Looking back at 2025, the standout UK Art Exhibitions show that there wasn’t a single aesthetic or tidy narrative linking everything together.
This selection wasn’t created to reward an institution’s agenda. The strongest shows didn’t need to follow a curator’s perspective. They held their ground on the work displayed. They allowed complexity to surface slowly, sometimes awkwardly, without apology. – Paul Carter Robinson Artlyst Editor
We asked our critics to choose three standout UK exhibitions.
Paul Carey Kent
Painting tends to be the medium that garners most attention, and there was no shortage of quality in 2025: Wayne Thiebaud at the Courtauld, Noah Davis at the Barbican, Dana Schutz at Thomas Dane and ‘Siena: The Rise of Painting’ at the National Gallery were all thrillingly good. But I thought I’d choose other media, and found I was most drawn to three retrospectives, the first two of which you can still see:
The Photographers’ Gallery’s overview of the restlessly imaginative and cuttingly mischievous Boris Mikhailov, who has his own way of making ‘bad’ photographs conceptually good. It presents twenty of the Ukrainian’s most important series from the 60s onwards with clear sequencing, helpful explanations and plenty of enlightening quotes from Mikhailov himself.
New series and samples from the past projects of the American artist duo Doug and Mike Starn at HackelBury Gallery. Their fascinating practice uses science as a source of analogies and encourages consideration of questions such as: Why are moths dusty? What determines the shape of snowflakes? How are thoughts like trees? Why is the sky blue or red? How do seas move mountains?
Jyll Bradley: ‘Running and Returning’ at The Box, Plymouth, was a powerfully unified exploration of the politics of the self across forty years of materially varied, but thematically unified, work: such as intimate self-portrait photographs contextualising her queer identity; films exploring the effects of her having been adopted; and installations creating space for the public as a political act.
Sue Hubbard
Chantal Joffe – Victoria Miro, I Remember
I have long admired Chantal Joffe’s autobiographical works. Influenced by two of my favourite female artists, the early German Expressionist, Paula Modersohn-Becker and the American, Alice Neel, this evocative series of large-scale paintings explores the power of memory through images of her own childhood and family life. There’s a sense that, as viewers, we are being plunged into a dream-like past that continues to colour both the present and future. Her 1970s childhood, spent mainly in America, is revisited. The ghosts of Halloween parties and summers spent on the beach are presented in adroitly fluid brushwork that gives her works a nostalgic quality, taking us back to a lost past with the immediacy of Proust’s madeleine dipped in lime tea.
Giuseppe Penone, Serpentine:
Using leaves and imprints of human skin and bark, Penone investigates our (inter)connections with the natural world. Even breathing becomes a creative act, underlining the delicate balance between us and the natural world. His work seems to suggest that only when we return to value nature and place it centrally will humanity begin to heal. Postmodernism spent a long time elevating the commodity and the secular to the level of the ersatz ‘sacred but Penone creates spaces where we can begin anew and undergo spiritual transformation.. He seems to be suggesting that if we look and listen to the world around us, we might find a space for contemplation and reflection that returns us to ourselves.
Lee Miller – Tate Britain.
Lee Miller was a courageous, complex figure who witnessed immense horror during her life, Born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, where her father was a keen amateur photographer, she initially studied painting and stage design. Beautiful and stylish, she had an instinct for finding the pulse of things, and became a fashion model and a muse to many contemporary artists. A move to Paris in 1929 saw her become assistant, collaborator and sometime lover to Man Ray. But it is as a war photographer that she made her mark, documenting women’s lives on the home front, and capturing the deprivation and devastation of post-war communities across Europe. She was to became a primary witness to the 20th century’s most brutal events. It is thanks to her indomitable courage that those who would deny or glorify the horrors of war, particularly the holocaust, can be confronted with the unvarnished truth that she fearlessly recorded.
James Payne
Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley, B.A. 1979. © Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall at RA
This was a landmark retrospective of a living artist at the top of his game. His work asserts the black prescience in art, through huge canvases that engage with and disrupt the familiar dominant figures in classical painting. A true master.
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 at the National Gallery.
The extraordinary opportunity to see so many works together made this a once-in-a-lifetime show. Brilliantly curated and historically significant, particularly the grouping of masterpieces (including Duccio’s Maestà fragments). Electrifying!
Dermot O’Brien: (Not Only) But Also at Domo Baal.
One of the strongest shows I’ve seen for a while. O’Brien, the artist who can turn dust into magic, finally got the recognition he deserves in a show that rewarded quiet attention: the longer you spend with it, the more it revealed. A rare privilege to spend time in O’Brien’s world – even for a short while.
