What’s on in London this week: 21 - 27 April 2025
Discover our pick of events in London this week: 21 - 27 April 2025.
Multitudes Festival
Multitudes, a bold new arts festival, begins this week at the Southbank Centre. The festival reimagines the concert hall experience, combining orchestral music with dance, theatre, spoken word, and visual arts. It features performances from renowned orchestras such as the London Philharmonic and Chineke! Orchestra, as well as groundbreaking collaborations — including Daphnis and Chloé with Circa’s circus choreography, and Igor Levit’s 16-hour performance of Vexations.
Click here to discover the programme of events for Multitudes.
Date: 23 April - 3 May 2025. Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX.
London Philharmonic Orchestra. Image creidt Jason Bell
Brick Lane Jazz Festival 2025
The Brick Lane Jazz Festival returns for its fourth year, with events spanning across twelve venues in Brick Lane and Shoreditch. The 3-day festival will spotlight local and emerging talent, featuring jazz, hip-hop, neo-soul, R&B, breakbeat, and electronic music. Expect performances from headliners like Laraaji, Adi Oasis, and Ragz Originale, alongside rising stars and experimental outfits such as Ife Ogunjobi and Marysia Osu. With over 100 artists, the festival has become a prominent fixture in the UK music scene, offering a mix of ticketed and free-entry stages.
Date: 25 - 27 April 2025. Location: The festival will take place across various venues in East London, including the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane and locations in Shoreditch. Price: from just £29.95, and weekend passes from £89.95. Book now.
London Marathon 2025
The beloved London Marathon will take this weekend, with around 40,000 runners tackling the 26.2-mile course. Since its debut in 1981, this iconic event has grown into a city-wide celebration, attracting participants of all abilities, from elite athletes to fun-run enthusiasts in fancy dress. The race passes through some of London’s most famous landmarks, including Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye. Whether you’re running or cheering from the sidelines, it’s a fantastic opportunity to support various charities and be part of this exciting day.
Date: 27 April 2025. londonmarathonevents.co.uk.
The London Marathon returns on 27 April 2025.
Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet
Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh International Festival and a successful debut at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Peruvian company Teatro La Plaza brings their innovative reinvention of Hamlet to London. Directed by Chela De Ferrari, this production features eight actors with Down’s syndrome, who interweave their personal stories, desires, and frustrations with Shakespeare’s classic text. Through playfulness, humour, and powerful performances, the show explores how individuals with Down’s syndrome navigate a world that often excludes them. The production fuses Shakespeare’s words with protest songs, rap, video design, and dynamic choreography.
Date: 24 - 27 April 2025. Location: Barbican Theatre Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £16 plus booking fee, £5 Young Barbican tickets available. Book now.
Vexations
Pianist Igor Levit will perform Erik Satie’s challenging Vexations, a 16-hour piece, in a unique event directed by conceptual artist Marina Abramović. The performance, part of the Multitudes series, is a test of endurance, with Levit repeating the one-page score 840 times, as instructed by Satie. Known for its simplicity and difficulty, Vexations has influenced numerous musicians, including John Cage.
Date: 24 - 25 April 2025. Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Price: £32. Book now.
Marina Abramovic - Photo Credit: Zala Opara/ Igor Levit- Photo credit: Peter Rigaud c.o. Shotview Artists.
Oh To Believe in Another World
William Kentridge’s animated film Oh To Believe in Another World receives its UK premiere at the Royal Festival Hall, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Marin Alsop. Inspired by Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10—written in the shadow of Stalin’s death—the film examines oppression and resistance through a surreal ‘Soviet museum’ brought to life with collage, puppetry, and masked actors. The evening also features Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, adding a hopeful, rhythmic counterpoint to the programme.
Date: 24 April 2025. Time: 7.30pm. Duration: 1 hour and 45 minutes (approx). Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Price: from £17. Book now.
