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10 Exhibitions To Add To Your Summer Plans

If you’ve missed weekends wandering around galleries like we have, you’ll be excited at their impending reopening on May 17th. From Yayoi Kusama’s famous Infinity Mirrored Rooms at Tate Modern, to an in-depth look at nightlife and design at the V&A Dundee, there are so many enticing shows to choose from.

So you can plan your time wisely, we’ve checked the calendars and rounded-up the best art and design exhibitions you won’t want to miss this summer. Pre-book now, we’re expecting these exhibitions to sell out fast.

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms

Anyone with an Instagram account will recognise the magnificent work of Yayoi Kusama. With immersive installations that transport you into Kusama’s unique vision of endless reflections, the upcoming exhibition will feature two of her most iconic mirrored rooms, as well as a small presentation of photographs that provide historical context for the global phenomenon that Kusama’s work has become today.

On until 12th June 2022 at the Tate Modern, London.

Night Fever: Designing Club Culture

V&A Dundee’s long-awaited Night Fever: Designing Club Culture explores the relationship between club culture and design from the 1960s to today. Taking a look at some of the most iconic nightlife spaces across New York, Berlin, Manchester and London, as well as cities across Scotland, this colourful exhibition uncovers the progressive and disruptive history of nightclub design and its far-reaching influence on popular culture.

On until 9th January 2022 at the V&A Dundee, Scotland.

Alison Milner: Decorative Minimalist

The relationship between nature, man-made materials and our wellbeing is explored in Alison Milner’s new installations at the historic Yorkshire Sculpture Park landscape. Describing herself as a ‘Decorative Minimalist’, Milner is inspired by the geometry of nature and a minimal use of materials, all of which she channels into an exhibition that is not to be missed. Our favourite highlight? A large-scale, illustrated tile mural entitled Walk in the Park, a 160 ceramic tile mural that captures the everyday life and soul of Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

On until 27th June 2021 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict

Kenyan-born artist Michael Armitage has quickly become one of the most exciting voices in contemporary painting. Known for his colourful, dreamlike paintings, Armitage’s work is loaded with provocative perspectives, weaving narratives drawn from his memories, and cultural and historical discourses from Western and East Africa vantage points. His large-scale oil paintings use Lubugo bark cloth, a culturally important material made of tree bark by the Baganda people of Uganda, to locate and destabilise the subject of his paintings.. We wouldn’t miss this incredible opportunity to view Armitage’s work in-person, and neither should you.

On until 19th September 2021 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Rachel Maclean: Solo Exhibition

The critically acclaimed and multimedia artist Rachel Maclean’s new solo exhibition at Jupiter Artland is set to bring together a decade of her fantasy worlds. Highlighting four key works, Spite Your Face (2017), Eyes To Me (2015), Germs (2013) and The Lion and the Unicorn (2012), audiences are invited into Maclean’s vivid imagination further. There is also a rare chance to view Maclean’s earliest work, The Lion and the Unicorn, created in the year the Scottish independence referendum was announced, is an inspired commentary on Scotland and the crisis of the union. Using political satire, the artist’s work has a timeless quality that reinforces the message that although faces change and headlines shift, the farce of political life and comic-tragedy of human frailty is endless and forever.

On until 18th July 2021 at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh.

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

On view for the first time outside the US, the Serpentine Gallery hosts 34 works of the New York-based painter, Jennifer Packer. Drawing out timely and necessary discussions on care, racial politics, representation and art history, Jennifer Packer’s work questions the invisibility of Blackness in Western painting traditions and addresses how the presence, strength, and vulnerability of Black lives can be represented in painting today.

On until 22nd August 2021 at Serpentine Galleries, London.

Imran Perretta: the destructors

The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester is presenting a new two-screen film by London-based artist Imran Perretta. Drawing on the artist’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi descent, the film explores personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Filmed on location in Tower Hamlets, East London, it reconsiders the alienated male youth, exploring the complexities of coming of age for young Muslim men living in the UK.

On until Autumn 2021 at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy

Eileen Agar is known for having transformed the everyday into the extraordinary. Through her unique style of nimbly-spanned painting, collage, photography, sculpture and even ceremonial hats, Agar’s work fuses vivid abstraction imagery from classical art, the natural world and sexual pleasure. The retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery follows Agar’s career from the 1920s to the 1990s, cementing her status as one of the most dynamic, bold and prolific artists of her generation. It’s one not to be missed.

On until 29th August 2021 at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Jaap Pieters: The Eye of Amsterdam

A specialist of Super 8mm filmmaking, Dutch artist Jaap Pieters has spent four decades directing his voyeuristic gaze in an attempt to capture the everyday. Known as the “eye of Amsterdam”, Pieters confides himself to one reel of film, with many of his films lasting anywhere between 20-seconds and 3-minutesWorking with minimal equipment and manipulation, Pieters turns his attention to urban subjects with a focus on isolating trams, crossroads, city dwellers and drifters so viewers have to look beyond the superficial or obvious. Jaap Pieters’ films will be shown on three showreels at The MAC Belfast, rotating throughout the duration of the exhibition.

On until 8th August at The MAC, Belfast.

Aliza Nisenbaum

New York-based painter Aliza Nisenbaum is best known for her bright, large-scale portraits of community groups. In response to the dedication of Liverpool’s key works, Nisenbaum has created a series of new paintings, capturing the stories of the frontline NHS workers from Merseyside, while highlighting the impact that Covid-19 has had on their jobs and home lives. Sitters include a professor of Outbreak Medicine, a respiratory doctor who became a father during the first wave, and a student nurse who comes from a family of nurses who all chose to return to frontline work.

On until 5th September 2021 at The Tate, Liverpool.

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