The best art exhibitions in London: May 2021

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Tate Modern

Tate Modern was due to celebrate its 20th birthday last May with an exhibit two of Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms. Then the pandemic happened. Fast-forward to 2021 and the immersive installations are opening, with two galleries filled with mirrors and lights, giving visitors the illusion that they are standing in rooms that have no end.

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The Vinyl Factory x Fact Ryoji Ikeda

The Japanese artist will be presenting a sensorial immersive audiovisual experience – transforming the 180 Studios into a subterranean landscape. Expect influences from Tokyo nightclubs, mathematical data and astronomical black holes.

'The entire exhibition is based very much on physical experience, not only intellectual content,' explained Ikeda. 'It begins with works that give intense, very simple experiences, and then the works get more complicated, like the data-oriented digital projections.'

The Making of Rodin, Tate Modern

Bringing together over 200 works, many of which have never been seen outside France, The Making of Rodin sheds light on a new side of a much-loved master.

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Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty exhibition Barbican Art Gallery

This May, the Barbican Centre is launching the first major UK exhibition dedicated to Jean Dubuffet in 50 years. The French artist – who made daring artworks with found objects and unusual materials – had a profound influence on some of the 20th century’s biggest names. This exhibition will bring together Dubuffet’s provocative paintings and sculptures and a number of props from his performances. His work has lost none of its edge over the decades. Expect large-scale canvases and brave experimentations.

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Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict exhibition, Royal Academy

An exhibition of riotous paintings is coming to the Royal Academy this May. Brightly coloured and crowded with figures, the works of Kenyan-born artist Michael Armitage are large scale and dripping with political and social commentary – think Goya meets Gauguin.

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David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, exhibition Royal Academy

This joyful show, which will celebrate the arrival and rebirth of spring, is perfectly timed, as the UK takes tentative steps towards normality again. The blue skies and bright blooms in Hockney’s images will no doubt reflect the mood of many of us, as we reunite with family and friends. But as our lives become busy and full again, these works also serve to remind us of the comfort we found in nature during times of uncertainty and sadness.

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Tracey Emin/ Edvard Munch exhibition, Royal Academy

This exhibition, organised by the Munch Museum in Norway in partnership with the Royal Academy, puts Emin’s work in direct conversation with that of her 'fellow lost soul' and kindred spirit, Edvard Munch. The result is powerful to say the least; prepare yourself for a heart-wrenching experience.

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Lee Miller: Fashion in Wartime Britain at Farleys House and Gallery

Nestled in the Sussex countryside, Farley House is the wonderfully eccentric former home of American photographer Lee Miller. Miller's career was a long and varied one. She started as a model in New York and then travelled to Europe, where she famously documented the second world war for Vogue. This exhibition explores her wartime fashion photography. Expect gloriously vampy make-up and shoulder pads aplenty.

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Bags: Inside Out, V&A review ★★★★★

For the past two decades, fashion has been all about the bag – and the V&A's new exhibition, Bags: Inside Out, explores how the beloved accessory is much more than a functional object. Instead, it is a statement full of symbolic meanings, an object in which we conceal our most treasured belongings but which we also use to project ourselves into the world.

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Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, Whitechapel Gallery

Eileen Agar (1899-1991) saw her art as a means of exploring ‘imaginative playfulness’. A new retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, celebrates her phenomenal career, which spanned almost a century. The largest exhibition of Agar’s work to date, this show will bring together over 100 paintings, collages, photographs, assemblages and archive material.

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Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Natural History Museum

From city gardens to the blackest depths of our oceans, Wildlife Photographer of the Year covers it all. This year's exhibition promises no end of wonders and all the drama we've come to expect from this perennial favourite.

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Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life, Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, West Yorkshire

This will be the largest exhibition of Barbara Hepworth's work since her death in 1975 and will represent the full breadth of her influential career as one of Britain's best-known sculptors. If you are a Hepworth fan, this exhibition will be essential viewing and well worth the journey out of the capital.

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