February of course is known as a month of love, and pursuing an art exhibition with a partner, friend, or on your own, is a sure way to romanticise a day out and about. This month is rammed full of art exhibitions to see across the city. From group shows to major career retrospectives, plan your next visit with our handy, frequently updated guide to the city’s art exhibitions happening in February.
Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.
London art exhibitions: what to see in February 2025
Leigh Bowery!
Tate Modern
27 February – 31 August 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery)
Tate Modern celebrates the life and career of artist Leigh Bowery. Never limited to convention, Bowery adapted to many roles from artist to performer, model to fashion designer. He saw himself as the canvas and reimagined clothes and makeup as tools for sculpture, using his body as a shapeshifting tool to challenge sexuality and gender. The exhibition is a chance to see his different ‘looks’, and many collaborations.
Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark
Raven Row
Until 6 April 2025
Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger, 1979
(Image credit: Courtesy of Raven Row)
Peter Hujar is best known for his black-and-white portraits, and you may recognise his work from the front cover portrait of novel A Little Life. The photographer was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia, his work was unknown to the larger art world. At Raven Row ‘Eyes Open in the Dark’ focuses on his later work, celebrating an artistic career admired for its elegance and deep rooted emotions. His intense and intimate works take on a variety of subjects and immerse viewers in 1970s and 80s New York.
‘Under the Same Sky’
Studio Voltaire
Until 13 April 2025
(Image credit: © Jake Grewal. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Ben Westoby)
Jake Grewal, a rising star of the British art scene showcasing a new exhibition at Studio Voltaire. The gallery’s former Victorian mission hall architecture works well as a backdrop for the artist’s work because, in his own words, it feels ‘open and expansive’ which reflects the new paintings. ‘I think people think my work is quite closed and intense, quite dark, and I wanted to make a different statement,’ he says. Grewal’s work to date has been an exploration of figuration and landscape, he uses charcoal and oil paint to create pictures full of intrigue, ambiguity and a certain kind of poetic longing.
Writer Simon Chilvers
Read the full review here
‘Safety Curtain’
Auto Italia
Until 23 March 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of Auto Italia)
In a new exhibition at London’s Auto Italia, Alex Margo Arden explores the recent spate of art attacks and the ‘tricky’ discourse they provoke. The artist started making work inspired by protest actions in 2022, when Just Stop Oil activists made headlines by throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery. ‘Safety Curtain’, her solo exhibition at London’s Auto Italia, looks at various moments when arts institutions have become protest sites.
Writer Phin Jennings
Read the full review here
‘Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley’
Alison Jacques gallery
Until 8 March 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy Alison Jacques © Maeve Gilmore Estate)
Daniel Malarkey, the curator of ‘Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley’ at London’s Alison Jacques gallery, celebrates the fantastical. Given carte blanche over the gallery’s many-roomed Cork Street space, Malarkey has pulled together work by over 30 artists across generations and geographies. The result is a fairytale exhibition that negotiates a complex set of moods and feelings; it is both irreverent and unsettling, containing moments of joy alongside a looming, inky darkness.
Writer Phin Jennings
Read the full review here
‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World’
Victoria looked
Until 8 March 2025
(Image credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel Courtesy The Estate of Alice Neel, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro)
Twentieth-century American painter Alice Neel (1900- 1984) had a sharply uncanny eye for a portrait, her emotive, psychologically astute works an antidote to the abstract aesthetic fashionable throughout her lifetime .Throughout her long career, Neel championed those left vulnerable from social discrimination, celebrating freedom and pride in the body in groups including women and the Black and immigrant communities. With her ninth solo exhibition at Victoria Miro, her support of the queer community is put under the lens in an honest and emotional snapshot of broader American society.
Writer Hannah Silver
Read the full review here
‘There: A Feeling’
Camden Art Centre
Until 23 March 2025
(Image credit: Installation view of Gregg Bordowitz, There: a Feeling at Camden Art Centre, 2025. Photo: Luke Walker)
Gregg Bordowitz’s new show, ‘There: A Feeling’ at Camden Art Centre, spans video, installation, performance, poetry, and prints, Throughout ‘There: A Feeling’, Bordowitz’s multitudes are manifested in the different forms that the artwork takes; there are videos, poems, monotype prints, and more. There’s a specificity to how the work is displayed; according to the artist, ‘a lot of these works have been shown before, but whenever they’re shown, they’re responding to the context or space in which they’re being shown’.
