – November 3 2024 at National Museum, Cardiff

Artist Koby Martin combines his experiences from Ghana and the UK into his practice by blending autobiographical elements with themes of melancholy, diaspora, space, time, and perspectives. Drunk Minds Speak Of Sober Times explores liminal spaces using windows as thresholds between the viewer and the focal point, where public and private coalesce. Throughout the show, Martin draws inspiration from artists like Frank Bowling, Felix Vallotton, and David Hockney, creating works that evoke conversation and contort notions of identity, origin, and territory, unearthing lost narratives.

From July 25 – July 29 2024 at Sarabande Foundation, London

Dance, sound, and spoken word combine to narrate the romances and toxicities of rivers and waterways in Adham Faramawy’s Daughters of the River. Inspired by Alexander Pope’s poem “Windsor-Forest”, the performance explores the porous borders between purity and impurity and traces the imperialist roots of vital waterways. Using history, mythology, fiction, and queer desire, Faramawy reveals rivers as sites of ecological collapse. Originally commissioned for Queer Earth and Liquid Matters in 2022, it will be restaged as part of the wider Infinite Ecologies Marathon.

On July 11 2024 at 8pm at Stone Nest, London

In his latest project, ENVIRONmental, emerging artist and conceptual photographer Aleks Faust explores colour matching, symmetry, and harmony. This poetic series captures discarded objects like abandoned chairs and children’s toys in London’s residential areas, blending chance with the deliberate. Featuring 18 photographs, the exhibition includes works like “Broken (2)”, exhibited in Tokyo, and “Rocking Horse”, previously shown at London’s River Side Studios.

From July 1–31 2024. PV 11 July, 6-8pm, at The Tavistock Centre, London

Deadweight explores rebellion and transformation through four large-scale sculptures that serve as beacons of imagined, stateless worlds: “a [Black] future that hasn’t yet happened, but must.” The exhibition’s title, derived from a nautical term, signifies disruption over stability and offers emancipation through abolition. With influences ranging from Afrofuturism, Afro-pessimism, and Hydrarchy, and the envisioning of an Afro future free from capitalist and colonial influence, White blends force and fragility, using metals shaped into forms reminiscent of anchors and ship hulls to symbolise defiance. Each sculpture was also immersed in the Mediterranean Sea to highlight water’s transformative effect. 

From July 2 – September 15 2024 at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Artist Diamond Stingily’s multidisciplinary practice explores fictive, biographical, and autobiographical narratives to reframe everyday objects. You might even remember her as the star of fellow artist Martine Sym’s feature-length film, The African Desperate. However, Stingily is an artist in her own right, and her new solo show, Orgasms Happened Here, features site-specific architectural interventions that evoke suburban American households and places of worship. These spaces reveal whimsical and dark memories that reflect libidinal longing, and the exhibition’s title refers to a note in her brother’s childhood closet reading, ‘Orgasms happened here’. Across the show, Stingily explores thresholds – closets, doors, stained-glass windows – symbolising privacy, transition, and transgression while examining generational differences, blending themes of shame and desire within domestic and public spaces. 

From June 21 – September 14 2024 at 52 Walker, New York City

Fitzrovia-based Alice Black Gallery has recently launched ABG Emerging to connect up-and-coming artists with collectors while also awakening a new cohort of potential collectors who feel that owning a piece of art is out of their financial reach. Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and works on paper, prices are visible and range up to £1,500, including VAT. Each collection is curated by the gallery team and new collections will be released throughout the year, with an open submissions process that welcomes artists looking to gain collectors. Collection 01 is currently exhibiting in the gallery until the end of July, but pieces can also be purchased online. 

For artists wanting to participate in Collection 02, submission guidelines can be found here. ABG Emerging Collection 01 is on show until July 31 2024 at Alice Black Gallery, London

Alexandra Metcalf’s exploration of madness, domesticity, and feminity immerses visitors in various mediums, from painting, sculpture, and collage. Metcalf transforms the gallery with densely patterned wallpaper and an antique spiral staircase punctuated with buttons, which suggests an unreachable space beyond, while the wallpaper evokes both allure and confinement. This environment recalls the themes of Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper and conjures domestic anxieties and disruptions. Metcalf's paintings blend gothic and psychedelia, inspired by the 1960s paper dress phenomenon – disposable dresses that couldn’t be washed or used beyond a few wears. They offer no easy answers but instead present a complex interplay of emotions and references to challenge viewers to explore the boundaries of their perceptions and emotions.

Until July 20 2024 at Ginny on Frederick, London