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Our pick of the best exhibitions to see in London's galleries and museums opening in June 2025, plus a couple of cheeky additions outside the M25.
Global designs: London Design Biennale at Somerset House
Dozens of countries put forward their top designers to take a section of Somerset House and make it their own at the London Design Biennale. This year’s theme 'Surface Reflections' explores how ideas are fuelled by both our internal experiences and external influences. This show's always filled with thought-provoking designs that reflect the challenges in the world today.
London Design Biennale at Somerset House. 5-29 June, £22.
Skin deep: Kelvin Okafor at Hope 93 Gallery
From a distance, Kelvin Okafor's pencil drawings are so hyper-realistic that they look like photographs. His latest series of works uses his breathtaking skill to raise awareness of people with visible skin differences, including singer Seal's facial scarring from lupus, and model Winnie Harlow's vitiligo. It's an important concept backed up by phenomenal art.
Kelvin Okafor: Drawing Awareness at Hope 93 Gallery. 5 June-3 July, free.
Summer in the shade: The Serpentine Pavilion
Every summer we look forward to whichever architectural intervention will sit outside the Serpentine South Gallery. This year it's the turn of Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum and her lozenge-like structure. It's designed so you can see the gallery through its middle, while one of the sections can move to reconfigure the space. The pavilion draws on the history and architectural tradition of Shamiana tents or awnings of South Asia and has translucent skin, which "diffuses and dapples light — handy if we get the sunny summer we're all hoping for.
Serpentine Pavilion by Marina Tabassum. 6 June-26 October, free.
Innovation & celebration: Design and Disability at V&A
The V&A highlights disability as a culture and identity, through its engagement with design, art, architecture, fashion and photography from the 1940s onwards. This exhibition shows where and how disabled, Deaf, and neurodiverse people and communities have made important contributions to design history and contemporary culture, based on their experiences. It shows how design can be made more equitable and accessible, and traces the political and social history of design and disability.
Design and Disability at V&A. 7 June-15 February 2026, £16 (disabled people go free).
Tree-membrance: Nancy Cadogan at Garden Museum
Trees give us the air we breathe, yet we rarely grieve them when they're cut down — a recent exception being the Sycamore Gap tree. In this timely Garden Museum show, painter Nancy Cadogan has gathered the stories of 20 felled trees and created 'portraits' of them, revelling in their former glories. The project was sparked by the felling of trees in Cadogan's area to make way for HS2, and the loss felt in the local community there.
Nancy Cadogan: The Lost Trees at Garden Museum. 10 June-20 July, free.
Cutesy characters?: Yoshitomo Nara at Hayward Gallery
If you don't know the name Yoshitomo Nara, you probably recognise his work. Nara paints cutesy animal and human figures with over-sized heads and bullfrog eyes. This major exhibition at Hayward Gallery covers a 40-year career and includes collage, sculpture, drawing and installation in works exploring ideas of home, isolation, nature, peace, resistance and freedom. They may look cute, yet Nara's creations forcibly counter the cute 'Kawaii' culture of Japan, deliberately giving them expressions of intensity and rebellion.
Yoshitomo Nara at Hayward Gallery. 10 June-31 August, £20.
Satire and Surrealism: Edward Burra - Ithell Colquhoun at Tate Britain
We get two British artists for the price of one at Tate Britain. Ithell Colquhoun was a surrealist painter, a writer and a practicing occultist. 140 artworks and archival materials trace Colquhoun's evolution, from her early student work and engagement with the surrealist movement, to her fascination with the intertwining realms of art, sexual identity, ecology and occultism. Edward Burra was a watercolourist who painted satirical scenes of the uninhibited urban underworld. His scenes include macabre landscapes that reflect his experience of world events, including the Spanish Civil War, Second World War, and post-war industrial revolution.
Edward Burra - Ithell Colquhoun at Tate Britain. 12 June-19 October, £18.
The changing environment: Our Story with David Attenborough at Natural History Museum
Conservationist, broadcaster and national treasure Sir David Attenborough narrates this ambitious blockbuster, which projects footage of the natural world onto floors and ceiling, in a 50-minute wrap-around experience. It tells the history of humankind, from over four billion years ago. Attenborough narrates the evolution of humans, and how we came to change the world around us, including our impact on whales in the ocean, and our relationship with one of our closest relatives, gorillas. It's the closest you'll get to being in one of Attenborough's legendary documentaries.
Our Story with David Attenborough at the Natural History Museum. Opens 19 June 2025, £20+.
Fleshy bodies: Jenny Saville at National Portrait Gallery
It's all fleshy folds, contours and crevices on bodies and faces in the paintings of Jenny Saville. They capture the human body and all it's so-called imperfections — it's not about flattery but reality. Here are 50 works made by the artist to date, charting the evolution of her career, from monumental oil paintings to smaller scale charcoal drawings. Saville has analysed medical illustrations and observed plastic surgeons at work, studying the reconstruction of human flesh and the ways it could be transformed and reconfigured; her diligence shines through.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery. 20 June-7 September, £21.
