Exhibitions

Basquiat × Warhol: Painting Four Hands at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris: April 5 – August 28, 2023

At the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, a new exhibition thrusts the storied collaborative relationship between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol under the microscope, using their extensive painting project À Quatre Mains (four hands) as the jumping-off point. This involved the creation of some 160 paintings, made together in tandem between 1984–85, which the artists’ friend Keith Haring once described as a “conversation occurring through painting, instead of words.” The show will bring together around 300 works, including 80 jointly signed by Warhol and Basquiat, individual works by each, and artworks by the pair’s contemporaries (Haring among them).

Cere Anatomiche at Fondazione Prada, Milan: Until July 17, 2023

Who better to offer a haunting and compelling spin on a series of 18th-century anatomical wax models than the Canadian master of “body horror” David Cronenberg? So opined Fondazione Prada, who invited the director to collaborate on their newest exhibition, offering an “unexpected interpretation” of several ceroplastic works borrowed from La Specola museum in Florence. Designed for educational purposes, these partially dissected models’ “body language and facial expressions [do not] display pain or agony [suggesting] they were undergoing torture or punishment or even surgery,” notes Cronenberg, who has created a short film featuring four such works as part of the display. Instead, he says, they appear like “living characters who seemed to be in the throes of ecstasy.”

Torbjørn Rødland: Metal Balm at Taxa Seoul, Seoul: Until April 28, 2023

Norwegian photographer Torbjørn Rødland is currently enjoying his first exhibition in South Korea, hosted by Galerie Eva Presenhuber at Taxa Seoul. Rodland is renowned for his often unsettling, always thought-provoking photographic stagings in which it is not uncommon to see a child wielding a knife, for instance, or gelatinous substances in unexpected places and what the artist terms “intersubjective gestures of closeness and submission”, often involving close-up shots of hard-to-define interactions between subjects. Rodland’s photography is designed to pose questions, and his latest exhibition, titled Metal Balm, is no exception, guaranteed to leave viewers uncertain but enthralled.

Bold Journey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki: 28 April – 29 October, 2023

Tom of Finland is taking centre stage at Helsinki’s Kiasma museum, which will delve deep into both the groundbreaking artist’s taboo-busting work and striking life story in its major retrospective, Bold Journey. Spanning Tom of Finland’s six-decade career, the show will feature drawings from the artist’s childhood, a wealth of archive material, and, of course, myriad leather- and uniform-clad characters originally conceived for the artist’s personal pleasure, before being embraced by queer and fetish communities across the globe. Highlights also include a virtual tour of Tom’s LA home, where he spent his winters in the final decade of his life.

Tartan at V&A Dundee, Dundee: April 1, 2023 – January 14, 2024

If check checks all your boxes, it’s time to head to Dundee, where the city’s V&A Museum is in the throes of celebrating all things tartan. Offering what the museum dubs “a radical new look at one of the world’s best-known textiles”, the exhibition will consider the gridded fabric’s early origins and iterations, as well as its extensive influence on the worlds of art and modern fashion design. Expect to see works by Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, Grace Wales Bonner and Charles Jeffrey, among many others, in a compelling investigation into tartan’s manifold interpretations over the years.

Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time at The Museum of Modern Art: April 9 – August 12, 2023

“To see takes time,” the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe once wrote in a comment that could be said to summarise her artistic approach. Throughout her career, O’Keeffe “revisited and reworked the same subjects, developing, repeating, and transforming motifs that lie between observation and abstraction,” explains MoMA, where a new exhibition is set to platform this element of O’Keeffe’s practice, with a particular focus on her works on paper. “Even as she turned increasingly to painting, important series – including flowers in the 1930s, portraits in the 40s, and aerial views in the 50s – reaffirmed her commitment to working on paper,” the exhibition text continues. “Drawing in this way enabled O’Keeffe to capture not only nature’s forms but its rhythms.”

Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me at Tate Britain: April 26 – August 20, 2023

Fans of the celebrated British artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien will soon get the chance to experience his first major UK retrospective, opening at Tate Britain later in the month. Known for his poetic films and video art installations, Julien investigates what the Tate describes as “the movement of peoples across different continents, times and spaces.” Tracing the artist’s practice from the early 1980s to the present day, the show will hone in on “Julien’s critical thinking and the way his work breaks down barriers between different artistic disciplines, drawing from film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture by utilising the themes of desire, history and culture.”

Tremulations at Swedenborg House Gallery, London: April 3 – June 29, 2023

Over the course of his career, the 18th century Swedish theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg conjured a universe of “reflections and correspondences”, envisioning “a cosmos in which everything, including seemingly solid objects, vibrates.” It is Swedenborg’s thinking and writing that inspired the latest exhibition at Swedenborg House Gallery in London – a show presented in three chapters “manifested in physical, temporal and virtual space”, and titled Tremulations after Swedenborg’s 1719 book On Tremulation. Highlights will include three specially commissioned VR works, starting with The Bridge by Mark Leckey, and artworks by Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, among others.

