2024 has seen London galleries churn out hundreds, maybe thousands, of exhibitions. From blockbuster painting shows at huge museums to minimal installations at under-the-radar galleries, this city has seen it all – and Time Out’s been there for the whole ride.
I’ve been to countless shows over the course of the year and reviewed more than 120 of them in this very publication. At some points it felt like my eyes were going to melt right out of my skull and form little sad puddles on the ground, but they didn’t; I ran the gauntlet of London’s art calendar and lived to tell the tale. That tale is one filled with some very bad art, some very okay art, and, luckily, some very good art.
This, right here, is a list of the best of the best; the top exhibitions I saw all year. It’s got everything from contemporary photography to Renaissance painting, modernism to erotica. Yeehaw, let’s do this.
The 12 best London art exhibitions of 2024
1. ‘Fragile Beauty’ at the V&A
One of the many benefits of being Elton John is that you’ve got the dosh and star power to buy some of the finest art on earth. And his collection of photography, as this huge V&A exhibition proved, is absolutely world class, filled with the best works by the biggest names. The show was quite literally a ‘best of’ compilation of modern photography, including fashion, reportage, erotic and fine art takes on the genre, and all tied together with the narrative thread of Elton John and David Furnish’s own personal tastes. Dazzling, glamorous, excellent photography that absolutely won’t go breaking your heart.
Read our five-star review here. Until January 5, 2025.
2. Nick Waplington: ‘Living Room’ at Hamiltons
Waplington’s iconic original ‘Living Room’ series documented the often joyful everyday reality of life on a Midlands council estate in the early 1990s. This show uncovered previously unseen gems from the same series: images that are so full of love and life, so devoid of judgement and condescension, so personal and private that you felt like you were prying just by looking. Photography at its realest, and most brilliant.
Read our five-star review here.
![Matthew Barney SECONDARY, 2023 [Production Still]](https://media.timeout.com/images/106139559/image.jpg)
3. Matthew Barney: ‘Secondary’ at Sadie Coles HQ
The master of long and totally incomprehensible art films returned with another visceral attack on your senses this year with this completely mesmerising, utterly bewildering exploration of public violence. Barney’s latest film was a meditative look at a famous tackle during an American football game that left a player paralysed: it’s a slow, surreal, unsettling but genuinely beautiful look at the public spectacle of violence, the frailty of the human body and the way we consume entertainment.
Read our five-star review here.
4. ‘Monet and London. View of the Thames’ at the Courtauld
Claude Monet came to London and liked what he saw. From the balcony of his suite at the Savoy, he watched the interplay of sun and fog across the Thames and knew he had to paint it, and paint it he did, over and over. This show at the Courtauld brought together 21 of the impressionist big dog’s fuzzy, hazy, almost psychedelic views of London’s big grey river, and it was absolutely perfect.
Read our five-star review here. Until January 19, 2025.
5. Mike Kelley: ‘Ghost and Spirit’ at Tate Modern
Unbelievably cacophonous, totally hectic: performance-punk-poet-conceptualist Mike Kelley’s Tate show was a wild mashup of heavy metal, high school imagery, Superman-references and ectoplasm for a genuinely moving exploration of youth, adolescence and rebellion by a special and much-missed artist.
Read our four-star review here. Until March 9, 2025.
6. ‘The Imaginary Institution of India’ at the Barbican
After years of the Barbican disappearing right up its own curatorial backside, it emerged in 2024 with a new sense of clarity, and this show saw it approach the difficult, powerful, thorny concept of Indian art during times of turmoil with simplicity and approachability. The show was full of fantastic, moving and often shocking political art, all presented in a way that welcomed viewers rather than pushed them away. That’s worth celebrating.
Read our four-star review here. Until January 5, 2025.
7. Tavares Strachan: ‘There is Light Somewhere’ at Hayward Gallery
Colonialism, space exploration, dub, medical experiments; Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan’s exhibition at the Hayward was a sweeping, ambitious, chaotic display that drew countless links between African history, slavery, religion, jazz, hip hop, ancient Egypt and science. It was dizzying, complex, ungraspable, just like the hidden histories it was giving much-needed attention to.
Read our four-star review here.
![Rubem Valentim, Emblema – Logotipo Poético [Emblem – poetic logotype], 1975 Courtesy Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araujo Photograph by João Liberato](https://media.timeout.com/images/106104720/image.jpg)
8. ‘Some May Work as Symbols’ at Raven Row
The story of modernism has been told and retold countless times, and almost always in the same way. But this gorgeous, in-depth, museum-quality exhibition at Raven Row presented new ways to think about what was arguably the twentieth century’s most important art movement. This was a show all about colour, spiritualism, indigenous histories, religion and craft, and how they made Brazilian modernism so special.
Read our five-star review here.
9. Sibylle Ruppert: ‘Frenzy of the Visible’ at Project Native Informant
Sibylle Ruppert dealt in nightmarish, erotic, sci-fi art – what else would you expect from an artist closely associated with horror art master HR Giger? This small show of Ruppert’s work, including paintings and charcoal drawings, was a dark, obscene and often shocking exploration of trauma and techno-dystopia. Horrifyingly good.
Read our four-star review here.
10. ‘The Last Caravaggio’ at the National Gallery
What was very likely Caravaggio’s last ever painting was the sole focus of this tiny but mesmerising exhibition at the National Gallery. This was a chance to get up close and personal with all the power, skill and overwhelming drama of one of art history’s greats.
Read our five-star review here.
11. Sarah Slappey at Bernheim
With an unbelievable level of skill, American artist Sarah Slappey paints female bodies as if they’re made of granite. Her semi-erotic paintings at Bernheim Gallery rendered women as marble and stone figures being pierced by rods of iron, draped in chains, drowned in baths; used, abused, objectified, manipulated. As beautiful as it was ugly and nasty, this was one of the best painting shows of the year, by far.
Read our four-star review here.
12. Harmony Korine: ‘Aggressive Dr1fter Part II’ at Hauser & Wirth
Harmony Korine’s artwork is easy to dismiss: he’s a famous film director who managed to get an in at a major gallery to show a bunch of video game-inspired paintings. Big whoop. But these hyper-saturated canvases were a genuinely weird, properly confrontational exercise in late-night ultra-stoned violence, all about death, psychedelia and paranoia. It was genuinely, and brilliantly, totally different to everything else this year.
Read our four-star review here.
Want the best art you can see right now? Here are the top ten exhibitions in London.
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