London art exhibitions to see in April

April is a month dedicated to wonderful design, as the anticipation of Milan Design Week begins to stir, creating a buzz of excitement across the city ( see our guide to the goings-on during Milan Design Week so you don’t miss a thing). For those firmly rooted in London soil and not venturing to the Italian design capital, there is plenty to see in the form art through painted series, dynamic sculptural pieces and even album cover creations. 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 April.

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

London art exhibitions: what to see in April 2025

‘Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts’

Victoria Miro
Until 17 April

At Victoria Miro, artist Celia Paul showcases her lightly washed portraits and landscapes which haunt the walls and the viewer alike. Her new works look back to former paintings, and more recent auto-portraits reference older ones by other British artists. In Ghost of a Girl with an Egg (2023), a woman looms luminous and lavish, her pearlescent flesh shimmering against the dark depths of a bed. These ghostly works speak, rather eerily and elegiacally, into the here and now.

Writer Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou

Read the full review here

Teresa Pągowska's ‘Shadow Self’

Thaddaeus Ropac
Until 2 April

Although closing early in the month, Teresa Pągowska's dreamy interpretations of the female form are worth a mention. The first UK solo exhibition of Pągowska’s work, the exhibition seeks to spotlight the Polish artist’s overlooked work and present it to a global audience. Newspaper cut-outs, collaged works on paper, and oil paintings on unprimed canvases come together in bold interpretations of female form, animals, dreamscapes, and interspecies figures that define the work of the late Polish artist.

Writer: Sofia Hallström
Read the full review here

Secret 7”

NOW Gallery
From 11 April until 1 June 2025

Secret 7”, the charitable initiative which invites creatives both established and up-and-coming to submit artwork for the sleeves of 700 vinyl records, is back for its ninth edition. The event is presented by War Child, the charity that will be the recipient of the proceeds, which provides protection, education and mental health support to children in conflict zones. The initiative selects seven tracks from global musicians, pressing each onto 100 limited-edition 7” vinyl records. Secret 7” then asks creatives to design a one-of-a-kind sleeve for each record, interpreting the track in any style or medium they want. The distinct records that blur the boundaries between music and collectible art, will be showcased at Greenwich Peninsula’s NOW Gallery.

Writer: Anna Solomon
Read the full story here

Tunga

Lisson Gallery
From 4 April to 17 May 2025

The work of the late multidisciplinary Brazilian artist Tunga is on show at Lisson Gallery. The exhibition will offer a look into his practice which includes ten sculptures from 2004 to 2014. The artist was known for his use of unconventional materials including hair and teeth, while also using copper and rubber which referenced Brazil’s industrial and colonial histories.

lissongallery.com

1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader

Wellcome Collection
From 17 April to 16 November 2025

At the Wellcome Collection creative duo Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader have collaborated on their latest exhibition ‘1880 THAT’ which includes film, installation and drawings to explore the communication between signed and spoken languages, and challenge a medical perspective of deafness as something to be cured. The brick motif is a recurring theme in the exhibition symbolising the building blocks of language, as well as the act of throwing bricks as a gesture of protest. The exhibition is a mix of witty design, humour and word play to uncover the complexities of meaning and (mis)understanding.

wellcomecollection.org

Soft Armour, Heavy Bones

Edel Assanti until 13 May 2025

Artist Si On marks her second exhibition in the UK. The Seoul-born, Krakow-based artist explores the relationship between innocence and darkness, and beauty and decay within the human spirit and the intricate nature of resilience. Through vivid paintings and sculptures she paints a world informed on, in her own words, 'life experiences shape our identities, as we carry memories, hopes, scars, and traumas that accumulate over time, revealing the complex aspects of our humanity’.

edelassanti.com

'Temptation of Being'

Albion Jeune
Until 17 April 2025

New York-based artist Ivana Bašić presents ‘Temptation of Being’, an exhibition which includes a series of drawings and delicate sculptural works. Using a variety of materials including wax, bronze, blown glass, copper and stainless steel create abstract works inspired by the human body and biomechanics.

albionjeune.com

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

Sadie Coles HQ
Until 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
Until 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/

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

Leigh Bowery!

Tate Modern
Until 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

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

‘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.