梦幻岛屿生活 | 伦敦 2022 年艺术展览大赏

The best 2022 art exhibitions in London and around the UK, from Yayoi Kusama to Wang Gongxin, Holly Hendry to Rosemarie Trockel – as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk

If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that nothing beats an in-person art encounter. The Covid-19-induced backlog of show postponements has largely settled, and uncertainty is becoming less of a certainty. We finally have an alternative to viewing art via pixels, which – bar ongoing NFT dramas – never quite offered the same thrills.

These are the best art exhibitions, in London and around the UK, worth visiting in 2022.

London art exhibitions

Exhibition: ‘Birds of a Feather’, a survey of contemporary art in GhanaLocation: PhillipsDates: Until 10 February 2022

James Mishio, Mishio And Max, acrylic, oil and fabric on canvas, 2022

At Phillips, a new show spotlights the work of 18 rising-star artists from Ghana. Developed in collaboration with Ghanaian Art Agency & Collective Artemartis, ‘Birds of a Feather’ constructs a contemporary visual language rooted in a West African cultural aesthetic through which each artist navigates the complexities of identity within a Ghanaian socio-political context. With work spanning portraiture, abstraction, and collage, featured artists include and include Awanle Ayiboro Hawa Ali, Courage Hunke, James Mishio, Araba Opoku, Abdur Rahman Muhammed, and Kwaku Yaro. The private selling exhibition will be on view at 30 Berkeley Square until 10 February 2022.

Exhibition: Louis Morlæ: ‘Machinochrome Dreams’Location: Moarain HouseDates: Until 20 February 2022

Louis Morlæ, ’Machinochrome Dreams’, installation view, Moarain House, London. Photography: Theo Christelis

In east London, something otherworldly has landed at Moarain House. Louis Morlæ’s show, ‘Machinochrome Dreams’, is part art exhibition, part requiem for a pandemic-zapped nightlife. On the walls of the space, pallid, lifeless neo-human bodies line the walls. On a central screen is Morlæ’s Ecce in Semper Aeternum. Framed as a fable, the animation can be read as Ecce’s journey through a dystopian, dance and drink-filled eternity, while clad in Moncler and Balenciaga. As the artist describes: ‘Locked down, isolated and seeking an escape I set out to build a series of figures that I could live vicariously through and a digital world in which I could bring them to life. Through plugging into this world I pursued liberation in the hot darkness of a digital club, surrounded by surrogates. Without physical constraints we could be together, shoulder to shoulder, raging into the night.’

Exhibition: Holly Hendry: ‘Fatty Acids’ Location: Stephen Friedman GalleryDates: until 26 February 2022

Holly Hendry, Brain Fog II, 2021. Plaster, marble, pigment and Jesmonite. Copyright Holly Hendry. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photograph: Mark Blower

Holly Hendry has a knack for fusing anatomy and emotion. Through inventive material concoctions – often involving steel, Jesmonite, silicone, ash, charcoal, lipstick, chewed gum, soap, foam, marble and grit – she creates cartoon-esque, pastel-coloured sculptures that turn the inner workings of the body and mind inside out. Hendry’s new show, ‘Fatty Acids’ – a living, breathing bodily production line of sorts – draws on the ethos of Bauhaus, specifically the work of Oskar Schlemmer, whose performative costumes explore the human body as a mechanical object. Hendry’s sculptures yawn, sneeze, cry and even experience ‘brain fog’ within the gallery space, which has been transformed into a custard yellow factory of anatomical delights. Feeling indulgent? Try Hendry’s ‘mum’s banoffee pie’ recipe, a recent contribution to our Artist’s Palate feature.

Exhibition: Rosemarie Trockel: ‘Why gravel, Ms. Smith?’Location: Sprüth MagersDates: until 19 March 2022

Rosemarie Trockel, installation view of ’Why gravel, Ms. Smith?’, Sprüth Magers, London, until March 19, 2022 Photography: Stephen White & Co

Rosemarie Trockel’s show at Sprüth Magers is about layers, illusion and twists. The German artist’s multifaceted practice has long explored the conceptual potential of conventionally ‘feminine’ crafts: ceramics emerge as reliefs and paintings are produced on industrial knitting machines. The first works we encounter in ‘Why gravel, Ms Smith’ are new and recent ceramic works ranging from ambiguous and amorphous forms to definite objects like fans, hobs and windows. In her Clusters series, Trockel presents digitally manipulated images of older works, sampled, remixed and recontextualised. There are uncanny paintings of photographs: Julian Assange appears in one, Trockel’s collaboration with Bottega Veneta for the brand’s Spring 2021 presentation features in another. One is a painting of a photograph of a sculpture, which offers viewers an eerie sense of detachment from the original subject. Some works allude, some describe. All, in one way or another, keep us guessing.

