Tucked away in a beautiful building in fashionable north London you’ll find the only museum in the UK dedicated to modern Italian art. The Estorick Collection is internationally recognised as one of the finest collections of Italian art from the early 20th century and it really is an absolute gem. The permanent collection is especially strong in Italian Futurism with works including Giacomo Balla’s Hand of the Violinist and Gino Severini’s The Boulevard. The current temporary exhibition is a delight. Antonio Calderara: A Certain Light fills the ground floor galleries until 22 December. Comprising some 50 paintings, this is a beautiful show that highlights Calderara’s artistic development from expressive figurative painting to magic realism and total abstraction. These are delicate and exquisitely balanced paintings full of subdued colour and gentle light. And there’s a cute little courtyard café to enjoy too.
Ticketed, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN
The London Underground Map is surely one of the most universally recognised graphic designs in the world. This new exhibition explores the evolution of the iconic London Underground map over the 160 years since its creation in 1863. It includes a rare opportunity to see hand-drawn and annotated manuscripts by its creator Harry Beck and marks the 50th anniversary of his death. Beck’s 1933 pocket map influenced the design of transport maps worldwide and really is a design icon. The Map House itself is also fascinating. Established in 1907, it is the world’s oldest and largest antiquarian map dealer.
Free, to 30 November, The Map House, 54 Beauchamp Place, London SW3 1NY
The impressive Hauser & Wirth (H&W) gallery in Savile Row houses two gallery spaces. This month, you can see solo shows by the established US artist Jack Whitten and the emerging artist George Rouy. Over the course of a six-decade career, Whitten’s work has bridged rhythms of gestural abstraction and process art, arriving at a nuanced language of painting that hovers between mechanical automation and intensely personal expression. This exhibition focuses on Whitten’s paintings, works on paper and sculptures from the 1970s. Now acknowledged as a leading figure in the new generation of London painters, George Rouy’s debut exhibition at H&W features works that continue his enquiry into collective mass, multiplicities and movement, and human modes of existence. Rouy’s dynamic and signature use of the human figure, vexed with desire, alienation and crisis, speaks to the emotional extremities of our time, resulting in explorations of identity in a globalised, technologically driven 21st century. These are big, dramatic works that hold your gaze.
Free, Whitten to 14 December and Rouy to 21 December, Hauser & Wirth, 23 Saville Row, London
Modern Art’s Helmet Row gallery is showing this fascinating intergenerational exhibition of 14 artists whose paintings are made with the assistance of machines. Machine Painting includes artists working from the 1970s to the present day. Their use of mechanical apparatuses proposes a more collaborative creative relationship with machines. Jack Whitten (see above) is one of the artists featured here, along with Tauba Auerbach, Matthias Groebel, Peter Halley, Jacqueline Humphries, Albert Oehlen, Seth Price, Sigmar Polke, Avery Singer, Reena Spaulings, Wolfgang Tillmans, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Rosemarie Trockel and Christopher Wool. These are diverse and intriguing works that inevitably pose questions about the hand of the artist.
Free, to 14 December at Modern Art, 4-8 Helmet Row, London EC1V 3QJ
November celebrates the artistic achievements of the Czech Republic with the 28th Made in Prague Festival. The Festival offers a rich cultural program, including music, literature, performing and visual arts, and contemporary cinema, all capturing the evolving story of Czech society. This year’s Festival commemorates the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death, acknowledges the 35th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution and celebrates the Year of Czech Music. The Festival opens on 31 October with a concert of contemporary Czech classical music by composer Ondřej Adámek with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican. World-renowned Czech violinist Pavel Šporcl and the English Chamber Orchestra feature in the closing concert at the Southbank Centre.