Writer Sam Moore
Read the full review here
Jennifer Binnie: Forest Visions
Richard Saltoun
Until 1 March
Jennifer BINNIE, Gamekeeper with Dying Doe and Hound2021
(Image credit: Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery London, Rome, New York)
Jennifer Binnie’s work reflects her eclectic mix of interests, with references to movements including eco-feminism, ecology and myth. In her new exhibition at Richard Saltoun, she draws on four decades of work, creating a magical world in which boundaries between the human, animal and natural worlds are non-existent.
Writer: Hannah Silver
The 80s: Photographing Britain
Tate Britain
Until 5 May
Hand of Pork, Caerphilly, South Wales, 1985-1988, by Paul Reas
(Image credit: Melanie Friend, Format Photographers)
Set against a backdrop of race riots, strikes, mass unemployment and gentrification, a new show at Tate Britain explores one of the UK’s most colourful eras through the medium of photography. Bringing together nearly 350 images and archive materials, ‘The 80s: Photographing Britain’ explores how the medium became a tool for social representation, cultural celebration and artistic expression throughout this period.
Writer Anne Soward
tate.org.uk
‘Electric Dreams’
Tate Modern
Until 1 June 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist)
Encompassing the period from the 1950s to the beginning of the internet era, and uniting over 70 artists, ‘Electric Dreams’ celebrates vintage tech art in all its mind-bending glory. From US artist Rebecca Allen’s experiments in motion capture and 3D modelling for a Krafwerk music video, to Eduardo Kac’s text poems created with Minitel machines, the exhibition delves into movements including kineticism, cybernetics and abstraction as they began to take shape.
Writer Hannah Silver
Jameel Prize: Moving Images
V&A
From 30 November to 16 March 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artists)
Preview the Jameel Prize exhibition which is soon arriving at London’s V&A, this year with a focus on moving image and digital media. The winner of the V&A and Art Jameel’s seventh international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition will be showcased alongside shortlisted artists. The exhibition highlights the rich artistic heritage of the Islamic Middle East and South Asia, showcasing the vibrant connection between contemporary creativity and the region’s historical legacy.
Writer: Smilian Cibic
The Turner Prize 2024
Tate Britain
Until 16 February 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist)
The Turner Prize 2024 shortlisted artists are now able to view. The work of Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas will be exhibited, with the winner of the 40th edition of the prize set to be unveiled on 3 December 2024. Turner Prize chair and director of Tate Britain Alex Farquharson leads a jury composed of Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster, curator and a Wallpaper* contributing editor; Sam Thorne, director general and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian.
Writer: Hannah Silver
‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’
Until 27 April 2025
(Image credit: Courtesy of Wellcome Collection)
Wellcome Collection’s Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights is a thought-provoking exhibition which delves into the complexities of unregulated work practices and how this impacts mental and physical health. The exhibition will consist of historical objects in parallel with contemporary artworks focusing on three places of work: The Plantation, The Street and The Home, each chosen due to the difficult, physical labour, where conditions may be unsafe, and with little to no access to healthcare, a stable income and even basic rights. From sex work, street vending, domestic labour, and prison labor to name a few, Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights highlights the inequalities people face and how their health, work and rights remain hidden.
‘Solid Light’
Tate Modern
Until 27 April 2025
Anthony McCall, Solid Light Films and Other Works1971-2014. Installation view Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam 2014. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers, and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles. Photo by Hans Wilschut.
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Tate Modern)
Anthony McCall, a trailblazer within experimental cinema and installation art, presents Solid Light at Tate Modern, an exhibition dedicated to the artists’ immersive works. Using beams of light projected through thin mist, resulting in solid light forms, allows visitors to playfully interact. The exhibition will also feature film, photography and archive material.