This time last year we could only dream of waltzing around a gallery soaking up inspiring imagery and soul-evoking sounds.
This year is, most fortunately, quite different as we experience the closest to normal that new normal can seem to get. 2022 promises a plethora of exciting London exhibitions. Most listed are already being exhibited so get yourself a ticket and get on down there!
There truly is no better way to spend a weekend afternoon than in one of London’s exciting galleries…
At No Point In Between
American photographer Zora J Murff’s latest exhibition unpicks racial constructs in the USA. Much of Murff’s work questions and interacts with America’s complex and often uncomfortable constructs around race, white supremacy and the lives of Black people across the country. At No Point In Between provides a snapshot of Black lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where decades of oppression have shaped the Black community here.
Name: At No Point In Between
Location: Webber Gallery (At No Point In Between, Webber Gallery, 18 Newman Street, London W1T 1PE)
Website: webberrepresents.com
Dates: Until Friday 14 January 2022
Price: Free entry
Amy: Beyond the Stage
You’ve heard us rave on about this exhibition before. If you think you’ve read or heard everything there is about the great Camden born jazz singer, think again. Explore Amy Winehouse’s career at this exhibition, curated in partnership with The Estate of Amy Winehouse. Get a glimpse at the woman behind the music with Amy’s notebooks, early recordings, personal items and handwritten lyrics. Also on display are outfits from her most-celebrated performances, as well as her guitar. The Estate of Amy Winehouse will waive its right to royalties in favour of the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
Name: Amy: Beyond the Stage
Location: Design Museum (224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG)
Website: designmuseum.org
Dates: Until Sunday 10 April 2022
Price: £16
Amazônia by Sebastião Salgado
‘What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures,’ Sebastião Salgado once said, having founded Instituto Terra, a non-profit organisation that has turned 17,000 acres of Amazon rainforest into a nature reserve and focuses on reforestation, conservation and environmental education. Returning to London for the first time since 2013, the photojournalist’s 200 black and white prints at the Science Museum demonstrate both the delicacy and urgency of the Amazon’s existence. From the communities most affected by the climate crisis to the indigenous leaders whose voices Salgado aims to amplify, it’s a moving, provocative and challenging collection that was seven years in the making and involved working closely with 12 different communities.
Name: Amazônia by Sebastião Salgado
Location: Science Museum (Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD)
Website: sciencemuseum.org.uk
Dates: Until March 2022
Price: £10
Helen Levitt’s Landmark Retrospective
It isn’t often that a late-photographer dominates a gallery with such an extensive body of work, but the late Helen Levitt’s rich photographic practice — charting her journey from street reportage to documentary filmmaker and pioneer of colour photography — does just that. Spanning two floors and encompassing more than 130 works, observers are privy to a palpable sense of the quiet desolation felt by many Americans in the mid-nineties. Chronicling New York’s local communities, recording the theatrics and flow of the everyday in the Lower East Side, the Bronx, and Spanish Harlem, Helen’s work encapsulates a visceral sense of bleakness which played out on the stoops and streets of the city.
Name: Helen Levitt’s Landmark Retrospective
Location: The Photographers’ Gallery (16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW)
Website: thephotographersgallery.org.uk
Dates: Until Sunday 13 February 2022
Price: From £15.50
Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child
Louise Bourgeois is perhaps best known for her colossal sculpture, Maman, a steel and marble spider standing nearly nine metres tall. Maman was the inaugural installation of Tate Modern’s newly opened Turbine Hall in 2000 and now guards the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. But, as a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery will demonstrate, Bourgeois’ work was just as impactful when she was exploring the malleability of much softer materials.
Name: Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child
Location: Hayward Gallery (Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX)
Website: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/hayward-gallery
Dates: Until 15 May 2022
Price: £15
