This month, London’s exhibition calendar settles into its summer rhythm, balancing major institutional shows with smaller gallery programmes across the city. From Frida: The Making of an Icon at Tate Modern to Hepworth in Colour at The Courtauld, the season moves between high-profile retrospectives and more focused presentations. Highlights include Japanese Women Photographers at The Photographers’ Gallery and Yu Nishimura’s Dislocation at Sadie Coles HQ — offering, collectively, a compelling way to step out of the heat and escape into the city’s fine-art scene.
Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal, at the Freud Museum
British-born, but based in Mexico later in her career, Carrington was one of the most distinctive voices within Surrealism. The Symptomatic Surreal, at the Freud Museum, focuses on a pivotal moment in her life, bringing together drawings made during her wartime hospitalisation in Spain. The works trace her flight from Nazi-occupied France and a period of psychological crisis that shaped her practice. These works are raw and immediate, blending fantastical imagery with lived experience. The exhibition is on now until 10 August.
Frida: The Making of an Icon, at Tate Modern
How does an artist become a cultural symbol? The Tate’s show leans into Kahlo’s afterlife as much as her work, tracing her influence from Mexican sensation to one of the most recognisable figures in modern culture. Alongside 30 key paintings, the show pulls in photographs, personal objects and work by artists she unwittingly influenced, widening the frame beyond a single biography. It builds toward the Fridamania phenomenon, which saw her image circulate far beyond the gallery. The exhibition runs until 3 January 2027.
Yu Nishimura: Dislocation, at Sadie Coles HQ
Known for his quietly atmospheric, memory-driven scenes, the Japanese painter shows his interiors, street scenes and solitary figures here in all their muted, earthy tones. The title Dislocation reflects the mood of the work — still, restrained and faintly melancholic — and explores the relationship between figure and environment. The exhibition runs until 22 August.
Gener8ion: 2034, at 180 Studios
The dystopian world conceived by director Romain Gavras and producer Surkin at 180 Studios showcases a series of films exploring facets of future conflict. The narratives feel disturbingly plausible, involving youth, technology and the erosion of social cohesion. Highlights include an extended version of the viral video Storm, featuring Yung Lean — set in a boys’ school in Leeds, it captures a charged atmosphere of mischief, rebellion and violence among schoolboys.
Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now, at the Photographers’ Gallery
This reappraisal of Japanese photographic history is a rare insight into the work of Japan’s most important image makers, bringing together 27 artists from the 1950s onward. It features works across photography, video, installation and rare photo books and spans intimate portraiture, fashion, pop culture and social commentary. Key artists include works by Toyoko Tokiwa, known for her documentation of postwar Japan, in particular females in nightlife districts. Tracing different generations of image-makers all the way to the present, the show reveals how women have challenged conventions, documented change and reshaped both the medium and its cultural lens.
Delcy Morelos: Origo, at the Barbican Sculpture Court
The Colombian artist’s first major UK presentation transforms the Barbican’s sculpture garden into a monumental walk-through installation built from soil, clay and alluringly fragrant spices. Drawing on Andean and Amazonian knowledge, it consists of a 24-metre-wide circular tunnel around a central lightwell that invites visitors to move, rest and recalibrate within. Immersive and quietly atmospheric, it reframes the court as a space for connection and reflection while centring on the elemental role of earth’s material meaning.
Hepworth in Colour, at the Courtauld Gallery
One of Britain’s most celebrated modernist sculptors, Hepworth is best known for her abstract forms shaped by the landscapes of Cornwall. This exhibition shifts focus to a quieter but no less enchanting aspect of her practice: her bold and often unexpected use of colour. Bringing together around 20 sculptures and 30 drawings, it highlights carvings with vivid blues and yellows painted into their surfaces, alongside bronzes and coloured marbles. Seeing them together reveals how central colour was to her thinking. It runs until 6 September, offering a fresh perspective on a familiar name.
