From Kerry James Marshall’s landmark survey at the Royal Academy to bold debuts and kinetic installations, these London exhibitions promise a season of depth and discovery.
As autumn arrives, the capital opens its doors to a new season of art, with some of the most anticipated shows of the year. Among the five exhibitions to see in London in September 2025, one of the most significant is Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy of Arts. Bringing together 70 works, this exhibition marks the largest survey of Marshall’s paintings ever staged outside the United States.
For more than four decades, the artist has transformed the Western tradition of history painting by centring the Black figure in narratives that had long excluded it. Monumental in scale yet deeply personal, Marshall’s canvases weave together art history, the civil rights movement, science fiction, comics and everyday life, making this one of the must-see exhibitions in London this September.
Running concurrently is LOVE/FIGHT, the debut solo exhibition by London-based multidisciplinary artist Betty Ogundipe at Tache Gallery. Spanning painting, photography, textiles, sculpture and video, the show addresses themes of Black womanhood through lenses of femininity, resistance and resilience. Bold and varied in its approach, Ogundipe’s work underlines the vitality of emerging voices within the season’s five exhibitions to see in London in September.
Equally ambitious is Conrad Shawcross’s The Nervous System (Umbilical), a monumental rope-making machine that will be unveiled in London this month. At ten metres tall and twelve metres wide, the structure features forty interlocking arms moving in endlessly varied orbits, producing a coiled rope that becomes a record of time. Part of Shawcross’s long-running Rope Makers series, this project represents one of the most technically complex and conceptually rich exhibitions in London in September 2025.
For those seeking something more intimate, Ollie White’s Something Borrowed at Haricot Gallery in Shoreditch offers a quieter but equally compelling exploration. Using shoes in boxes as a recurring motif, White creates a psychological dialogue between object and meaning. Across ten carefully curated paintings—including The Party and Mirage—this exhibition reflects on themes of containment, memory, intimacy and identity, proving that even smaller gallery shows can stand alongside the capital’s headline exhibitions in September.
Completing the line-up is Atlas by Han Bing at Thaddaeus Ropac London, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. Known for her subtle yet disruptive engagement with urban environments, Bing presents new canvases alongside works on paper executed on pages of found newspaper, a material central to her practice.
Accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by art historian Doris von Drathen, this exhibition situates itself among the most thought-provoking shows of the month. Exhibitions to see in London – Kerry James Marshall: The Histories may draw the spotlight, but Bing’s Atlas offers a quieter meditation on the relationship between painting, place and memory.
Together, these shows—Marshall’s historic survey, Ogundipe’s fierce debut, Shawcross’s kinetic invention, White’s psychological reflections and Bing’s urban interventions—define the season. For anyone charting their cultural calendar.
So here’s our Five Exhibitions To See In London In September 2025
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
This autumn, the Royal Academy of Arts will present Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, the largest exhibition of the artist’s paintings ever held outside the United States. Bringing together 70 works, it offers British audiences a rare chance to encounter the epic style of one of America’s most celebrated living painters.
Marshall, who served on President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2013, has spent more than four decades reshaping the Western tradition of history painting to centre the Black figure — a subject long absent from its grand narratives. His vivid, often monumental canvases weave together art-historical references, the civil rights movement, comics, science fiction, personal memory and the everyday.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
20th September, 2025 – 18th January, 2026
Royal Academy of Arts
Main Galleries
Burlington House,
Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD
Courtesy of Tache Gallery
Betty Ogundipe: LOVE/FIGHT
This autumn, London-based multidisciplinary artist Betty Ogundipe presents her debut solo exhibition LOVE/FIGHT at Tache Gallery, running from 18 September to 23 October 2025. The show brings together a bold and varied collection of paintings, photography, textiles, sculpture and video, all exploring themes of Black womanhood through the lenses of femininity, resistance and resilience.
Betty Ogundipe: LOVE/FIGHT
18th September, 2025 – 23rd October, 2025
Tache
33 Percy Street
London W1T 2DF
Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Umbilical)
British artist Conrad Shawcross has built his largest and most intricate “rope machine” to date — a 10-metre-tall, 12-metre-wide apparatus titled The Nervous System (Umbilical). When it begins operating this autumn, forty interlocking arms will rotate in a sequence of orbits that never repeats, slowly producing a rope that coils at its base like a physical record of time passing.
The work belongs to Shawcross’s long-running “Rope Makers” series, which began more than 25 years ago during his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. Its origins trace to a late-night conversation with David Walsh, founder of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. That discussion — about machinery, the cosmos and systems that resist repetition — eventually led to this monumental, permanently installed commission for MONA.
Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Umbilical)
11th September, 2025 – 2nd November, 2025
Timber Yard
Here East (next to V&A Storehouse)
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
London E15 2GW
Talks & events throughout the exhibition
Ollie White: Something Borrowed
Ollie White, one of London’s most exciting up-and-coming painters, is delighted to unveil his debut solo exhibition, Something Borrowed, showing at Shoreditch’s Haricot Gallery from Friday 05 to Saturday 27 September.
The exhibition will feature works which explore the quiet, psychological space between object and meaning through the visual motif of shoes in boxes. Featuring 10 carefully curated works including The Party, The After Party, Soirée, and Mirage, the exhibition seeks to convey a layered investigation into themes of containment, memory, intimacy, and identity, all of which are explored through the seemingly simple and domestic motif of the shoe.
Ollie White: Something Borrowed
5th September, 2025 to 27th September, 2025
Haricot Gallery
2 Blackall Street
London,
EC2A 4AD
172.7 x 203.2 cm (67.99 x 80 in).
Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac
Han Bing: Atlas
Thaddaeus Ropac London will open Atlas, the first exhibition in the United Kingdom devoted to Han Bing, whose paintings are recognised for their subtle yet disruptive engagement with the urban environment.
The exhibition, which spans the gallery’s ground floor, brings together new canvases and a series of works on paper executed on pages of found newspaper — a material integral to her practice. A catalogue, with an essay by the art historian Doris von Drathen, accompanies the show.
Han Bing: Atlas
2nd September, 2025 – 4th October, 2025
Thaddaeus Ropac London
Ely House
37 Dover Street
London, W1S 4NJ
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