Janette Beckman at The Pilgrm Hotel, London: Until May 31, 2023

Her images of punk and hip hop legends like Joe Strummer, Boy George, Sade, Salt-n-Pepa and NWA are widely known; she’s shot campaigns for Dior and Levi’s, and stories for Interview and The Face; but Janette Beckman has never has a London solo exhibition – until now. Currently on display (for free) at The Pilgrim Hotel, don’t miss your chance to see the British photographer’s remarkable portraits in person – prints of which are available to buy, alongside signed copies of her book Rebels: From Punk to Dior.

Suzanne Valadon: A World of Her Own at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris: April 15 – September 11, 2023

Collected by Degas, painted by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, and shamefully overlooked for her own bold contributions to art history, the French painter Suzanne Valadon is the subject of a new exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Set to “highlight the expressive and resolutely contemporary character of her work”, the show will consider Valadon’s unwavering desire to paint reality at a time when a fervour for Cubism and abstract art rendered this decidedly unfashionable. Transgressive and independent yet exceptionally well-connected, Valadon’s position as “an artist in contact with a range of different universes” paints “a vital portrait of emerging modernity,” the Pompidou explains, “taking the spectator from the 19th to the 20th century.”

Dissident Practices at Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York: April 19 – June 16, 2023

In New York, a forthcoming exhibit will consider how Brazilian women artists respond to social change. The multidisciplinary display will span the country’s “military dictatorship in the mid-1960s, the return to democracy in the mid-1980s, the social changes of the 2000s, the rise of the right in the late-2010s, and the recent development of a more diverse younger generation fighting for equality”, looking at the ways in which these events have influenced artists such as Anna Maria Maiolino, Leticia Parente and Gretta Sarfaty, as well as younger artists like Renata Felinto and Aleta Valente.

1980 in Parallax at The Cosmic House, London: April 4 – December, 2023

Be sure to visit the newly reopened Cosmic House, the home of late architect Charles Jencks, which the Jencks Foundation describes as “a built thought experiment bridging the worlds of the physical and the virtual.” It’s the perfect setting for its latest display, 1980 in Parallax, by the New Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective, whose practice exists at “the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory”. The show will centre around a special film commission that the collective says is “an investigation into the optics of [the] specific sensation of time … a time-travelling search into and out of a year – that pause between turbulences – a pause that lurks in every year of what we call our long now.”

So Let Us All Be Citizens Too at David Zwirner, London: April 20 – May 26, 2023

Coinciding with a survey of the work of late American artist Bob Thompson at 52 Walker New York, So Let Us All Be Citizens Too at David Zwirner in London takes a look at ripple effects of Thompson’s remarkable legacy – the influence he drew from jazz, his dynamic figurative style, his determination to engage new audiences within the history of painting. The group show brings together the work of various contemporary international artists across several generations – from Emma Amos and Michael Armitage to Cassi Namoda, Chris Ofili and Naudline Pierre – whose art boasts aesthetic affinities to Thompson, some obvious, some surprising.

Events & Performances

Events to leave the house for this April abound. Our top choices include Akram Khan’s newest dance-theatre production, the hypnotic Jungle Book Reimagined, at Sadler’s Wells from April 4–15. A retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale, Khan’s ten-dancer ensemble will perform Mowgli’s story as seen through the eyes of a climate refugee, accompanied by an original score by Jocelyn Pook and state-of-the-art animation and visuals.

Opera lovers, be sure to see Blue from Tony-award winner Jeanine Tesori. At ENO from April 20 until May 4, it is the rousing tale of a family “broken by violence” and learning how to process grief. At the Royal Court Theatre for a three-week run from April 18, following its acclaimed stint at Vault Festival, NO ID sees theatre-maker Tatenda Shamiso tell the story of his experience as a Black transgender immigrant in the UK, employing humour, music “and a healthy dose of care” for the purpose.

The Southbank Centre is marking the 50th anniversary of David Bowie’s beloved 1973 album with Aladdin Sane: 50 Years, a dedicated exhibition exploring the making of its iconic sleeve artwork by photographer Brian Duffy, and a line-up of live music, poetry and talks reflecting the LP’s enduring influence. Meanwhile, if a dose of witty cynicism is what you’re after this April, look no further than An Evening with Fran Lebowitz, your chance to hear the IRL musings of the US author, humourist and social commentator as she embarks upon her UK and Ireland tour.

Last but not least, there’s A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction at the Barbican from April 26–29. The first of its kind in the UK, the play, written by Miranda Rose Hall and directed by Katie Mitchell, will tour across the country “while the people and materials [will] not”, representing an experiment in eco theatre-making. Its London iteration will star Lydia West, of It’s a Sin fame, and promises to be darkly funny and life-affirming in equal measure. 