ROOH: Within Her
Within Her, a solo performance by Urja Desai Thakore, the Artistic Director of Pagrav Dance Company, will take place at Sadler’s Wells. In this moving and intricate piece, Urja will bring to life lesser-known heroines from history and legend, portraying women whose quiet acts of heroism have shaped their worlds. Through characters like a Tamil mother searching for her son’s body on the battlefield and Heerbai, a folk heroine who drives away a lion, Urja will explore how these stories, spanning two millennia, continue to influence and inspire us today.
Date: 23 – 25 April 2025. Location: Sadler's Wells Theatre, Rosebery Ave, London EC1R 4TN. Price: from £17 + £4 Maintenance fee. Book now.
© Pari Naderi.
Experiments in Utopia: Conservatory Takeover
Experiments in Utopia is a day of talks, workshops, and performances held in the Barbican Conservatory, exploring creativity, community, and intentional experimentation. Bringing together artists, thinkers, and collectives. Highlights include ambient soundscapes, interactive performances, live readings, and participatory listening games.
Date: 27 April 2025. Location: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: Free by ticketed. Book now.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Isata Kanneh-Mason at Wigmore Hall
Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason will perform at Wigmore Hall this week, showcasing their virtuosity, passion, and expressive eloquence. Their programme includes Poulenc’s Sonata, composed after the Nazi occupation of France, and Natalie Klouda’s Tor Mordôn, which was recently given its world premiere by the duo.
Date: 26 April 2025. Duration: approximately 2 hours, including an interval. Location: Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore St, London W1U 2BP. Price: £18 - £60. Book now.
Barbican Conservatory.
La Línea Festival 2025
La Línea returns to London, celebrating 25 years of championing Latin music and culture with a vibrant line-up of global stars and emerging talent. From traditional Cuban son to Latin rap, jazz, folk, and cutting-edge electronic sounds, the festival showcases the full spectrum of Latin music. The festival will feature performances from Eliades Ochoa, Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Villano Antillano, Ed Maverick, and Rodrigo Cuevas.
Click here for the full programme of events.
Date: 22 April – 3 May 2025. Location: Various venues.
Cinema
Acting with ScreenTalk hosted by Cate Blanchett
Sophie Fiennes’ Acting will be screened at the Barbican this weekend, offering rare insight into the theatre-making process with Cheek by Jowl’s artistic directors, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod. Set in a derelict Gothic mansion, eight actors explore Macbeth in a fresh, transformative way—revealing new dimensions of acting and text. The screening will be followed by a ScreenTalk with Fiennes, Donnellan, and Ormerod, hosted by Cate Blanchett.
Date: 27 April 2025. Location: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: £13+ BF. Book now.
Grace Andrews and Ekow Quartey. Sophie Fiennes’ Acting.
Arts & Culture
Opening this week
Antony Gormley: WITNESS: Early Lead Works
An Anthony Gormley exhibition will open on Wednesday at White Cube’s Mason’s Yard location. Titled WITNESS, the exhibition will showcase Gormley’s early lead sculptures, created from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, which are among the most significant of his career. Using lead—a material that symbolises both protection and toxicity—these sculptures highlight Gormley’s breakthroughs in visual language and explore the complexities of human existence. The works demonstrate how his early experiments with lead laid the foundation for his later pieces.
Date: 23 April – 8 June 2025. Location: White Cube Mason’s Yard, 25 - 26 Mason’s Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU. Price: Free. whitecube.com.
Nolan Oswald Dennis: throwers
Nolan Oswald Dennis’ first UK solo exhibition will open at Gasworks, showcasing his exploration of the politics of space and time through a system-specific approach. The exhibition will feature new and existing works that examine the relationships between geology and cosmology, along with a new iteration of the Black Earth Study Club, developed in collaboration with local artists, writers, and researchers.
Date: 24 April - 22 June 2025. Location: Gasworks 155 Vauxhall Street London SE11 5RH. Price: Free. gasworksw.org.uk.
