10 Must-See UK Art Exhibitions in October (That Aren’t in London)

Now that ‘Not London’ - recommending exhibitions for you to see outside of the M25 - is firmly in its second year, I’ve been enjoying re-reading last year’s editions to see what I was whining about in the intro 12 months ago. It’ll come as no surprise that last year it was Frieze Week, which I am sure had nothing to do with the fact that I never received an invite to it. Plus ça change…

In other news, I have decided that I’m no longer including counties in my listings, because I got fed up with Googling “what county is Cardiff in” and worrying I’ll get cancelled for saying “Glamorgan” because I don’t understand what a Historical County is.

This month, you’ve got Fascist-fighting art in Eastbourne, Turner Prize wannabe-winners duking it out in Middlesbrough, and Beryl Cook cutouts surprising shoppers in Bicester, as well as exhibitions of L.S. Lowry, Lee Miller, and British Landscapes across the country. So, without further ado, here are my recommended exhibitions to see this October outside of London. 

Towner Eastbourne, Eastbourne - Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism - until 18 October
There are plenty of must-dos on your list when visiting Eastbourne: taking a walk to splendor in the views from Beachy Head, promenading down the Victorian Eastbourne Pier, and of course, fighting fascism. (Having - to my shame - never been to Eastbourne I had to Google a list of “things to do in Eastbourne” and did find one article in which the first recommendation was “get stuck into a book”, which felt damning.) Towner Eastbourne are staging the most comprehensive exhibition ever of work by the Artists International Association -  a group established in London in 1933, bringing together artists against fascism in Europe. In addition to artwork by the 11 founding members of AIA, Towner Eastbourne is also exhibiting pieces by artists who exhibited with and supported the group, including Dame Laura Knight, Ithell Colquhoun, and Paul Nash.

‍Bicester Village, Bicester - House of Voltaire Presents Beryl Cook - until 25 October
I’m overjoyed with this collaboration between Beryl Cook - the artist of the jubilant everyday, who would have been celebrating her 100th birthday this year - and Bicester Village - the shopping village where I was taken once as a child before realising I couldn’t afford anything. (What should I have expected when the website gives four sets of instructions for getting there: by train, by car, by bus, and “by chauffeur”.) House of Voltaire have created an immersive exhibition of life-sized cutouts of Cook’s merry characters, which are dotted across Bicester Village, giving a smile to shoppers, diners, and tweens gutted to find out that their £30 isn’t going to get them very far. House of Voltaire also has its own pop-up selling some lovely Cook merch (I would like the ‘Four Hungry Cats’ tray, please, House of Voltaire, if you’re reading this - can’t hurt to ask), and on October 15th The Double Red Duke pub will be running a bingo night, transformed into Beryl Cook’s iconic bingo hall.

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Farleys House & Gallery, Chiddingly - Grim Glory: Lee Miller’s Britain at War - until 30 October
I had the absolute pleasure of visiting Farleys House & Gallery for the first time in August, bringing one of my Art Laughs art-themed comedy nights to the home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose (no, I can’t believe this is my job either). The house is spectacular, filled with souvenirs from the Surrealist power-couple’s life, artworks by their arty mates, brilliant trinkets that give real insight into their personalities - like Miller’s prized silver-plated King Kong figurine -, and a lovely mural in the dining room which takes up the perfect amount of space for anyone who finds the wall-to-ceiling decor at Charleston Farmhouse down the road a bit much. Their dedicated exhibition space is a huge converted barn, currently filled with Grim Glory, a collection of Miller’s photographs taken in Britain during the Blitz before she left to report in Europe as the official war photographer for Vogue. The photographs capture everyday contributions towards the war effort and particularly powerful images of women working in their new wartime roles.

‍Pallant House Gallery, Chichester - British Landscapes: A Sense of Place - until 01 November
Another show that I’ve been able to sneak around under the guise of “serious work” (you can see the video we made together here where I compare going to art galleries to waiting in line at a club despite having gone clubbing, I’d say, approximately 0 times) - A Sense of Place is an absolutely gorgeous show at Pallant House Gallery, chock-a-block with 18th to 20th century artists’ interpretations of the British landscape, including some particularly tasty Edward Bawden wallpaper which I would like a roll of. From Gainsborough to Barns-Graham, this is a show that manages to be sleek without being dour, and will be an absolute treat for fans of late 19th and early 20th-century modernists.

Holburne Museum, Bath - Ancient Landscape, Modern Times: Eric Ravilious and the Artists of the Chalk Downs - from 03 October until 10 January 2027

The second of three recommendations on the trot that will rock the worlds of fans of early 20th-century British art, Ancient Landscape, Modern Times at Bath’s Holburne Museum is boasting work by Eric Ravilious and his circle (can you imagine having a circle?), including Paul Nash, Tirzah Garwood, and William Nicholson. Bath itself is a fair way away from the ancient Chalk Downs, which inspired these artists (although not lacking in its own beautiful landscape, we needn’t feel too sorry for them), but this exhibition demonstrates how the South Downs became more than just a physical surrounding for these artists, but an ideological battleground on which they tussled with a changing world.

