By Sara Bright
There are moments when art ceases to be a passive object of admiration and instead becomes an active participant in our cultural dialogue. It holds a mirror up to society, not merely to reflect our likeness, but to refract our anxieties, interrogate our histories, and challenge the very foundations of our identity. The sentience of the painted canvas or the carved stone awakens, and it begins to speak. In this current, politically charged, and socially fluid moment, the UK’s galleries and museums have become crucial arenas for this conversation. They are no longer just quiet repositories of the past, but vibrant forums for the urgent questions of now. Creativitys.UK will tell you about a season of exhibitions that are not just to be seen, but to be reckoned with.
Velvet, silk, and power
In the gilded halls of Tate Britain, a potent dialectic is unfolding between the past and present. The landmark exhibition, Sargent and Fashion, delves into the oeuvre of John Singer Sargent, an artist who did not merely paint the Edwardian elite but constructed their public personas with strokes of oil and swathes of silk. To view these works is to understand that this is far more than an exercise in aesthetic appreciation. It is a masterclass in the semiotics of power. Sargent’s portraits were the Instagram of their day, meticulously curated displays of status, wealth, and social standing.
The exhibition brilliantly juxtaposes the magnificent paintings with some of the original garments worn by his sitters, a curatorial choice that brings the fabric of their society to life. You see the impossibly slender waist of a Worth gown or the defiant black of Dr Pozzi’s dressing robe, and you understand that clothing here is armour, language, and theatre. This is not just historical portraiture; it is a profound analysis of how identity is performed. In an age of digital avatars and personal branding, Sargent’s work feels shockingly contemporary, reminding us that the desire to control one’s own narrative is a timeless human impulse. It’s a highlight of the London art world that resonates far beyond its historical context.
A thread across continents
Travelling north to the starkly modern, Kengo Kuma-designed V&A Dundee, the narrative shifts from the Western elite to the currents of global culture. Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk is a visually stunning and intellectually rigorous exploration of Japan’s most iconic garment. The exhibition charts the kimono’s evolution from the courtly elegance of the Edo period to its dramatic reinterpretation on the international stage, demonstrating its remarkable fluidity as a cultural symbol. This is a story of craft, tradition, and exquisite artistry, but it is also a story of cultural exchange and adaptation.
The exhibition powerfully illustrates how the kimono’s simple T-shaped form has been a canvas for endless creativity, influencing designers from Paul Poiret to Alexander McQueen. We see its DNA in the robes of a Jedi Knight from Star Wars and in the androgynous glamour of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust phase. Kimono avoids the simplistic binary of appreciation versus appropriation, instead presenting a nuanced history of how an object travels, accrues new meanings, and becomes part of a global design lexicon. It is a testament to the power of a single garment to weave disparate cultures together, a timely reflection on globalisation in a world that often seems intent on pulling itself apart.
An instruction for peace
In a dramatic tonal shift, Tate Modern offers an encounter not with objects of beauty, but with ideas that demand participation. Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is less an exhibition and more of a spiritual and political provocation. Walking through the space is to engage with Ono’s lifelong commitment to peace, feminism, and conceptual art. Her work has often been misunderstood, overshadowed by her biography, but this retrospective asserts her position as a true pioneer of the avant-garde.
The power lies in its quiet radicalism. Works like ‘Cut Piece’, where viewers were invited to cut away her clothing, remain a visceral statement on vulnerability and violence. Her ‘Instructions for Paintings’ invite the viewer to complete the artwork in their own imagination, democratising the creative act. In a gallery filled with interactive pieces – a white chess set where both sides are the same, a wish tree for visitors to hang their hopes upon – the boundary between artist and audience dissolves. In our deeply polarised times, Ono’s unwavering belief in human connection and the power of a collective gesture feels not just poignant but essential. This is immersive artwork at its most profound, asking not what we think, but what we will do.
Sculpting the British landscape
To understand the soul of a nation, one must often look to its landscape. At The Hepworth Wakefield, a gallery whose very architecture seems to rise organically from the riverbank, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life celebrates one of the titans of British modernism. Hepworth’s work is an intimate dialogue between material, form, and nature. She did not seek to replicate the landscape, but to capture its essence – the curve of a hill, the hollow of a cave, the relentless rhythm of the sea.
To stand before her pierced sculptures of wood and stone is to feel a connection to something ancient and elemental. She spoke of the “figure in the landscape,” a sense of the human presence within the natural world. In an era of acute climate anxiety, her work takes on a new urgency. It speaks of a harmony between humanity and the environment, a balance we have catastrophically lost. This exhibition is a pilgrimage for anyone interested in the trajectory of modern sculpture, but it is also a quiet, powerful reminder of our deep-rooted connection to the land. Hepworth remains a singular British artist whose vision feels more relevant than ever.
The absurdity of being
From the elemental grace of Hepworth, we journey to the playful and surreal world of Erwin Wurm at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The Austrian artist’s work is a joyful and incisive critique of consumer culture, social norms, and the very nature of sculpture itself. His famous ‘One Minute Sculptures’ invite visitors to become the artwork, contorting their bodies around everyday objects – buckets, chairs, fruit – and holding a pose for sixty seconds. The result is a moment of shared, delightful absurdity that breaks down the solemnity of the traditional art-viewing experience.
Elsewhere in the park, his bloated, anthropomorphic cars and gherkin-like figures challenge our perceptions of the mundane. Wurm’s art is disarmingly funny, but beneath the humour lies a sharp commentary on the pressures of contemporary life and our often-bizarre relationship with the objects that surround us. By turning the viewer into a temporary sculpture, he asks us to consider our own physicality and the ways we present ourselves to the world. It is a brilliantly subversive take on what an exhibition can be, transforming the rolling hills of Yorkshire into a stage for surrealist performance.
Art inspired by the ocean
Finally, on the coastline of Kent, Turner Contemporary in Margate presents an exhibition that confronts our most pressing global crisis head-on. The Drowning World brings together contemporary artists whose work grapples with the climate emergency, using the ocean as both a subject and a metaphor. Situated in a town that owes its existence to the sea, and named for an artist who captured its sublime power like no other, the exhibition has a profound sense of place.
Here, art becomes a form of witness. We see haunting photographic works documenting coastal erosion, sculptural installations made from plastic waste recovered from the sea, and soundscapes that capture the changing acoustics of marine ecosystems. The work is by turns beautiful and terrifying, a lament for what is being lost and a call to action. It moves beyond the abstract data of climate science and translates the crisis into a visceral, emotional experience. This is art with a clear and urgent purpose, demonstrating that our creative institutions have a vital role to play in navigating the challenges of the 21st century.
This season of UK exhibitions offers far more than a simple diversion. It presents a complex, multi-faceted portrait of a nation and a world in flux. From the performance of identity in Sargent’s London to the environmental anxieties on Margate’s coast, these artists and curators are asking the difficult questions. They are holding up a mirror, and it is our collective responsibility to look closely at the reflection, to recognise the beauty, the flaws, and the urgent need for change. The gallery doors open, not as an escape, but as an invitation to see ourselves, and our world, anew.