Antony Gormley WITNESS II, 1993
Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane: 2125 & The Pits
2125 is a new outdoor commission by artists Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane, centred on questions of identity, belonging, and who has the ‘right to remain’ in Britain today. Featuring four benches made from reclaimed Portland stone sourced from Admiralty Arch—once a symbol of naval power and now being transformed into a luxury hotel—the work draws a visual and symbolic link to Somerset House, a site similarly shaped by histories of authority and ownership. Running in parallel, the artists’ indoor installation The Pits expands on these ideas, delving into the emotional and physical toll of postcolonial and late capitalist narratives. Over four months, the space becomes a shifting black box that invites rest, reflection, and resistance, encouraging visitors to dwell, rearrange, or even book the space for their own events. The Pits offers a rare space to sit with unresolved emotions and challenge the myth of constant healing and productivity.
Date: 25 April – 31 August 2025. Location: 2125 is on display at the Lancaster Place entrance of the New Wing. The Pits is showing inside at Somerset House Studios, G31, also in the New Wing. Price: Free.
Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis: A Retrospective
The first London retrospective of Richard Hunt (1935–2023), one of America’s leading sculptors, will open at White Cube Bermondsey. Spanning a seven-decade career, Hunt created over 160 large-scale public sculptures worldwide and held more than 170 solo exhibitions. In 1971, he became the first African American sculptor to receive a retrospective at New York’s MoMA. Known for his work in metal, Hunt’s sculptures blend the natural with the industrial, the surreal with the abstract, and the geometric with the organic. His career included tributes to American heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Owens, and in 2022, he was commissioned by Barack Obama for a piece for the Obama Presidential Centre in Chicago.
Date: 25 April – 29 June 2025. Location: White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ. Price: Free. whitecube.com.
Richard Hunt, Reaching Up, 2022 © 2025 The Richard Hunt Trust / ARS, NY and DACS. London. Photo © White Cube (Frankie Tyska).
#FLOFavourites: This Week
R.I.P. Germain: Anti-Blackness Is Bad, Even The Parts That We Like
RIP Germain’s exhibition confronts the UK drill scene’s entanglement with violence, crime, and incarceration, questioning society’s complicity in consuming and profiting from this reality. At its core, it highlights how countless young artists have been lost to the prison system, their lives and pain turned into entertainment for public consumption.
Date: Until 10 May 2025. Location: C A B I N E T, 132 Tyers Street, London SE11 5HS. Price: Free. cabinet.uk.com.
R.I.P Germain, 101 hour psycho, 2024-25. Image credit MTotoe.
Last chance
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism
Last chance to see Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at the Royal Academy. The exhibition features over 130 works by ten pivotal Brazilian artists, spanning the 1910s to the 1970s. Showcasing the rich diversity of Brazilian art, it draws from rarely seen private and public collections, with many pieces being shown in the UK for the first time.
Click here for our review of Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism.
Date: 28 January - 21 April 2025. Location: Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: £23.50 - £25.50. Book now.
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights
Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights at the Wellcome Collection explores the impact of physical work on health and the body, highlighting the struggles of underrepresented workers in unsafe labour environments. The exhibition features over 150 items, including historical objects, contemporary artworks, and new commissions, showcasing hidden histories of resistance and collective action. It offers a global perspective on the ongoing fight for workers’ rights and the interconnectedness of working practices across the world.
Date: until 27 April 2025. Location: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE Price: Free.
Installation view of the 'Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism' exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (23 January - 21 April 2025). Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. © Tarsita do Amaral S/A.
Alvaro Barrington: Back Home / I Am... I Said
Alvaro Barrington’s two-part exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, inspired by Caribbean sunsets and his return to Grenada, features modernist-inspired paintings and a shack installation. Constructed from corrugated metal, wood, and fabrics, the installation includes an audio experience with works by Tiffany Calver and Naima Nefertari. Surrounding the shack are paintings from Barrington’s Banana Fall on You series, which reflects on migration, belonging, and the tension between identity and being a product.