Exhibition: Yu Ji: ‘Against Shadows’Location: Sadie Coles HQDates: Until 5 March 2022

Yu Ji, Flesh in Stone – Ghost NO.2, 2018. Installation view in ’Against Shadows’, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 2022. Photographer: Eva Herzog

Yu Ji’s first exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ is a sea of flesh. In a new assemblage, concrete bodies are broken, dissected, and revealing their innards – iron bars that were supposed to hold them together. In places, the bodies become hybrid, their missing parts filled in with cast soap that resembles wax. Elsewhere, Flesh in Stone – Ghost No. 1, 2018, originated in a live sitting in the artist’s studio. She instructed male models to test the physical limits of their bodies; Yu Ji depicted their strained torsos and flexed limbs in clay models. ‘Against Shadows’, spans sculpture, installation, video and performance and delves into the relationship between ‘original’ and ‘reproduction’; individuality and mass urban experience.

Exhibition: Wang GongxinLocation: White Cube, Mason’s Yard Dates: Until 26 February 2022

Wang Gongxin, Perpetrator, 2020, Metal container, light bulb, motor, ink with water and LED light. © the artist. Photography © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

Chinese artist Wang Gongxin has long probed the contrasts between his native China and the United States and the dazzling, sometimes stifling complexity of living in a globalising world. His new White Cube show explores cultural polarities and in-between states through 13 captivating new multimedia works. Wang’s work, often black and white but never straightforward, composes a dynamic interchange between the work’s movement and that of its viewer. When people are involved, tightly controlled elements are at risk of unexpected outcomes. The spectator sees the work, and is the work, as humanity sees the conundrum, and is the conundrum.

Exhibition: ‘Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s – Now’Location: Tate BritainDates: Until 3 April 2022

Installation view of ‘Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s – Now’. Tate Photography

Spanning four generations of art through the work of 40 artists, ‘Life Between Islands’ is a landmark group survey of Caribbean-British art and its impact on the contemporary UK landscape. The show begins with the Windrush Generation that arrived in Britain in the 1950s. It moves through the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and 80s and concludes with emerging contemporary artists who draw on the legacy of Caribbean-British. Featured artists include Aubrey Williams, Sonia Boyce, Donald Locke, Horace Ové, Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling, Isaac Julien, Claudette Johnson, Peter Doig, Hurvin Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner and Alberta Whittle.

Exhibition: Ed Clark: ‘Without a Doubt’Location: Hauser & Wirth Dates: until 20 April 2022

Ed Clark, 
Untitled (Paris), 1998, Acrylic on canvas. Photography: Thomas Barratt

Ed Clark’s solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London will plunge viewers into the depths of material and colour, where paint itself is the primary subject. Clark was a pioneer of the New York School in the 1950s, known for pushing painting beyond hard-edged Abstraction, and became the first artist to exhibit a shaped canvas. ‘Without a Doubt’ is a deep-dive into the artist’s wide-ranging exploration of paint, marks his first solo presentation in the UK, following the artist’s inclusion in the seminal ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983’ at Tate Modern.

Exhibition: Victor Vasarely: ‘Universe’ Location: SelfridgesDates: until 31 March 2022

Victor Vasarely, Okta cor (1973). Photography: Fabrice Lepeltier and Fondation Vasarely

Selfridges is blending the worlds of NFT and IRL in a new project, ‘Universe’, which celebrates the work of Op Art pioneer, Victor Vasarely, known for geometric designs and perception-bending illusions. In partnership with the Fondation Vasarely and Paco Rabanne, the show will include an exhibition of 55; 37 will be available for sale, alongside a series of specially commissioned NFTs created by London-based platform, Substance. The project also marks the launch of Paco Rabanne’s S/S 2022 collection for which creative director Julien Dossena has taken the work of Vasarely as a starting point.