‍Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton - Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 - until 21 February 2027
I’m actually writing this column in Southampton Library - directly underneath the City Art Gallery - three days before the show opens, and I desperately want to scurry upstairs and see what’s being set up, but if I do, I’m worried the librarian will think I’m going to the upstairs vending machine again. In collaboration with The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art, Southampton City Art Gallery has put together a show celebrating the art of 1910 - 1960, the half-century that changed the world. (Right, I was searching for ages for a good example of things that were invented during this 50 years to demonstrate how far we’ve come and I ended up down a rabbit hole and now have no good examples for you because I’m still taking in the fact that despite the fact that aeroplanes were invented in 1903 it still took us until 1955 to work out how to create Velcro.) Inspired by Herbert Read’s 1933 book Art Now, which reflected on the 23 years of art since Roger Fry’s ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’ exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1910, Art Then examines the revolutionary modernist period with work by Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, and Eric Ravillious, plus some overlooked artists brought back into the spotlight.

‍MK Gallery, Milton Keynes - L.S. Lowry The Theatre of Life - from 24 October until 28 February 2027
The best anything in Milton Keynes*, MK Gallery is putting on an exhibition of L.S. Lowry’s paintings at the end of this month, 13 years since the last major show of the matchstick-man painter was held in the UK. It was a joy to learn more about L.S. Lowry’s life for BBC 2’s L.S.Lowry: The Unheard Tapes which we filmed at the end of last year, so I can’t wait to see this exhibition and tell whoever I’m with when I visit the two bits of information about him that I’ve committed to memory (“did you know that he collected Pre-Raphaelite paintings and was almost definitely lying about ever having a girlfriend?”). Focussed on the lives of everyday people in the North, using just five colours of undiluted oil paints on his signature white backdrops, Lowry’s work has made him a British icon, and this exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of his death. MK Gallery’s curation is always so good that I’m sure I’ll come away remembering more than two things about him, too.
* I don’t actually believe this - I think Milton Keynes is like Coldplay in that we’ve collectively decided that it’s okay to say it’s sort of crap even though 1) centre:mk has a lovely M&S and 2) Yellow is guaranteed to make you cry after 3 pints.

‍Charleston, Firle - Quentin Bell - until 07 March 2027
I could do with Charleston curating worse exhibitions, so they’re not on this list practically every month, so no one suspects they’ve got me on the payroll (prospective galleries who want to make it onto the list, let it be known that I am open to bribery). This time they’ve got a show of works by Quentin Bell at Charleston Farmhouse, where he grew up, surrounded by his mother - Vanessa Bell’s - artistic circle (God, I want to have a circle). Bell is best-known as the biographer of his aunt, Virginia Woolf, but - as demonstrated in this exhibition - he was also a wonderful ceramicist, sculptor, illustrator, and painter. Showcasing over 100 works by Bell - ranging from the ceramics he made as a child from the clay he dug from Charleston’s iconic pond, to more mature, less pond-y works - this exhibition demonstrates the joy to be found in the hand-made, no matter how imperfect - in the hellscape of the AI era.

‍Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough - Turner Prize 2026 - until 29 March 2027
I’ve never been to a Turner Prize exhibition and am still not 100% on how it works, but you can see the nominees’ exhibits - Simeon Barclay, Kira Freije, Marguerite Humeau, and Tanoa Sasraku - this year at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. The Prize alternates between being held at Tate Britain and a gallery across the UK each year, so this one is your last chance to get your Turner Prize fix without having to get on the Victoria Line until 2029. I haven’t seen the work of the other nominees, but because Simeon Barclay just had an excellent show close at Southampton's John Hansard Gallery, I’m rooting for him like he’s a hometown hero and not actually from Huddersfield.

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The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge - A Call to Art: William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites - from 23 October to 03 May 2027
If, having read previous ‘Not London’ editions, you reckon I’m pretty likely to recommend an exhibition of either William Morris or Pre-Raphaelite works, just imagine my glee to discover William Morris AND the Pre-Raphaelites at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Looking beyond the nice floral patterns you can now get on lampshades at Sainsbury’s and all of the hot gingers trapped in turrets, A Call to Art dives into the shared philosophies of the Arts & Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite artists, examining how they used their art as protest in an era of rampant industrialisation. Including work by May Morris, Elizabeth Siddal, and Kate Faulkner, as well as their better-known male contemporaries, the Fitzwilliam will be showing rarely seen examples from its own collection to offer a truly fresh perspective on the art that defined the last half of the 19th century.