Revd Jonathan Evens
‘SEEING THE UNSEEN: Reality and Imagination in the Art of Stanley Spencer’, Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham
This exhibition brought together stunning examples of Spencer’s realistic works – his portraits and landscapes – which he often viewed as “potboilers” that merely paid the rent, and his biblical or symbolic works, which had his heart and which, in his mind, formed a vast exhibition in a “church-house”. The curators, through their apt juxtapositions, compellingly demonstrate how Spencer brought together the seen and unseen in his work.
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
Jellett and Hone are significant as pioneering Irish modernists, as women artists undertaking that mission at the time, and as artists whose understanding of the ways in which faith and art intertwine shaped the work they produced. This exhibition allowed their work to speak, sing, and show as it was always intended to do.
Anthony Lawrence (1951-2022): A Retrospective, Palais des Vaches, Lower Exbury
An exciting new discovery for me, Lawrence combined the classical (Renaissance) with the contemporary (Pop Art) and created works that are, by turn, abstract, figurative, and a blend of both abstraction and figuration. His work frequently drew on classical antiquity, religion, and literary themes and did so whether he was working in still life, portraiture, landscape, or with religious iconography.
John K Grande
Giuseppe Penone – Thoughts in the Roots, Serpentine Gallery
Giuseppe Penone’s To Be a River drew interest long ago when he remade a stone found in nature, so one never knows which is real and which is a fake recreation, being part of nature’s endless processes. The Serpentine show underscores Penone’s passion for myth… A seemingly thunderstruck tree painted on top looks like a detail in a neoclassical painting, but it is truly contemporary – a parable on the force of nature in our times.
Some trees have gravity-defying stones in their upper branches. The uncovering of the inner tree within a tree is a radical time-based mystery… nature conceals.. nature reveals … Penone is an Arte Povera shaman from times when post-Duchampian tea kettles and blankets redefined marble and bronze. Anti-gravity can be spiritual. Statement. Giuseppe Penone always gets to the heart of the nature theatre we are a part of – tree branches are survival structures, aren’t they? And a wall of leaves a perfect perfume…
Lee Miller, Tate Britain, October 2, 2025 – February 15, 2026
A follow-up show to the recent film Lee 2023, starring Kate Winslet, is a perfect fit… This must be the most comprehensive show of Miller’s incredible production. The indefatigable photographer Miller, like Robert Capa, was one of the greatest war photographers ever. She passed through any barrier or obstacle to record the truth as it happened. From the Egypt photos, to the Second World War, to people at home, through her extensive publishing. With Cecil Beaton at Vogue, with the Surrealist Roland Penrose, and some of the exploratory avant-garde works with Man Ray…, Lee’s eye and zest for life captured real people and brought them home. The Tate Britain show has it all (even her unmodelled uniform)… Lee Miller grew out of modelling, then held her place in a magazine world men ruled. From image to text, and both together, she knew how to bring it alive. For her life as much as her art!
Paula Rego – Drawing from Life, Cristea Roberts Gallery, Nov. 27, 2025 – Jan. 17, 2026
Paula Rego’s emboldened theatrical artworks truly made an impression. Martin McDonagh had a play going on about child torture that inspired Rego to get in touch with him. McDonagh’s short stories became the raw subject matter for Rego’s curious prints and artworks from 2005 to 2007…(40 of them). McDonagh updates classics like Peter Pan, Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty. Children’s stories given a new life, albeit tinged with tragedy, are somewhat darker than you might want. Echoes of Rego’s childhood in fascist Portugal and unspoken memories. Studio memento dolls and creatures called ‘bonecos’ in Portugal in the show were used as props to inspire the art. Drawings from Life – a great late-blooming show by the late Paula Rego (1935-2022)!
Sara Faith
Do Ho Suh, Tate Modern
There was something magical about exploring the large-scale installations and intricate studies of household ironmongery made from coloured netted fabric. Do Ho Suh’s extraordinary attention to detail was fascinating to follow as you wandered through the exhibition, noting lighting fixtures and switches, plug sockets, keyholes, door handles and even fire extinguishers. He asks timely questions about the enigma of home, identity and how we inhabit the world around us.
Wayne Thiebaud, The Courtauld Gallery
I was struck by the painterly qualities of American pre-Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud’s (1920-2021) studies of cakes, deli counters, gumball and pinball machines. His use of paint, in thick strokes and lush colours, elevates the mundane. But the standout feature to me was the thick, creamy backgrounds in white or pale blue.
Victoria Miro 40 Years
This was a special exhibition celebrating Victoria Miro’s remarkable rosta of international artists, with whom the gallery has been associated over the last four decades, including paintings by Chris Ofili, Sarah Sze, Tal R, Idris Khan, Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel, Celia Paul and Paula Rego; sculpture by Conrad Shawcross, Elmgreen & Dragset and Doug Aitken; ceramics by Grayson Perry; photography by Isaac Julien. The list of impressive names and works goes on.