Free and ticketed events to 30 November at various venues
Celebrate the beauty of things that don’t fit in Jumbled Alphabet, a new exhibition by artist Nairy Baghramian. This is her first major solo show in London for 14 years and comes as she is receiving international recognition for her work, including the 2023 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s façade commission, the Aspen Award for Art, the Nasher Prize and the Nivola Award for Sculpture. Born in Isfahan, Baghramian had to flee post-revolutionary Iran as a teenager and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984. Baghramian’s colourful, abstract sculptures recognise the magic of being an outsider and seeing the potential in imperfection. She is interested in the idea of the ‘misfit’ and the creativity found in that which is considered ‘disfunctional’. Baghramian employs an extensive repertoire of techniques, materials and forms to address the spatial, architectural, social, political and contextual conditions of contemporary art.
Free, to 12 January, South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Rd, London, SE5 8UH
Enter a world of inventive, immersive and multisensory installations and sculptures that weave connections between disparate histories, cultures and traditions with the internationally celebrated South Korean artist Haegue Yang. Now living and working in Berlin and Seoul, this is the first major survey of her work to be held here in the UK. It presents a comprehensive study of Yang’s work from the early 2000s to today, highlighting how her artworks resonate on a personal and sensory level, while also speaking to social, political and spiritual ideas. Her works draw on diverse histories and customs, including East Asian traditions and folklore, modernism, contemporary art history and nature. This is a vibrant, uplifting and original exhibition.
Ticketed, to 5 January at Hayward Gallery, Southbank
While you’re at Southbank, be sure to visit the National Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall. Here you’ll see Astra Papachristodoulou’s debut solo exhibition that takes poetry off the page. Poems are displayed here as sculpture, objects and textiles in this thought-provoking show. These ‘object poems’ encourage interactive and shared participatory experiences and offer new and unconventional ways for poetry to exist today.
Free, to 5 January at the National Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank
Get up close and personal with Francis Bacon, one of the icons of 20th century British art, in this comprehensive exhibition. Featuring a wide range of works from the 1940s onwards, this exhibition clearly shows how Bacon challenged the accepted conventions of painting and portraiture. All those disfigured bodies and contorted faces we associate with Bacon are here, anguished images of existential man living alone in a bleak and godless universe. Pictures of popes and painters, friends and lovers, are brought together in this deeply personal and revealing show. “Of course we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher’s shop I always think it’s surprising that I wasn’t there instead of the animal,” Bacon once said. This is the National Portrait Gallery’s first major exhibition of Bacon portraits and brings together rarely-seen works from international collections. A special highlight is the superb display of 1960s photographs. The excellent accompanying book is available in both paperback and hardback – exit through the gift shop, as they say.
Ticketed (but free to members/patrons), to 19 January at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place (Trafalgar Square)
The EFG London Jazz Festival is back this month, celebrating the living legends and timeless heroes of jazz and contemporary music who inspire artists and audiences alike. The Festival includes a full calendar of performances and events, with many free to attend on the Barbican FreeStage. The Jazz On Screen cinema program explores the intersection of jazz and film, especially celebrating the rich legacy of jazz as portrayed through British television in the 1970s and beyond. On 17 November, three exceptional artists from Australia will bring their unique and diverse sounds to the FreeStage with a takeover by Melbourne International Jazz Festival. A new pop-up venue, The Jazz Social, will be the place to go.
Free and ticketed events, 15-24 November at The Barbican
Famous faces on stage
There’s always an opportunity to see a famous face from film and television live on stage in London. This month, see funny man Steve Coogan alongside Armando Iannucci from The Thick of It in Dr Strangelove at the Noel Coward Theatre; Ugly Betty star Vanessa Williams is in The Devil wears Prada at the Dominion; former Dr Who Jodie Whittaker stars in The Duchess, a modern reimagining of a Jacobean tragedy, at the Trafalgar Theatre; and Lily Collins from Emily in Paris and Money Heist’s Álvaro Mortemake their West End debuts at the Duke of York’s Theatre in the explosive two-hander, Barcelona.
Read: Don’t miss in October – your monthly guide to the brightest and best arts in London
