WORDS Baillie Jones
As the winter sets in, temperatures plummet and indoor activities become all the more inviting, it’s the ideal time to spend an afternoon wandering an art gallery. And, lucky for us, London is currently bursting with buzzy exhibitions, from new opens to last-chance visits.
Below, BRICKS rounds up our favourite exhibitions to visit this November.
Tracey Emin – I followed you to the end
Until 10 November | White Cube, Bermondsey | FREE ENTRY
There is still just enough time to catch Tracey Emin’s return to The White Cube, Bermondsey with her solo exhibition, ‘I followed you to the end’. After being diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020 and suffering complications after her major surgery, Emin bravely bares all with the world, sharing her most profound tribulations of the past few years. Drawing from this transformative experience, Emin presents a series of paintings and sculptures that journey through love, loss, death, and rebirth.
Emin displays her own body and psyche as the subject, along with lost lovers. Throughout the exhibition, the subjects are displayed in different situations, some curled up in bed, in the bath or on the bare floor in complete despair and agony. Other figures are stood upright, confronting the front of the canvas and facing the viewer. The bold figures embedded into the canvas intertwine together but slowly become ghost-like as they are washed away between the layers.
Some of the most powerful works combine poetry within the paintings, as if they are confessions ripped straight out of a diary or moments recalled from past confrontations. “You made me like this, all of you, you men that I insanely loved so much” is a line that many will understand, that fine line between love and loss. This exhibition will keep you pondering for days to follow and is as beautiful as it is brutally honest.
Francis Bacon – Human Presence
Until 19th of January | National Portrait Gallery | £23, £5 tickets for under 25
Francis Bacon’s favourite place of his time was the heart of London, so it’s fitting that this solo exhibition is held at the National Portrait Gallery. Human Presence explores Francis Bacon’s deep connection to portraiture and how he challenged its traditions. A master of his time, these works journey us through the very beginning of his practice, from studies responding to old masters that lead to large-scale paintings.
This journey ventures through monumental, historical events and also begins to pull closer to the artist’s inner world, sharing intimate moments with lost lovers and dear friends. The exhibition answers questions about his greatness through the sheer confrontation of the works firsthand. Bacon was the only artist of his time who could fully face reality of the time through an unbiased lens, he had no political or religious beliefs that drove the way he saw the world.
He dissected life around him exactly how it was, within his Study for Self-Portrait, 1964 his body meets the viewer directly in the centre of the canvas. Sitting in jeans and a shirt on his bed, his face implodes into fragments of black paint splattering into a mess of bone and blood. This painting, along with others, is concealed into generous gold frames that capture the raw, bloody scenes into a ceremonial space. The figure is a consistent subject within his
work and Bacon’s fascination with the body, both humans and animals is memorialised within his painting’s raw and visceral depictions. This show really captures the joy of paint that he felt and makes us aware not only of the vulnerability of the subjects but the feelings of Bacon himself and how he connected to this world through the medium.
The World of Tim Burton
Until April 2025 | The Design Museum | From £20
Tim Burton is the creative force behind some of the world’s most celebrated and loved films of the last four decades. His cinematic works include the infamous Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Corpse Bride (2005) and the list goes on. Within his characters, he mastered the balance of grotesque and endearing. This major exhibition displays the full range of his creative production, revealing the versatility of his unique vision and how this could transcend into new formats.
Drawing from his personal archive, The Design Museum invites visitors into the world of Tim Burton’s mind through the exploration of over 600 illustrations, paintings, photographs, sculptures, sketchbooks, moving image, models, mannequins, outfits and texts from his childhood to the present day. Material was always an important role in his practice so being able to view the way he physically worked is the best way to understand his prolific process.
The immersive exhibition is held in installation-like rooms that are populated by his subjects and even recreates his private home studio. It acts as a tour of the phenomenal output of one singular creative mind that impacted cinema for future generations. London is the last stop on the exhibits tour; previously hosted in Prague, Osaka São Paulo and Seoul.
George Rouy – The Bleed, Part I
Until 21 December | Hauser & Wirth, Savile Row | FREE ENTRY
George Rouy is a leading figure of the new generation of painters and Hauser & Wirth is the first to display his debut solo exhibition ‘The Bleed, part I’. Rouy’s work captures the movement of the human form and the relationships we have through touch and connection. The human form is portrayed as vexed with desire and speaks to the emotional extremities of our time.
The title of the exhibition is a common expression used by Rouy that explains the in-between of the figure and the void depicted within his work and how these two realms interact through the medium of paint and bleed into one another. The large-scale paintings allow you space to be surrounded by the chaotic mass of bodies that blend and seep into each other.
Rouy’s figures become increasingly abstracted, their faces often blurred or completely removed. As the faces are eliminated, fragments of flesh and body parts are highlighted, this blurring creates space within the work for interpretation. They become less about gender or identity and more about connection, consciousness and the relationship we have with each other. The idea of carrying is explored through the masses of figures displayed, the way the figures carry each other and the process of being carried both in and back out of this world.
Rouy’s work articulates a vocabulary of both figurative and abstract painting which is simultaneously distinctive and visceral. Within these new works, the abstract element denies the body to be a fixed unit and instead portrays the way that we are ever-changing and redefining ourselves.
Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas
Until 16th November | Frith Street Gallery, Golden Square | FREE ENTRY
Another monumental exhibition with just enough time to catch is Marlene Dumas’ Mourning Marsyas at Frith Street Gallery. One of the most prominent painters working today, her intense, psychologically charged works explore themes of love, loss, sexuality, birth and death. Dumas draws upon a range of traditional techniques to reclaim old images and transform them into vibrant, reborn presences to be spectated and immersed in. She references both historical events and current affairs which are both explored in this exhibition.
The series of 18 haunting paintings in this exhibition are created through a combination of intention and chance. Her portraits are observations of the human experience through a female perspective, capturing feelings of desperation, displacement and grief through the sombre palette of greys, blacks and navy that are illuminated by moments of red and yellow. This series of works captures a sense of life, as if the paintings have a beating heart of their own. The bodies contort and move between being in and out of control as they fight through the washes of paint across the canvas.
The medium of oil and ink is used as a universal language to communicate human emotion. The work is unified by the act of portraiture and its tradition whilst also rejecting its norms. It is up to the viewer to formulate the themes surrounding the subjects and how politics hold weight in our present day. The image and questions around these tortured figures will leave an imprint on you.
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