Film

For those inevitable April shower days, there are plenty of good excuses to hole up in your local cinema, courtesy of this month’s best film offerings. Slow, stark and exquisitely shot, Godland, from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason, follows an arrogant, 19th-century priest from Denmark as he makes his way to Iceland’s southeastern coast to set up a church. Then there’s One Fine Morning, a stirring, slice-of-life drama from French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve. In it, Léa Seydoux plays a widowed mother struggling to care for her ailing father, while seeking solace in a relationship with a married friend. Andrew Legge’s debut feature Lola weaves together real World War Two-era newsreels with fictional home video footage to tell the story of two sisters in the 1940s. The pair build a machine “that can intercept radio and TV broadcasts from the future” and a wonderfully clever sci-fi ensues.

In Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick Of Myself, a woman in an unhealthily competitive relationship invents “a new persona, hell-bent on attracting attention and sympathy” in response to her partner’s newfound artistic success. The results are both horrifying and humorous. 

French director Emmanuelle Nicot’s Love According To Dalva is a deeply sensitive study of the ramifications of abuse, in which a 12-year-old girl, whose childhood has been devastatingly curtailed, begins a journey towards healing through friendship. Don’t miss US filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber’s environmentalist thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which follows a group of young activists as they execute a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline.

Finally, this month’s must-see documentaries include Loving Highsmith, Eva Vitija’s investigation into the life and work of the enigmatic American author Patricia Highsmith, compiled using Highsmith’s diary and notebook entries and interviews with her friends, family and former lovers. Rebecca Lloyd-Evans’ film Blue Bag Life is an unflinching and moving portrait of addiction, centred on artist Lisa Selby, whose life has been indelibly marked by heroin addiction. While Lisa Cortés’ Little Richard: I Am Everything uses a “treasure trove of archive material” to shed light on the inimitable US musician “who reinvented popular music as the ultimate form of self-expression”.

Food & Drink

April has enough enticing culinary offerings to fulfil all your Easter-adjacent feasting needs. Esti is bringing laid-back Greek dining to London with a six-month residency at Shoreditch’s TT Liquor. Founder Kostas Vais champions ingredient-led cooking, using the best of seasonal British produce to whip up authentic Greek dishes, served with a small sprinkling of Australian herbs and spices, and a large dash of Australian hospitality. “Twice-cooked lamb ribs are perfectly charred, then dressed with tzatziki and an Australian spice mix,” the press release teases. “Octopus is braised in a spicy bush tomato sauce and served alongside a green salad ... [while] fish of the day is served with the moreish garlic-spiked Greek dip with macadamia skordalia.”

If you’re seeking out Italian fare, head to The Compton Arms from April 14, where Tiella, helmed by Dara Klein, will take over the popular kitchen residency, focussing on traditional Italian comfort cooking. An homage to Klein’s childhood spent in rural Emilia-Romagna, the menu will feature such delights as sage and anchovy fritti, asparagus paired with mozzarella and a saffron sauce, and braised hogget shoulder, with polenta and vignole.

Does excellent coffee, sumptuous small plates and low intervention wine sound like your idea of heaven? If so head down to Finsbury Park’s new neighbourhood restaurant and wine bar Giacco’s stat. Spotlighting small Italian producers, offerings include charcuterie (capocollo, prosciutto crudo san daniele, salamino toscano), various cheeses (taleggio, gorgonzola, pecorino sardo, burrata pugliese) and delicious wines from Tutto Wines, Les Caves De Pyrene, Vine Trai and many more.

In Soho, the team behind Fitzrovia’s Mortimer House Kitchen have just opened the doors of their latest venture, Nessa. A refreshingly informal modern bistro, Nessa bills its menu as  “an expression of elegant yet playful, inventive British cuisine”. Expect to sample starters like brioche with black pudding and brown butter noisette; mains including sea bass with beurre blanc, pickled dulse and pink fir potatoes; and reimagined British puddings, such as roly poly with custard, for dessert. 

Temporarily closed after a kitchen fire, Michelin-starred restaurant The Ninth from chef patron Jun Tanaka is now back in action at its Charlotte Street home. Former favourites including salted beef cheek with sourdough, pickled radishes and dulse, and pain perdu with tonka bean ice cream make their return, alongside new additions to the menu such as tuna belly, with mojama and anchovy vinaigrette, and pork cheek tortellini with lardo and salsa verde.

Shoreditch watering hole Oranj is hosting two not-to-be-missed residencies this April, playing host to Australian chef Michael Bagnall who will be showcasing the best of British seafood from April 5–9. Then from April 12–30, AYO Collective, founded by chef Victor Okunowo and sommelier Henna Zinzuwadia, will embark upon a joyful celebration of African culture, authenticity and innovation through food and drink. Head to Oranj to sample delicacies including asun kofta (made with smoked and minced goat belly and served with scent leaf and leek hollandaise and scotch-bonnet chimichurri), and classic beef tartare with a Nigerian twist of suya bone marrow butter and pickles.