London art exhibitions to see in March

After a very long winter, we are finally seeing the first signs of spring in the city. Bluebells and daffodils are peaking through the defrosted grounds of The Regent's Park, and the evenings are starting to get lighter and brighter. London is also blooming with art exhibitions. From group shows to major career retrospectives, plan your next visit with our handy, frequently updated guide to the city's art exhibitions happening in March.

Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.

London art exhibitions: what to see in March 2025

Alvaro Barrington ‘Back Home / I Am... I Said’

Sadie Coles HQ
5 March - 26 April 2025

Alvaro Barrington ‘Back Home / I Am... I Said, ’featuring Tiffany Calver, Naima Karlsson and Friendly Pressure is on display at Sadie Coles HQ. Following his exhibition at Tate Britain, Barrington presents new bodies of work in two chapters, which marks his return to the exploration of traditional modernist painting. The new exhibition explores his interpretation of the sun setting across the Caribbean Sea through a series of works composed on paper.

sadiecoles.com

Verena Loewensberg

Hauser & Wirth London
17 April 2025

Hauser & Wirth presents the first solo gallery exhibition in the UK dedicated to the Zurich artist Verona Loewensberg, featuring her paintings from the 1960s to 1980s which marked a shift in working in colour and minimalism. The exhibition also includes the only sculpture Loewensberg ever made.

hauserwirth.com/

Ai Weiwei: A New Chapter

Lisson Gallery
Until 15 March

Renowned artist Ai Weiwei displays new works at Lisson Gallery. The pieces are a contemporary take on historical and artistic references, looking at topics including identity, politics, and cultural heritage, which threads an intricate dialogue between past and present. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the artist's ideas and emotions and look at connections between personal and political narratives.

lissongallery.com

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift

National Portrait Gallery
Until 18 May 2025

Portrait photography from The Face Magazine is at the heart of this playful retrospective. In this exhibition over 80 photographers, and over 200 photographs are on display, with many of these images taken away from the magazine for the first time. Expect to see a variety of musicians to models who featured on the magazine’s cover, including a young Kate Moss.

www.npg.org.uk

Tarot: Origins & Afterlives

Warburg Institute
Until 30 April 2025

An exhibition, ‘Tarot: Origins & Afterlives’, at the Warburg Institute in London, delves into seven mercurial centuries. The show, which debuts the institute’s public gallery, spotlights the artists who have interpreted and reimagined tarot’s compelling format. The exhibition celebrates the creative flair that artists bring to tarot, often creating designs at a larger scale and then shrinking them down.

Writer Emily Steer
Read the full review here

Barbara Hepworth: Strings

Piano Nobile
Until 2 May 2025

A new exhibition at London gallery Piano Nobile will feature works by English artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth that have, up until now, only been viewed as part of private collections. Barbara Hepworth: Strings coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death.

The presentation will focus on Hepworth’s use of string. Even if you haven’t heard of the artist, you may have seen her ‘string’ work in the form of the sculpture mounted on the side of John Lewis in Oxford Street: featuring huge aluminium rods, Winged Figure has been displayed in London since 1963.

Writer Anna Solomon
Read full review here

Noah Davis at the Barbican

Barbican
Until 11 May 2025

A decade after Noah Davis’ untimely death, the Barbican has staged the first institutional retrospective of his work. Davis's staggering talent as a painter is offset by his eye for the uncanny, a forensic knowledge of the history of painting and the ability to fuse these elements to create truly beautiful art.

Writer Amah-Rose Abrams
Read the full review here

'Linder: Danger Came Smiling'

Hayward Gallery, London,
Until 5 May 2025

'Linder: Danger Came Smiling' gathers fifty years of the artist's work at the Hayward Gallery. Her first retrospective traces her beginnings on the punk music scene, via her photomontages and eclectic embrace of references, from pornography to fashion, ballet, fetish, weightlifting and art history, culminating with her newest pieces, deepfake images of herself.

Writer Hannah Silver
Read the full interview here

‘Rotimi Fani Kayode: The Studio – Staging Desire’

Autograph ABP
Until 22 March 2025

Celebrating the work of the Nigerian-born photographer, ‘Rotimi Fani Kayode, the latest exhibition showcases his photography during the AIDS years of the 1980s was short but ran electric in its conscious performativity, while depicting the queer male body and its political and spiritual associations.

Writer Upasana Das
Read the full review here

‘Situation Comedy’

Gagosian London
Until March 22 2025

Derrick Adams plays with themes of Black Americana in ‘Situation Comedy. Pervasive themes of Black Americana are gently subverted throughout a show which, on the face of it, is a bright, joyful capturing of everyday life. Easter eggs lay in wait for excited children, a cherry pie is ready to be eaten, a woman prepares to drink the Kool-Aid and another sports a sickly sweet Tootsie Rolls hairstyle. But look closer, and there’s slyly observant undertones questioning the religious rituals.

Writer Hannah Silver
Read the full review here

Leigh Bowery!

