1. Cecil Beaton, ‘The Theatre of War’, The Imperial War Museum
Cecil Beaton is one of Britain’s most celebrated photographers and designers. Famed for his photographs of famous faces from Hollywood, high society and the theatrical world, his extraordinary work as a wartime photographer is, perhaps, less well-known.
‘The Theatre of War’ will examine Beaton’s response to the Second World War as an official war photographer for the Ministry of Information. Commissioned in July 1940, Beaton was the longest serving high-profile photographer to cover the war, travelling throughout Britain, the Middle East, India, China and Burma and capturing wonderfully unadorned yet powerfully affective images of a world on the brink of lasting change. The exhibition includes excerpts from his extensive diaries, his drawing and designs as well as over 250 photographs selected from the some 7000 he took between 1940 and 1945, many of which have never been seen in the public domain.
Until 1st January 2013
2. Art of Change: New Directions from China, Hayward
The Hayward Gallery presents ‘Art of Change’, a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese installation and performance art. Featuring the work of some of the most innovative and inspiring artists from the 1980s up to the present day, ‘Art of Change’ focusses on themes of transformation, instability and discontinuity. Expect thrashing hose pipes, structures made by live silk worms and sculptures seeming to float above the gallery floor, an absolute must-see.
Until December 9th
3. Lindsay Seers, ‘Nowhere Less Now’, The Tin Tabernacle 12-16 Cambridge Avenue, NW6 5BA
Combining photography, performance, video and animation, ‘Nowhere Less Now’ is a site specific project conceived in response to ‘The Tin Tabernacle’ a striking 19th century corrugated iron chapel in Kilburn. Seers’s installation takes the form of two 33-minute films, set to a multi-layered soundtrack, which explore the unlikely connections between the chapel, the birth of her great great uncle, George Edwards, the birth of Mina Bergson, artist and sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, and her own birth exactly 100 years later to the day.
Until 21st October
4. Pre Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, Tate Britain
For its current blockbuster Tate brings together over 150 works in a variety of media by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in a bold attempt to assert their avant-gardist ambitions and advanced multi-genre approach. A fascinating opportunity to discover rarely seen masterpieces by Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb and Edward Burne-Jones, displayed alongside iconic and instantly recognisable works by Pre-Raphaelite super stars, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
Until 13th January 2013
5. Everything was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre
This major photography exhibition brings together a stunning array of over 400 works from the 60s and 70s by key international figures including Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov, Sigmar Polke, Malick Sidibé, Shomei Tomatsu, and Li Zhensheng. ‘Everything was moving’ aims, then, to survey the medium across two decades in which the curators believe the world changed radically a period in which photography itself was in a state of flux, a historically significant and visually arresting experience.