Exhibition: Rindon Johnson: ‘Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves’Location: Chisenhale GalleryDates: until 6 February 2022

Rindon Johnson, Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year’s Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening, 2021. Realtime Portrait Animating Program, projectors, platform, computer. SculptureCenter, New York and Chisenhale Gallery, London Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography: Kyle Knodell

The art of American artist Rindon Johnson is rooted in language and fluid in media. In a newly-opened show at Chisenhale Gallery, London – following a recent presentation at SculptureCenter New York – Johnson traverses a wide range of subjects, from his identity as a Black transgender American, to the environmental crisis and the space between actual and virtual realities. Through sculpture, installation, poetry, writing, virtual reality film and painting, Johnson probes at the very core of belonging. In the large-scale sculpture, Coeval Proposition #1: Tear down so as to make flat with the Ground or The *Trans America Building DISMANTLE EVERYTHING, Johnson references the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, an iconic landmark of the city’s skyline. The building’s concrete, steel, and glass with a facade covered in crushed white quartz has been reimagined in reclaimed redwood and ebonised, or darkened.

Exhibition: Yayoi Kusama: ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’Location: Tate ModernDates: Until 12 June 2022

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, 2011/2017, Tate, presented by the artist, Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro 2015, accessioned 2019 © YAYOI KUSAMA Photo © Tate (Joe Humphrys)

On the post-lockdown London art scene, there seems to be a recurring theme: immersion. These include Ryoji Ikeda’s sensory ambush at 180 The Strand, and Es Devlin’s recent Forest for Change at Somerset House for London Design Biennale. But Tate Modern is hosting the piece of work that arguably redefined the role of immersion in contemporary art: Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’. The year-long show will comprise two of the artist’s acclaimed mirror room installations in a dizzying marriage of mirrors, light and water, which offers the illusion of limitless space. Also on view is The Universe as Seen from the Stairway to Heaven, 2021, Kusama’s brand new ’peep in’ sculpture, which has been created specifically for the show. At 92, Kusama remains a prolific force: the artist currently has a simultaneous shows at Victoria Miro, London, the New York Botanical Garden, and a major retrospective at Gropius Bau in Berlin. She has also recently collaborated with brands such as Veuve Clicquot, which involved a striking sculptural intervention on the French Champagne house’s premium cuvée, La Grande Dame.

Art exhibitions around the UK

Exhibition: ‘Ida Applebroog: Right Up to Now 1969 – 2021’Location: Hauser & Wirth Somerset Dates: until 2 May 2022

Installation view, ‘Ida Applebroog. Right Up To Now 1969 – 2021’, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2022 Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photography: Ken Adlard

A major new show by American artist Ida Applebroog is taking viewers through a labyrinth of dark twists and sharp visions of the human condition. ‘Ida Applebroog: Right Up to Now 1969 – 2021’, at Hauser & Wirth Somerset makes clear that the artist, however underappreciated, is a key figure in American feminist art and American art. As Nick Compton said in his recent review, her work is ‘often raw, confessional, often dealing with dysfunctional relationships and male aggression, also has a dark wit, a way with aphorisms and an illustrator’s fine, engaging line.’ The show speaks to the radical introspection of Ida Applebroog—now in her 90s—as a woman and as an artist, presenting life as it is, through interconnected themes of power, gender, politics, and sexuality.

Exhibition: ‘Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery’Location: Pallant House, ChichesterDates: Until spring 2022

Installation views of ‘Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery’ at Pallant House Gallery. Photography: Rob Harris

The 2021 Model Art Gallery at Pallant House is a microcosm of contemporary British art featuring tiny new works created over the last year by 34 leading artists. The dolls house-esque gallery features new works sculptures by Julian Opie, ceramics by Grayson Perry, with a façade clad in Lothar Götz’s electric geometric mural, and pieces by Michael Armitage, Cecily Brown, Michael Craig-Martin, Gary Hume, Magdalene Odundo, and Rachel Whiteread. Ever thought you’d have to squint for a closer look at a Sean Scully or spot a porcelain pot by Edmund de Waal no bigger than a thimble? We didn’t either, but there’s a first time for everything.