10 Must-See UK Art Exhibitions in June (That Aren’t in London)
Not London! gowithYamo’s monthly roundup of shows outside the capital...
By
Verity Babbs
May 28, 2025
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
‘Not London’ is back – your monthly roundup of exhibitions to see outside the capital, because, have you been there? Yes, yes, the museums and galleries in London are the best in the world, and there’s lots to do, and it’s where Paddington Bear lives. But to focus solely on the arts and culture in London does a disservice to the rest of the country, the tube is too loud, and your phone is almost guaranteed to be nicked by a 12-year-old on an e-scooter - so I’m looking elsewhere.
From smelly things to Stuart kings, here are 10 exhibitions to see in the UK outside of London this June.
Northampton Museum & Art Gallery is one of my favourite arts spaces – and that has nothing to do with the hours I volunteered as a recent grad cataloguing their World Famous collection of shoes (the largest in the world, they’ll have you know). If there are three things Northampton has, it’s a passion for cobbling, a football team narrowly avoiding relegation, and curators with a sense of humour. The Worst Record Covers in the World – which closes before the end of the month, but I couldn’t not include it – is a showcase of over 500 unintentionally dreadful album covers, collected by Steve Goldman. Never including anything offensive, Goldman’s treasure trove of terrible covers is fit to bursting with *interesting creative choices* that will leave you thinking “surely not?”
The Wilson, Gloucestershire - Common Ground - Until 31 August
Curated by painter and folklorist Ben Edge, Common Ground explores our relationships to nature and shared spaces here and now. Once, almost half of the land in Britain was “Common Land”, so you could stroll about it, collect wood, and let your livestock graze upon it. Now, just 3% of England is Common Land. Where will I let my livestock graze?! Bringing together objects from local traditions and makers in The Wilson collection and works by contemporary artists (including new commissions and major installations), the exhibition asks how we can restore our connection with nature, maintain our folk traditions, and roll with the punches of the climate emergency in a way that doesn’t extinguish hope.
King James VI & I (one person, it turns out – who knew!) is very much the IT Boy of Kings right now. The subject of Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James, James was queer, obsessed with witchcraft, and irresponsible with his money – much like many of my friends. Marking 400 years since the monarch’s death, the National Galleries of Scotland explore James’ life, loves, and loyalties through more than 140 objects loaned from across the country. For the monarchy-phobic, this show is also a dazzling survey of 16th and 17th century craft, including jewellery and textiles (in addition to the expected dozens of portraits of a man with a beard) and a lesson in how James united the country as the first king of Great Britain*.
* Scotland and England, sorry, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Box, Devon - Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes - Until 24 September
101 years since André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and secured his place in history as the father of the movement (even though Yvan Goll published his own one two weeks earlier – life’s a bitch), Plymouth are showcasing artists who approach landscape painting in the dreamlike, uncomfortable, and thinly-veiled-sexual-metaphorical way that we associate with Surrealism. From Surrealist OG’s like Salvador Dalí (before he was banned from the group for being a fascist - yikes) to contemporary rising stars like Wael Shawky, this exhibition, organised by The Hepworth Wakefield, will be a lovely start to the day for art lovers before they step out to experience Plymouth’s own Surrealist landscape, like that huge sculptures of a woman doing a Spiderman post outside the Theatre Royal.
Laing Art Gallery, Northumberland - With These Hands - Until 27 September
Karl Marx hated that workers had been philosophically separated from the work they created, so he probably would have loved With These Hands in Newcastle. He probably would have loved a stottie cake, too. Filled with representations of craft and manual industry, dating back to the 1750s, the exhibition highlights the importance of seeing the physical fruits of your labour and working socially in groups – neither of which any of us are getting in our WFH roles in crypto-fin-tech-marketing-consultancy startups. Featuring paintings and prints from Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist, painted lots of babies) and George Frederic Watts (British Symbolist, made a museum dedicated to himself, humble) and ceramics and crafts from Bernard Leach (British potter, nice pottery in St Ives up a hill) and C. R. Ashbee (Arts & Crafts architect, serious ‘tasche), With These Hand’ is a star-studded presentation bound to be excellent.
Towner, East Sussex - Sussex Modernism - Until 28 September
Towner Eastbourne is making much of the sheer variety of stuff on display in Sussex Modernism in their promo material, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone (as long as what you’re looking for is art made between the nineteenth century and now on the theme of Sussex and modernism). Sussex has long been an artistic haven for artists, from the early pioneers of abstraction and general poshos of the Bloomsbury group, to Surrealist power couple Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and David Bowie for the music video for Ashes to Ashes. This summer, the team at Towner are celebrating the county’s artistic heritage and the creative projects its landscape continues to inspire today.
Pallant House Gallery, Hampshire - Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists - Until 02 November
If I had to be trapped in an exhibition for a week, it would be Seeing Each Other at Pallant House Gallery. Although I’d probably start hallucinating that the portraits were talking to me, and I’d definitely want some of the sitters to back off (John Bratby, get out of my face). Filled with over 130 portraits of artists by their contemporaries, starting at 1900 right through to new commissions made earlier this year, the exhibition is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of British art history. With star names from Roger Fry to Lubaina Himid, this exhibition is filled with vulnerable portrayals of lovers, friends, and rivals, chock-a-block with great work that illuminates what it must have been like to move in tight-knit artistic circles, from the Bloomsbury Group making all of those cushion covers, to Damien Hirst getting freaky at YBA parties.
Watts Gallery Artist Village, Surrey - Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850 - 1915 - Until 09 November
It’s the aforementioned Watts Village! Opened by George Frederic Watts just before his death as one of the UK’s very few museums dedicated solely to one artist, Watts Gallery in Compton is getting smelly this summer. Scented Visions - a touring exhibition curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet following the release of her book of the same title - is all about how the Pre-Raphaelites and Chums communicated smell in their paintings and the importance of whiff in our understanding of narrative and atmosphere. Move over, vision! Here comes smell! Featuring three bespoke scents created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, Scented Visions promises to be the most innovative survey of late Victorian art for a long time.
Manchester Art Gallery, Greater Manchester - Rethinking the Grand Tour - Until 31 December
This one’s been on for ages - since 2022, in fact - but as with any exhibition on for a long time, you put off going because you have ages but then suddenly it’s 1 January 2026 and you’ve missed your chance so I’m reminding you now and you can thank me later. Manchester Art Gallery have been rethinking and recontextualising their collection of works from the Grand Tour which they purchased in the mid 20th century, with four new commissions righting the narrative about the practice of the Lads Holiday But With A Hint Of Colonial Crimes which was the highlight of wealthy men’s education in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were married for 20 years between 1971 and Tinguely’s death in 1991, and had worked together since the late 1950s. In their latest exhibition, Hauser & Worth reunite the lovers in Somerset, showcasing each artist’s individual practice as well as their collaborations, highlighting their symbiotic professional relationship. Myths & Machines at Hauser & Wirth is part of a string of birthday celebrations to mark 100 years since Tinguely’s birth, organised by the Museum Tinguely in Switzerland. The festivities include several international exhibitions and a birthday party at the Museum, which will include guided tours in three languages, the cutting of a birthday cake, and Crêpe Automaat which I’m hoping is a pancake-making robot, much like the automatons seen in Tinguely’s work, which always strike me as being a bit like Wallace & Gromit but Goth.
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