Your Guide: Spring Exhibitions UK
Welcome to our seasonal What’s on segment. This is too long for email so please read via browser or app to see all our wonderful recommendations. If you attend please feel free to share your experience in the comments.
**This was previously posted on What’s the Weather Substack before I decided to change it to be a section on my original Substack. If this post isn’t from you, then you can change your notifications to not be included in the What’s the Weather segments <3
There are times we all need to step away from a screen, our desk and throw ourselves into an exhibition. It’s a great way to refresh our perspective, be inspired by things that we would have before never felt possible. Art and culture is always influencing fashion, as well as giving us an opportunity to be inspired by a curated event that hasn’t been fed to us from an algorithm.
Museums are full of rich history and to be able to look forward we need to understand history, culture, and how we can use history to inspire and innovate moving forward. This is one of the reasons why we will be (soon) launching a Fashion History segment to WTW?
Below is a list of 15 amazing exhibitions being shown around the UK as well as a list of incredible workshops on offer whether you’re looking for a personal creative outlet or an opportunity to be creative as a team build to kick off the season.
UK Exhibitions this Spring
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Rerspectives, 7th Feb - 28th June 2025 Edinburgh
A groundbreaking exhibition in partnership with the Fleming Collection, which for the first time showcases the Scottish Colourists in the context of their European contemporaries, interrogating how this international generation of radical painters forged a new language of colour in the early 20th century.
Textiles: The Art of Mankind, 28th March - 7th Sept 2025, London
Textiles: The Art of Mankind celebrates the ancient and deep entanglement between textiles, people and our world. Through the beauty of textiles, you will encounter human ingenuity that can be traced from pre-history to our digital age.
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, 28th March -17 Aug 2025, London Design Museum
A major exhibition celebrating our enduring love of the water over the last 100 years. Explore the full spectrum of the design of swimming — from sports performance and fashion, to architecture.
Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, 7th March - 1 June 2025, Whitworth Manchester.
If you missed out when this exhibition sold out at the Tate spring of 2024 now is your chance to view in Manchester.
This exhibition features over 90 women artists and collectives whose ideas helped fuel the women’s liberation movement during a huge period of change.
Women in Revolt! explores six key themes, spanning two decades of art and activism. These include maternal and domestic experiences, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ activism, Greenham Common and the peace movement, and punk and independent music.*
Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, 14th Feb - 15th June, Oxford,
This is a landmark exhibition of one of the world's most important living artists, organised in collaboration with the Hall Art Foundation and drawn from the Hall Collection. Featuring paintings, watercolours, artist books, photos and woodcuts, all rarely displayed in the UK, this major exhibition takes us back to the origins of Anselm Kiefer.
Emily Kam Kngwarray, 10th July 2025- 11th Jan 2026, London,
Renowned Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray created compelling, powerful works that reflect her extraordinary life as a senior Anmatyerr woman from the Utopia region of Australia.
Flowers - Flora in contemporary Art and Culture, 12th Feb - 5th May, London
Occupying two floors and over nine major gallery spaces, this exhibition features large-scale installations, original art, photography, fashion, archival objects and graphic design exploring the ongoing influence of flowers on creativity and human expression.
Alison Watt: From Light, 5th March - 15th June 2025, London
From Light includes 18 new paintings created specifically for Pitzhanger. The title reflects the centrality of light in both Watt’s work and that of Sir John Soane, the architect of Pitzhanger, in harnessing light to shape space and create atmosphere. For Watt, light is the ‘very substance of painting’, while for Soane, it defined the architecture of Pitzhanger.
Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, 8th Feb - 11th May 2025, Surrey,
The French painter, sculptor and designer, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. His vibrant works are celebrated for their extraordinary richness and luminosity of colour and his spectacular paper cut-outs were his final triumph.
Ding Yi: Between Prediction and Retrospection, 15 Feb-31 May 2025, Wales, Mostyn
Between Prediction and Retrospection is a survey exhibition of works by Ding Yi, a leading figure in Chinese geometric abstraction, featuring works on canvas, wood and paper, created over the last forty years.
Koak, 26th March–21st Sept 2025,
The first institutional solo exhibition of Koak’s work in the UK, featuring a newly commissioned body of work for Charleston’s town centre space in Lewes.
Koak (b. 1981), based in San Francisco, explores identity and human nature through art, spanning drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation. Her work captures emotionally charged figures and landscapes, bringing them to life with a unique and seemingly effortless line.
Bedrock, 7th June - 14th Sept, Liverpool,
Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art.
Summer Exhibition, 17th June - 17th Aug, London,
Held every year without interruption since 1769, the Summer Exhibition showcases a diverse array of contemporary works, including prints, paintings, films, photography, sculpture, and architectural works. It features a mix of art by household names and emerging talent.
Design and Disability, 7th June 2025 - 14th Feb 2026, London,
Both a celebration and a call to action, Design and Disability showcases the radical contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people and communities to design history and contemporary culture, from the 1940s to now.
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley: Fashion Play, 12th July - 26th Oct,
Fashion Play will feature an expressive collection of beautifully designed, handmade wooden figures, celebrating movement and form, inspired by Barnes’ own recent book of the same name. A bold, playful display of wooden dancers and figurative mobiles.
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