July in London brings a wave of creativity, and these top 7 art exhibitions are sure to inspire your summer with bold ideas, global perspectives, and unforgettable visuals. From introspective ceramics and poetic installations to surrealist dreamscapes and iconic retrospectives, London’s galleries this month are bursting with cultural energy. Whether you’re a seasoned art lover or just looking to explore something new, these exhibitions offer the perfect way to immerse yourself in the city’s vibrant summer art scene.
Arriving Somewhere, Maybe – Valentin Loellmann
Date: 6–30 June 2025
Location: David Gill Gallery, 2–4 King Street, St James’s, London, UK
In his highly anticipated London debut, renowned German designer Valentin Loellmann introduces Arriving Somewhere, Maybe, an exhibition that transforms traditional design into poetic storytelling. Known for his fluid, nature-inspired forms, Loellmann presents a site-specific installation composed of handcrafted ceramic tiles arranged like a reflective pool. Influenced by Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics, the show emphasizes harmony, imperfection, and stillness. The minimal yet richly textured environment invites viewers to slow down and engage with the subtleties of form, material, and space. Through this immersive setting, Loellmann provokes contemplation about the human touch in an increasingly digitized world.
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Chimaera – Sylvain Rieu‑Piquet
Date: 22 May–30 August 2025
Location: Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Ladbroke Hall, 79 Barlby Road, W10 6AZ, London, UK
Blurring the boundaries between function, form, and fantasy, Parisian designer Sylvain Rieu‑Piquet’s Chimaera is a hybrid art-meets-design installation that defies easy categorization. Drawing inspiration from the textures of wild creatures—scales, fungi, fish skin—the artist creates ceramic sculptures that double as surreal jewelry. Each piece is a tactile meditation on the relationship between humans and nature, the body and ornamentation. With earthy glazes and sinuous forms, the show speaks to transformation, decay, and hybridity. Chimaera offers a dreamlike escape while asking critical questions about identity and adornment in a fragmented world.
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In Plain Sight
Date: 6 June–19 July 2025
Location: Luxembourg + Co., 2 Savile Row, W1S 3PA, London, UK
In Plain Sight is a compelling group exhibition that spans a century of artistic exploration around the themes of visibility, presence, and perception. Featuring works by seminal artists such as Man Ray, Piero Manzoni, and Maurizio Cattelan, as well as contemporary innovators, the exhibition challenges the viewer to see what lies beneath the surface. The curation masterfully highlights how absence, minimalism, and subversion can become powerful artistic tools. Whether through performative gestures, conceptual provocations, or sculptural restraint, each work questions the role of art in revealing—or concealing—truths. It’s a powerful reminder of how art can disrupt our everyday seeing.
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Chants – Thiago Barbalho
Date: 16 May–19 July 2025
Location: Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Fuel Tank, 8–12 Creekside, SE8 3DX, Deptford, London, UK
Thiago Barbalho’s solo exhibition Chants is a poetic journey into the spiritual and cultural resonances of his Brazilian heritage. Melding drawing, text, and sculptural assemblage, Barbalho constructs a visual language rooted in ancestral wisdom and ritual practices. His work often references Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cosmologies, presenting a tapestry of symbols, incantations, and coded communication. The exhibition encourages viewers to reflect on the layered nature of identity, the sacredness of language, and the persistent rhythms of memory. Chants not only bridges the material and the metaphysical but also affirms the power of storytelling in the resistance against cultural erasure.
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Yoshitomo Nara
Date: 10 June–31 August 2025
Location: Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Road, Southbank Centre, London, UK
One of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists, Yoshitomo Nara, returns to London with his most comprehensive European retrospective to date. The exhibition traces over 40 years of artistic evolution, presenting more than 150 works including paintings, drawings, large-scale sculptures, and rare ceramics. Nara’s iconic wide-eyed characters, often portrayed as solitary and defiant, have long captured the complexities of childhood, rebellion, and emotional solitude. Beyond their cute façades lies a deep undercurrent of existential yearning and political commentary, particularly in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. This retrospective highlights Nara’s profound ability to merge innocence with subversion, playfulness with protest.
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Dreamlandia
Date: 7 June–19 July 2025
Location: Sim Smith, 6 Camberwell Passage, SE5 0AX, London, UK
Celebrating a century since the birth of Surrealism, Dreamlandia offers a bold and necessary reimagining of the movement through the lens of women artists. Co-curated by Sim Smith and artist Emily Hunt, the exhibition brings together historical and contemporary figures working in puppetry, painting, installation, and performance. By subverting traditional surrealist tropes and reclaiming narrative space, the show positions the female imagination as central to the uncanny and fantastical. With an emphasis on the subconscious, bodily experience, and dream logic, Dreamlandia is as unsettling as it is enchanting—offering a feminist reinterpretation of one of art history’s most mythic traditions.
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Umbilical Cord – Antonio Pichillá QuiacaÃn
Date: 20 June–2 August 2025 (private view 19 June)
Location: Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Exmouth Market space, EC1R 4QE, London, UK
With Umbilical Cord, Guatemalan artist Antonio Pichillá QuiacaÃn creates a meditative environment that weaves together Indigenous Maya cosmologies with contemporary concerns of displacement and cultural survival. The exhibition features sculptural works made from natural fibers, dyed textiles, and spiritual symbols—each piece functioning as a physical manifestation of lineage and place. At the core of the show is the metaphor of the umbilical cord, connecting the past to the present, the personal to the collective. Through this intimate and politically resonant body of work, Pichillá invites audiences to consider the sacred ties that bind us to land, memory, and ancestral knowledge.
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Why These Seven?
July in London offers an extraordinary artistic landscape—from Japan to Guatemala, Surrealism to ceramics, punk spirit to ancient myth. Each show brings a distinct voice:
- Craft & contemplation: Loellmann’s ceramic meditations
- Organic fusion: Rieu‑Piquet’s tactile, body-aware forms
- Invisible dialogues: Minimalist shapes in Luxembourg + Co.
- Symbolic storytelling: Barbalho’s entangled languages
- Global resonance: Nara’s emotionally charged retrospection
- Feminist surrealism: Dreamlandia’s intergenerational lens
- Cultural reclamation: Pichillá’s indigenous-rooted installations
Whether you’re seeking creative inspiration or a cultural escape, these exhibitions make July in London the perfect time to explore art in all its forms. Don’t just scroll—step into a gallery and let the summer spark your imagination.
To see the best art exhibitions around the world in 2025, visit here.
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