Date: until 26 April 2025. Location: Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street, London W1B 5QN. Price: Free.
Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser: Salt Cosmologies
This large scale installation at Somerset House delves into the complex histories surrounding Britain’s imperial salt monopoly in India. Spanning three spaces, the exhibition uses large-scale installations, block-printed fabrics, and newly refurbished areas to explore the intertwined histories of salt.
Date: 20 February – 27 April 2025. Location: Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, Terrace Room, and Salt Stair. Price: Free.
HylozoicDesires. Soap of the Sages, Sun of the Sea , 2024. Courtesy the artist.
Artist Talk
Ossian Ward: discovering dsh
Ossian Ward, Content Director at Lisson Gallery, and Nicola Simpson, curator and expert in concrete poetry, will present an introduction to the work of Benedictine monk and artist Dom Sylvester Houédard at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.
Full-time students can enjoy free entry from 5pm, with the talk beginning at 6.30pm. The event is free with an admission ticket purchased for the same day.
Date: 24 April 2025. Time: 6.30 - 8pm. Location: Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1 2AN. Price: Adult £9.50, Over 65s £7.50, Free for members. Book now.
#FLOFavourites: Pick of the Week
Free event of the week
More Human Systems: Perceptual Drift
Perceptual Drift by More Human Systems will be open to the public on 27 April 2025.
As part of Experiments in Utopia, Perceptual Drift offers a calming, sensory experience designed to soothe the nervous system and explore new forms of togetherness. Created by design collective More Human Systems, the installation will be on display at the Barbican on 27 April in the sculpture court. A special in-bubble workshop at 4.30pm—led by Michele Occelli, Ben Khan, and Lewis Walker—guides participants through somatic practices, spatial sensing, and collective attunement, encouraging a shift toward embodied, fluid ways of being. The installation is free to explore during the day, with booking required for the workshop.
Date: 27 April 2025. Location: Barbican Centre, Sculputure Court, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS. Price: Free entry (drop in): From 12pm–6pm. Paid workshop: 1 hour, 4.30pm–5.30pm. Book now.
Interview of the week
In conversation with Daniel Pitt
Daniel Pitt in front of Old Diorama Arts Centre. Image credit Matt Mahmood-Ogston.
Daniel is a curator-producer dedicated to the social impact of the arts and cross-sector collaboration. He is currently Creative Director & Chief Executive of Old Diorama Arts Centre (ODAC) in Euston, where he has strengthened the centre’s community connections amidst urban transformation.
Click here for the full interview.
Food of the week
JOIA Rooftop Opening Party
Joia Rooftop Bar, art’otel at Battersea Power Station. © MTotoe.
Rooftop season is back, and this Friday, JOIA at Battersea Power Station is kicking off the summer in style. From 5pm, enjoy live music from the dynamic duo JOALFARO, alongside Iberian-inspired hot dogs and signature cocktails. As the sun sets, DJ Fat Tony takes over the rooftop with a set from 7pm to 9pm, followed by DJ Mercedes Benson continuing the party downstairs at the JOIA Bar. Tickets are £45 per person and include two tokens for food or drinks.
Date: 25 April 2025. Location: JOIA Restaurant, Bar & Rooftop, 15th Floor, 1 Electric Blvd, Nine Elms, London SW11 8BX.
Cause of the week
Charity art exhibitions in London
Liam Gallagher, Oasis in Union Jack, London, 2009 - Lawrence Watson, Print Matters.
A series of exhibitions and auctions across London are supporting vital causes—from mental health and food poverty to children affected by war and the conservation of endangered animals, with celebrated artists and musicians contributing unique works.
Click here for our guide to art exhibitions for causes you can support this week.