Water world: Thirst at Wellcome Collection
In the UK we may take access to freshwater for granted but it wasn't always that way, and in many parts of the world it's still a struggle, not a right. Spanning times and cultures, from ancient Mesopotamia to Victorian London — and extending to modern-day Nepal and Singapore — Thirst brings together art, science, history, technology and Indigenous knowledge from communities past and present, to understand the environmental, social and cultural relationships we have with freshwater. It also addresses the consequences of water’s mismanagement around the world, from the spread of infectious diseases to exacerbating the effects of climate change.
Thirst: In Search of Freshwater at Wellcome Collection. 26 June-1 February 2026, free.
Spiky sculpture: Permindar Kaur and Prem Sahib at Pitzhanger
Spiky figures sit under a bed frame and child-like things equipped with claws, horns and beaks
haunt the gallery like sentinels or misfits, suggesting protection, defiance or both. Welcome to the cute and cuddly (but also rebellious and mischievous) world of Permindar Kaur. The other side of this double header exhibition is Prem Sahib's work, where one hoodie is suspended over another and duplicates and mirrors are used to question what we see.
Permindar Kaur: Mirror, Mirror and Prem Sahib: Doubles at Pitzhanger. 26 June-21 September, £12.
Landscape Inspiration: Kiefer / Van Gogh at Royal Academy of Arts
One current and one past great artist converge at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), as we see how a young Anselm Kiefer followed in Van Gogh's footsteps through the Netherlands, Belgium, Paris and the south of France. Van Gogh's works have alway been an inspiration for Kiefer's grittier landscapes that incorporate objects. The RA also hosts its annual Summer Exhibition where the main galleries are filled with floor to ceiling art, including a mix of recognisable names and a flurry of lesser-known artists.
Kiefer / Van Gogh at Royal Academy of Arts. 28 June-26 October, £17.
Summer Exhibition 2025 at Royal Academy of Arts. 17 June-17 August, £23.50.
Short run events
June is the month when we get to see some of the best work by graduate and post-graduate artists including the 41 artists in the highly skilled summer show at the Royal Drawing School (2-18 June, free). Graduates across the many programmes at the Royal College of Art (19 June-23 July, free) showcase their creations, as do the impressive fine artists, carvers and conservators at City & Guilds London Art School* (21-27 June, free).
There are also graduate shows for students at Chelsea College of Arts (12-20 June, free), Camberwell College of Arts (14-20 June, free), Wimbledon College of Arts (14-21 June, free), Central Saint Martins (19-22 June, free) and Goldsmiths College (20-23 June, free); plus the post-graduate exhibition at Slade School of Art (14-22 June, free).
June also marks the month when commercial galleries collaborate and fling open their doors to everyone across Saturday and Sunday for London Gallery Weekend (6-8 June, free). There are events, curated routes and more exhibitions than you could possibly visit in a weekend.
If art fairs are more your speed then Somerset House Studios is hosting the artist's fair (7-8 June, pay what you can) where artists are paid to participate and get to keep 100% of proceeds. In Woolwich, the contemporary print fair hosts its inaugural summer edition (27-29 June, £13.20); it's one of our faves as there are some fab prints, many at affordable prices.
The local artists of Richmond open up their studios across two weekends (14/15 & 21/22 June, free) so you can visit them where the magic happens, as do those of Eel Pie Island (28/29 June & 5/6 July, free). If East London is more your neck of the woods then Bow Arts will be holding a weekend of east London open studios (20-21 June, free), and for the north Londoners there's an art trail for the 20th anniversary of the Crouch End Open Studios (7-8 June, free).
Irreverent art from Jealous Gallery takes over a massive church space for its summer show at St. Michael's Church (14-15 June, free) and playful sculptor Annie Trevorah brings her sci-fi plant vibes in celebration of world ocean day at Fitzrovia's NoHo studios (3-11 June, free). The brilliant affordable art specialists Bobcat Gallery and artist collective ArtCan** are teaming up for an exhibition of emerging artists titled Ripple, hosted at the gallery's space in Putney Exchange Shopping Centre (3-21 June, free).
Exhibitions outside London
The Liverpool Biennial (7 June-14 September, free) brings together 30 artists and collectives along the theme of bedrock, reflecting on the sandstone that sits under Liverpool and is used in the local architecture. Liverpool Biennial is the UK's largest free festival of contemporary visual art. It takes place in historic buildings, unexpected spaces and art galleries, and includes free exhibitions, performances, screenings, community and learning activities and fringe events.
Wael Shawky was our favourite pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2024 and now there's a chance to see it in the UK, at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh (28 June – 28 September, free). This operatic film tells the story of the nationalist Urabi revolution, a dramatic café-fight in Alexandria in the summer of 1882, and the resulting conflict that led to Britain's occupation of Egypt until 1956, protecting its investment in the Suez Canal. It will form the centrepiece of a wider exhibition of Shawky's work.
* The author of this piece is a trustee of City & Guilds London Art School
** The author of this piece is an honorary trustee of ArtCan
