What's Art-pening?
LONDON SUMMER 25
17 June - 17 August 2025
The UK’s longest-running art show, the Summer Exhibition, returns with over 1,700 contemporary works spanning painting, sculpture, photography, film, and more. Curated by Farshid Moussavi RA, this year’s highlights include playful installations, bold new pieces by Tracey Emin, and artworks from both renowned names and emerging talent — many available to buy for under £250.
Detail Overview Artwork by RCA
Yoshitomo Nara
Tue 10 Jun – Sun 31 Aug 2025
If you’ve ever been caught off guard by the eerie sweetness of a childlike figure staring right through you, then Yoshitomo Nara’s work will feel like a kind of hypnotic shock. This exhibition at Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery is the biggest showcase of Nara’s art ever seen in Europe — a sprawling, 40-year journey through his playful yet punk-infused world.​ From oversized, defiant kids to quiet moments of loneliness and rebellion, Nara’s pieces blur innocence and edge in a way that’s impossible to look away from. It’s like stepping inside a dream that’s equal parts nostalgic, unsettling, and full of raw emotion — all wrapped in deceptively simple brushstrokes and bold colors.
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Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026
There’s something deeply hypnotic about Emily Kam Kngwarray’s paintings — like a vibrant pulse of ancient stories and landscapes brought to life through thousands of tiny dots and dashes. Starting her artistic journey late in life, this Anmatyerr elder transformed her connection to Country into radiant canvases that glow with the spirit of Central Australia.
Tate Modern’s first major European solo exhibition of her work is more than a showcase; it’s an invitation to slow down, look closer, and feel the rhythms of a land and culture that exist beyond time. Her paintings don’t just depict a place — they hold a powerful memory and a living presence, a quiet strength that demands your full attention.
If you want to experience art that hums with history, resilience, and luminous beauty, this is the show to see this season.
Emily Kam Kngwarray, not titled, 1981
National Gallery of Australia. Copyrights; Estate of Emily Kam Kngwarray /DACS 2024
Kiefer / Van Gogh​
28 June - 26 October 2025
There’s a raw, almost mythic energy when Anselm Kiefer’s monumental works meet Vincent van Gogh’s timeless masterpieces. This Royal Academy exhibition isn’t just a side-by-side—it’s a conversation across time, place, and spirit.
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Kiefer’s vast, textured canvases wrestle with memory, nature, and history, echoing the fierce intensity and emotional depth that Van Gogh poured into every brushstroke. Walking through the show feels like stepping into a landscape where past and present bleed into one another—where Van Gogh’s swirling skies and golden fields collide with Kiefer’s towering, earthy structures and haunting skies.
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It’s a rare chance to witness how one artist’s pilgrimage through Van Gogh’s world sparked a lifetime of creation — and how two visions, so different yet so intertwined, challenge us to see the familiar in a bold, new light
Anselm Kiefer Walther von der Vogelweide: Under the Lime Tree on the Heather (Walther von der Vogelweide: under der Linden an der Heide), 2014 Emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sediment of electrolysis and charcoal on canvas. 280 × 380 cm. Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. Photo: Nina Slavcheva. © Anselm Kiefer
ATHENS SUMMER 25
WHY LOOK AT ANIMALS?
A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives
16 May 2025 — 15 February 2026
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EMST
''Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives centres on animal rights and animal well-being, highlighting the urgent need to recognise and defend the lives of non-human animals in an anthropocentric world that exploits, oppresses and brutalises them. The exhibition is inspired by John Berger’s seminal essay of the same name, “Why Look at Animals?” (1980), which explores the changing relationship between humans and animals, particularly in the context of modernity. The essay reflects on how animals, once deeply integrated into human life, have become increasingly distanced, objectified and commodified.''