#oliver-oakes

#oliver-oakes

Kamrooz Aram is everywhere this year, from Mumbai Art Week to the Whitney Biennial, and critic Aruna D'Souza is grateful. She pens a beautiful meditation on his work, reading his abstract paintings as not simply a denunciation of Western modernism nor a reassertion of Islamic visual motifs, but something else entirely - something gestural, exuberant, riotous, and incomparably his own.

Hong Kong's particular and seductive Metabolist city planning is an ode to consumption as a great totalizer of culture, and to contemporary art as merely a niche commodity form among many others.

The 6th edition of Earth 2026 juried awards invites artists worldwide to explore and express the power, beauty, and resilience of our wounded planet as we approach World Earth Day.

Art on the Underground was launched in 2000, with site-specific works exploring themes of community, space and place. David Gentleman's 'Cross for Queen Eleanor', for example, is synonymous with Charing Cross, while Eric Aumonier's sculpture 'The Archer' looks imperiously over East Finchley station, linking the site to its historic surroundings as an ancient hunting area.

The New Museum has been growing in visitors, exhibitions, and activities, transforming the institution into a cultural laboratory with diverse engagements.

The RA is led by leading artists and architects, with the UK's oldest-and, crucially, free-art school at its heart. The opportunity to shape the RA's artistic programme and respond to its extraordinary gallery spaces, as well as launching the expanded Collection Gallery, is tremendously exciting.

Your weekly Londonist roundup, featuring Londony news and features. Including the room behind that world-famous balcony. Hat's the way uh-huh, uh-huh... You can hire it for birthdays, too. No tube strike on Monday after all. If you see what we mean. Mirroring the proposed Bakerloo line extension. When, where, who and how of London's biggest run.

After hearing gallerists' complaints about the rising cost of fair participation, he says he began planning Enzo last summer with the goal of creating a low-cost, collegial environment. "There's no build-out, there's no division, there are no walls," he says. "It feels almost like one presentation amongst nine galleries I really love."

It's not that advertising campaigns are never announced, but when they are, it's usually in advertising trade magazines, and generally by the agency that did the work. The client doesn't normally issue a press release that essentially says, "We are putting up some posters." Yet that is exactly what the Tate has done, issuing a general announcement that it will run an advertising campaign for its upcoming Tracey Emin exhibition.

And what a year it's gonna be for the city's gallery-botherers, with blockbuster exhibition after blockbuster exhibition on the way over the next twelve months. There's monumental sculpture, pointillist landscapes and flashy photography, massive names from Renoir to Hockney, and so many big shows by women that the Guerrilla Girls might have to get a new schtick. RECOMMENDED: The best theatre shows in London for 2026.

In the story of art history-the art and artists, movements and trends-a select number of galleries have played a defining role in the evolution and trajectory of art itself. Among them, the Mayor Gallery in London is surely one, as it has maintained a position fostering and promoting some of the most significant developments in art for an astounding 100 years.

CONDO WEEKEND BEGAN in the same way that all good British rom-coms, or Martin Amis novels, do: walking against the wind, en route to an oversize redbrick Victorian house in Earls Court, a spot that my press invitation had unabashedly advertised as being located in Notting Hill, but is an easy two tube stops away. This was the "standing" dinner to celebrate Arash Nassiri's "A Bug's Life," newly open at Chisenhale Gallery, in a renowned collector's home.

Time Out has named the London Museum as the best new thing to do in the capital in 2026. We can't wait for its reopening not only because of its dashing new rebrand (which features a logo of a ceramic pigeon), but also because of its its shiny new home in Smithfield Market.

At Troubadour, we are driven by a belief in creating extraordinary spaces that inspire artists, audiences, and the stories they come together to share. The 3,000 seat venue is to be built in Greenwich Securing planning permission for the new Troubadour Greenwich Peninsula Theatre marks a major milestone for us, and an exciting new chapter in our commitment to bold, large-scale live performance.

But at the end of this month, there's a brand new festival arriving to inject some colour into the financial district. 'Vibrance' will light up Roman ruins, medieval churches and secret gardens across the Square Mile on Thursday January 29 and Friday January 30 from 5.30pm until 8.30pm. Created by Guildhall Production Studio, it brings together more than a dozen artworks and live performances by emerging artists from Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Sally Tallant, the former boss of the Liverpool Biennial, has been announced as the new director of the Hayward Gallery and visual arts at London's Southbank Centre. Tallant, who is currently in charge of the Queens Museum in New York, will return to the UK to take over from Ralph Rugoff, who will step down after two decades in charge of the institution, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.