If you’re looking to broaden your cultural interests and discover some new artists, there are plenty of free exhibitions and art installations scattered across London that you won’t want to miss out on! Each one is unique in their own way, incorporating a range of multimedia and art styles, and are sure to evoke emotions and spark conversations.
Sophie Tea Art Gallery
LOCATION: 10 Carnaby Street
London
W1F 9PF
OPEN UNTIL: Permanent shop
OPENING TIMES: Thurs: 11-7PM Fri-Sat: 11-8PM Sun: 11-6PM
INSTAGRAM: @sophieteaart
Sophie Tea is a young female artist who is creating an art brand that is accessible for all. Her work is extremely in demand and now sells in seconds. Her art is vibrant and powerful, which primarily focuses on and celebrates the female form and highlights body diversity. In an interview, Sophie explains that she wanted to “play a small role in making women feel a tiny bit better about themselves through artwork and celebration of the female body.” Her shop on the hip Carnaby Street is an experience in itself with multiple Instagrammable features and selfie opportunities – including a Dj booth blasting tunes all day, a bright pink exterior, pink fur walls, pink vending machines, huge infinity mirrors and even a games console. It is a perfect celebration of female body diversity and you will leave feeling energised and empowered!
Natural History – Damien Hirst at the Gagosian
LOCATION: Britannia Street, London
6–24 Britannia Street
London WC1X 9JD
OPEN UNTIL: 1 Jun 2022
OPENING TIMES: Tuesday–Saturday 10–6
Natural History is an exhibition dedicated to Damien Hirst’s groundbreaking works employing formaldehyde, which allows him to present visceral objects in a cool, clinical style, which is arresting and often disturbing to the viewer. On display are sharks, cows, and various dissected organs.
A New Nature – Isamu Noguchi at the White Cube
LOCATION: White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street London SE1 3TQ
OPEN UNTIL: 30 April 2022
OPENING TIMES: Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm Sunday 12pm – 6pm
‘A New Nature’ is a collection of works by Isamu Noguchi. This exhibition encourages people to broaden their understanding of what nature is, as there are many degrees of nature. Noguchi himself once said that “Concrete can be nature. Interstellar spaces are also nature. There is human nature. In the city, you have to have a new nature. Maybe you have to create that nature”.
The exhibition takes its title from a talk Noguchi gave to students at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970 where he urged them to forge ‘a new nature’ from the materials of urbanisation and technology they encountered around them. Bringing together several bodies of work that reflect the artist’s attempts to make us conscious of his broader understanding of nature, the works on show employ industrial methods and materials, yet appeal to our awareness of what is organic.
TESTAMENT – Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary art.
LOCATION: GOLDSMITHS CCA
St James’, New Cross
London SE14 6AD
OPEN UNTIL: 30 Apr 2022
OPENING TIMES: 12pm – 6pm
INSTAGRAM: @goldsmithscca
Located on the campus of Goldsmiths, University of London, the Goldsmiths CCA features stunning and thought-provoking free exhibitions that you should definitely check out. The next one, TESTAMENT, is in the New Year.
Testament is a large-scale group exhibition across the entirety of the CCA building, staged in response to this tumultuous period we are living in right now, triggered by by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental crises and Brexit, the role of monuments has been brought into sharp focus, becoming the centre of public debate.
The main focus of the exhibition is centred around the monument; what is at stake in tearing down and erecting monuments, and what it might mean to rethink the idea of the monument.
This exhibition features artworks by 47 artists, and their contributions indirectly address the treatment of monuments in the UK, and seek to magnify a multitude of conversations, from discussions about decolonising institutions.
Submissions incorporate a wide range of media, including notes, sketches, poems, installations, sculptures, paintings, films, performances, and text. This exhibition will be extremely thought-provoking and reflective, and will help to encourage critical and celebratory positions conversations about coping and surviving, ranging from the individual to the universal, and the local to the national.