Tate Modern
27 February – 31 August 2025

Tate Modern celebrates the life and career of artist Leigh Bowery. Never limited to convention, Bowery adapted to many roles from artist to performer, model to fashion designer. He saw himself as the canvas and reimagined clothes and makeup as tools for sculpture, using his body as a shapeshifting tool to challenge sexuality and gender. The exhibition is a chance to see his different 'looks', and many collaborations.

tate.org.uk

Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark

Raven Row
Until 6 April 2025

Peter Hujar is best known for his black-and-white portraits, and you may recognise his work from the front cover portrait of novel A Little Life. The photographer was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia, his work was unknown to the larger art world. At Raven Row ‘Eyes Open in the Dark’ focuses on his later work, celebrating an artistic career admired for its elegance and deep rooted emotions. His intense and intimate works take on a variety of subjects and immerse viewers in 1970s and 80s New York.

ravenrow.org

'Under the Same Sky’

Studio Voltaire
Until 13 April 2025

Jake Grewal, a rising star of the British art scene showcasing a new exhibition at Studio Voltaire. The gallery’s former Victorian mission hall architecture works well as a backdrop for the artist’s work because, in his own words, it feels ‘open and expansive’ which reflects the new paintings. ‘I think people think my work is quite closed and intense, quite dark, and I wanted to make a different statement,’ he says. Grewal’s work to date has been an exploration of figuration and landscape, he uses charcoal and oil paint to create pictures full of intrigue, ambiguity and a certain kind of poetic longing.

Writer Simon Chilvers
Read the full review here

'Safety Curtain'

Auto Italia
Until 23 March 2025

In a new exhibition at London's Auto Italia, Alex Margo Arden explores the recent spate of art attacks and the 'tricky' discourse they provoke. The artist started making work inspired by protest actions in 2022, when Just Stop Oil activists made headlines by throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery. ‘Safety Curtain’, her solo exhibition at London’s Auto Italia, looks at various moments when arts institutions have become protest sites.

Writer Phin Jennings
Read the full review here

‘Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley’

Alison Jacques gallery
Until 8 March 2025

Daniel Malarkey, the curator of ‘Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley’ at London’s Alison Jacques gallery, celebrates the fantastical. Given carte blanche over the gallery’s many-roomed Cork Street space, Malarkey has pulled together work by over 30 artists across generations and geographies. The result is a fairytale exhibition that negotiates a complex set of moods and feelings; it is both irreverent and unsettling, containing moments of joy alongside a looming, inky darkness.

Writer Phin Jennings
Read the full review here

‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World'

Victoria Miro
Until 8 March 2025

Twentieth-century American painter Alice Neel (1900- 1984) had a sharply uncanny eye for a portrait, her emotive, psychologically astute works an antidote to the abstract aesthetic fashionable throughout her lifetime .Throughout her long career, Neel championed those left vulnerable from social discrimination, celebrating freedom and pride in the body in groups including women and the Black and immigrant communities. With her ninth solo exhibition at Victoria Miro, her support of the queer community is put under the lens in an honest and emotional snapshot of broader American society.

Writer Hannah Silver
Read the full review here

'There: A Feeling'

Camden Art Centre
Until 23 March 2025

Gregg Bordowitz's new show, 'There: A Feeling' at Camden Art Centre, spans video, installation, performance, poetry, and prints, Throughout ‘There: A Feeling’, Bordowitz’s multitudes are manifested in the different forms that the artwork takes; there are videos, poems, monotype prints, and more. There’s a specificity to how the work is displayed; according to the artist, ‘a lot of these works have been shown before, but whenever they’re shown, they’re responding to the context or space in which they’re being shown’.

Writer Sam Moore
Read the full review here

The 80s: Photographing Britain

Tate Britain
Until 5 May

Set against a backdrop of race riots, strikes, mass unemployment and gentrification, a new show at Tate Britain explores one of the UK’s most colourful eras through the medium of photography. Bringing together nearly 350 images and archive materials, ‘The 80s: Photographing Britain’ explores how the medium became a tool for social representation, cultural celebration and artistic expression throughout this period.

Writer Anne Soward

tate.org.uk

'Electric Dreams'

Tate Modern
Until 1 June 2025

Encompassing the period from the 1950s to the beginning of the internet era, and uniting over 70 artists, ‘Electric Dreams’ celebrates vintage tech art in all its mind-bending glory. From US artist Rebecca Allen’s experiments in motion capture and 3D modelling for a Krafwerk music video, to Eduardo Kac’s text poems created with Minitel machines, the exhibition delves into movements including kineticism, cybernetics and abstraction as they began to take shape.

Writer Hannah Silver

tate.org.uk

Jameel Prize: Moving Images

V&A
From 30 November to 16 March 2025

Preview the Jameel Prize exhibition which is soon arriving at London's V&A, this year with a focus on moving image and digital media. The winner of the V&A and Art Jameel’s seventh international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition will be showcased alongside shortlisted artists. The exhibition highlights the rich artistic heritage of the Islamic Middle East and South Asia, showcasing the vibrant connection between contemporary creativity and the region's historical legacy.

Writer: Smilian Cibic

www.vam.ac.uk

‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’

Until 27 April 2025

Wellcome Collection’s Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is a thought-provoking exhibition which delves into the complexities of unregulated work practices and how this impacts mental and physical health. The exhibition will consist of historical objects in parallel with contemporary artworks focusing on three places of work: The Plantation, The Street and The Home, each chosen due to the difficult, physical labour, where conditions may be unsafe, and with little to no access to healthcare, a stable income and even basic rights. From sex work, street vending, domestic labour, and prison labor to name a few, Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights highlights the inequalities people face and how their health, work and rights remain hidden.

wellcomecollection.org

'Solid Light'

Tate Modern
Until 27 April 2025

Anthony McCall, a trailblazer within experimental cinema and installation art, presents Solid Light at Tate Modern, an exhibition dedicated to the artists' immersive works. Using beams of light projected through thin mist, resulting in solid light forms, allows visitors to playfully interact. The exhibition will also feature film, photography and archive material.