By Florence Hallett
2025 was so rich in expectation that it seemed unlikely to deliver even a fraction of its many enticing promises. And yet, it really has been a truly vintage year for art – some consolation perhaps for what has in other respects been a mixed bag.
Blockbusters to suit all tastes ranged from cutting edge fashion at the Barbican to Constable & Turner at Tate Britain via an epic celebration of Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern. On a smaller scale, but with no less pizzazz, were revelatory shows on the formidable, campaigning Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz, and the little known modernist painters Paule Vézelay, and Ithell Colquhoun.
The Courtauld Gallery continued its run of gorgeous and scholarly boutique shows, and Hampshire Cultural Trust in Winchester staged a small but glorious exhibition of Hans Coper’s lost murals. Dulwich Picture Gallery unveiled its magical new sculpture garden, and sensory play pavilion, and the National Gallery had a not uncontroversial rehang as part of its Sainsbury Wing revamp. These are my picks for the 10 best art exhibitions of the year.
Queen of feminist conceptual art, American Mary Kelly reflects and reprises the major themes of her six-decade-long career in an exhibition of new work at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in Mayfair. Featuring the compressed tumble drier lint that she has been perfecting as a medium for the past 25 years, the exhibition centres on her World on Fire Timeline (2020), described as a coda to decades of the artist’s work, linking global conflicts with her personal story.
Sobering and optimistic, Kelly’s catalogue of disaster measures the power of protest through the filter of a tumble drier, a symbol of domestic, predominantly female, individual action. And if all you can think is how do you make anything sensible from tumble-drier lint, wonder no more – just go!
To 24 January 2026, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.
