As we wave goodbye to a turbulent 2021 and begin anticipating the artworks set to hang in London's galleries in 2022, we take a moment to look back at the exhibitions that dazzled us this year. Here are the ones that remain etched in our memories, and those one that you can still catch – if you're quick.
Stephen Friedman and Modernity galleries joined forces to create one of the most extraordinary and inspiring design-meets-arts projects of the year. The exhibition took place in a sumptuously derelict Georgian mansion on Cavendish Square.
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Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s wonderful exhibition of interwoven words and paintings was an intensely intimate affair, a contemplative meditation on our relationship with others.
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There is a serenity about this exhibition, and at the same time a vitality, that grabs hold of you from the moment you set foot in the Barbican Art Gallery. Beautifully laid out over two floors and grouped under thematic headings such as Political Conscience, Earth and Gravity, are more than 150 pieces, as well as video documentaries, that illustrate Noguchi’s belief in sculpture as ‘a vital force in everyday life’.
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If art is an intimate conversation between an artist and a viewer, Ryoji Ikeda takes it a step further. The Japanese electronic composer and visual artist’s digital project at 180 The Strand orchestrated sounds, visuals, materials, physics and mathematics to explore the infinates. It demanded of the viewer a genuine physical effort and pushes our human senses to new sonic and visual extremes.
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Lewis Carroll’s Alice books have enchanted readers young and old since Victorian times. But their influence has spread far beyond the page, touching everything from fashion to film, art to advertising and pop-culture to politics. A blockbuster exhibition at the V&A, curated by award-winning designer Tom Piper, charts the evolution of Alice through the ages, showcasing why, 158 years after her inception, the heroine continues to inspire and delight today.
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Whether you grew up in Britain, southern Europe, Asia or Africa, it was easy to find yourself at home in this year's Serpentine pavilion. For some, the terracotta colour of the structure was evocative of local villages in central Africa, others found reference to ancient Greece or to Cambodian temples. The seducing and inclusive space was designed by Sumayya Vally and her all-female Johannesburg-based architectural firm, Counterspace.
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Paula Rego is a phenomenal storyteller. Whether in paint or pastel, collage or ink, she conjures up strident images that speak of personal as well as social struggle. Tate Britain’s major retrospective of the Portuguese artist's work gave Londoners the opportunity to see 17 important works never shown in the UK before.
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Brutal Beauty, a comprehensive retrospective of French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) at the Barbican, challenged our notions of art, beauty and the world around us.
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An exquisite, ongoing exhibition at the V&A invites us into the opulent world of Russian jeweller Carl Fabergé and his London clientele, while reflecting on the grand and final days of Imperial Russia.
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Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms – two major installations, currently showing at Tate Modern – are proof that the 92-year-old artist's dazzling power remains intact. Her ability to transport us into the heart of her obsessional and mysterious imagination is both welcome and exhilarating.
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Noah Davis’ figurative paintings are little known in the UK – he was never exhibited here – for they sold in private American galleries almost immediately. The influential black artist who founded the Underground Museum in Arlington heights in Los Angeles in 2013 with his brother Khalil Joseph and his wife, Karon Davis died of cancer at the age of 32. This exhibition offered a rare chance to see his extraordinary range and talent as a painter, but also to explore the Underground Museum project, presented on the top floor of the gallery.
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The Barbican marked 15 years of its association with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark with an exhilarating exhibition that perfectly captures the heady atmosphere of 80s punk London.
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Violence, sex, revenge – the National Gallery’s exhibition Artemisia had it all. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654) was a sought-after painter, whose works were desired by royal courts, who achieved excellence as a female artist in a time of intense misogyny. But she was ignored and belittled for centuries by the keepers of the art historical canon, her name but a footnote in academic writings on the Baroque. In recent years she has become a feminist icon, recognised for her brilliance and her perspective as a woman, and this blockbuster exhibition cemented this perception.
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