Dr Clare Finn
Lee Miller at Tate Britain – For her eye, the way she homed in on a detail, the focus of which changed the entire meaning of her images. The fearless way she recorded what she saw as a war correspondent in France and Germany in 1944 and 1945, at such a cost to herself. Her work has been buried by herself and others for too long; it richly deserves this retrospective.
Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 at the National Gallery– For its reach, for displaying applied arts and textiles from far-off lands that appear in the paintings. For the exquisite detail of the images and for revealing the birth of humanism in the gentle gestures of the images.
Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at The Courtauld Gallery– this is a personal one, as I saw the Sammlung several times in the early 1970s when it first opened to the public. Toulouse-Lautrec’s La Clownesse (at the Courtauld titled The clown Cho-U-Kao) has long lived in my mind’s eye, so women could be clowns too! The rare Renoir flower piece, the Goyas, the Cezannes, the Van Goghs – old friends that I remember well. Though I think I preferred their setting in Winterthur to the Courtauld’s white walls.
Paul Carter Robinson
Kiefer / Van Gogh – Royal Academy
Vincent van Gogh’s presence runs insistently through Anselm Kiefer’s work. This exhibition brought the two artists into direct conversation, placing paintings and drawings by Van Gogh alongside works made by Kiefer across nearly six decades of practice. Van Gogh’s final paintings were made in 1890. Seventy-two years later, an eighteen-year-old Kiefer set out on a journey funded by a modest travel grant, tracing Van Gogh’s route from the Netherlands through Belgium and Paris, ending in Arles.
Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals – Tate Britain
Two of Britain’s most iconic painters, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, were born just a year apart — Turner in 1775, Constable in 1776 — and almost immediately set the art world buzzing. Critics of the day framed their work as a duel: fire versus water, storm versus calm. Turner rose from the gritty streets of Georgian London, a prodigy whose talent and ambition propelled him quickly into the public eye. Constable, by contrast, grew up in Suffolk as the son of a prosperous merchant. His path to recognition was slower, marked by persistence and painstaking observation of the natural world. Despite these differences, both shared a fierce determination to redefine landscape painting. Each brought originality, daring, and an uncompromising vision to their work — one stormy, the other pastoral — shaping the very language of British art for generations to come. This was a wonderfully curated show!
Maggi Hambling & Sarah Lucas: OOO LA LA Sadie Coles HQ
Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas are friends. Close ones. Their first meeting was on 23 October 2000, on the same birthday, the Colony Room Club in Soho, ushered together by the inimitable Sebastian Horsley, who drifted through the works of both artists like a ghostly cameo. This winter, Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects hosted an exhibition across two galleries on Bury Street, bringing their distinct practices into dialogue. The show illuminates the affinities between them: a restless awareness of mortality, a flair for excess, and that unmistakable, defiant exuberance.
Sophie Parkin
Right: Ithell Colquhoun Scylla 1938 Tate Purchased 1977 © Spire Healthcare, © Noise Abatement Society, © Samaritans
I am grateful for the Tate Britain – Ithell Colquhoun + Edward Burra.
I went to this show four times, and I wish I’d gone another couple of times, because it is one I will never forget. This crucial show cemented the lives of two 20th-century artists. Understanding that it all comes back to mystical nature, the magical earth and that man should be a damn lot more respectful; beware the volcanoes! Their lives were not lived in vain, however much it is saddening to see that Colquhoun was so under-recognised in her lifetime, Burra was seen; better late than never. A remarkable show, more of these please.
I am grateful to The Serpentine for realising Sir Peter Cook’s Play Pavilion June-August 2025 with Lego. This showed how joyful the Pavilion idea could and should be, and yet so often isn’t. It lasted a short time in the summer and then, like the weather, it was gone, whilst the huge grey cloud on the other side by Marina Tabassum stayed up, the official boring Pavilion.
To choose one commercial show in 2025 is a misfortune; to choose two looks like carelessness. So I feel I can saucily slide a few in carelessly, as these are half commercial/ temporary spaces! In January, featuring @Nataliazagorskathomas (and sometimes @juliaMadisson), NZT makes original funny surreal feminist joyous pieces, I can’t forget, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Bags for life (or Julia’s A fuck and a cheese sandwich Tea Towel). There is also a matter of @NathalieFrost, her exquisite pieces threaded together with shells, mess, loss, tears, silk and joy in Lee Miller’s old home @FarleysHG House and Gallery. @WilmaJohnson show of glorious goddesses and ancient myths, Ghosts of the Madrugada @highgategallery, in September.
We will be adding to this List
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