From exhibitions by Tyler Mitchell, Nan Goldin and Stephen Shore to the best new dining spots, our roundup of the month’s most excellent events is guaranteed to kickstart your summer
Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real at C/O Berlin: June 1 – September 5, 2024
American photographer and director Tyler Mitchell traverses the boundary between fashion and fine art, conjuring scenes that propel “a visual narrative of beauty, style, utopia and the landscape that expands visions of Black life.” Now, Berlin-based photography fans can experience his mesmerising output in person, courtesy of his new solo show at C/O Berlin. Spanning almost a decade’s worth of work, Wish This Was Real calls attention to the themes of “self-determination and the extraordinary radiance of the everyday” that underscore Mitchell’s practice, while exploring the ways in which his vibrant tableaux and videos draw on the past to evoke imagined futures.
Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product at Moderna Museet, Stockholm: Until October 13, 2024
At Moderna Museet in Stockholm, punk icon Vaginal Davis is enjoying her first major solo exhibition: a series of three installations that reveal the American artist, performer, and filmmaker’s pioneering role in the Los Angeles punk “homocore“ scene, while spotlighting her subversive multimedia explorations of gender, identity and queer culture. Expect to see films, paintings, sculptures, books, blog excerpts and more in what promises to be an immersive examination of Davis’s singular world.
Don’t miss Palestinian-American artist and photographer Adam Rouhana’s second London solo show, on view at TJ Boulting until June 22. The exhibition is made up of mostly unseen imagery, created between 2022 and 2024, which expands upon Rouhana’s previous body of work capturing Palestinian life under occupation. In this instance, the photographer has crafted impactful new narratives with a view to challenging “history, memory, space, politics and reality itself”, with many of the images “drawing on the fertility of the land and the verdancy of spring in Palestine”.
Naomi: In Fashion at the V&A, London: June 22, 2024 – April 6, 2025
At the V&A, the inimitable Naomi Campbell will take centre stage in a new exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with the British model herself. Tracing Campbell’s swift ascent from freshly scouted 15-year-old to being the first Black model to front French Vogue just three years later, to all-out supermodel stardom thereafter, the show will celebrate Campbell’s extraordinary achievements, activism and cultural influence over the past 40 years. Visitors will have a chance to witness some of the breathtaking designs stemming from her long-standing friendships with designers like Azzedine Alaïa and Vivienne Westwood, her magnetism in front of the camera (courtesy of shots by Steven Meisel, Arthur Elgort et al), and much, much more.
American image-maker Stephen Shore is a veteran of both vehicular and vernacular photography. From the late 1960s onwards, he has captured images from the windows of cars, planes and trains, or made road trips across the States, documenting the essence and aesthetics of modern American life in striking colour. Contemplating these two vital elements of Shore’s oeuvre, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson’s newest exhibition unites some of the photographer’s most celebrated works, including his renowned series Uncommon Places and American Surfaces, as well as lesser-known projects never before shown in France – a treat for Shore aficionados.
Reverb at 180 Studios, London: Until September 28, 2024
Over the past 20 years, the Vinyl Factory has facilitated an impressive number of musician-artist collaborations. Now, in a new multimedia exhibition at 180 Studios, the London-based vinyl enterprise has taken this endeavour a step further, bringing together over 100 artists and musicians working across art, music, film and live performance for the purpose. Featuring specially commissioned audio-visual installations and sonic experiences from artists including Theaster Gates, Es Devlin, Hito Steyerl and William Kentridge, it also boasts a dedicated vinyl listening room conceived by New York artist Devon Turnbull, an exciting programme of coinciding live events, and a display of artist’s records pressed by the Vinyl Factory between 2009-24.
Paare / Couples at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur: June 1 – October 6, 2024
In Winterthur, Switzerland, Fotostiftung Schweiz is celebrating romantic coupledom in all its complexities. Its latest exhibition, Paare / Couples, brings together a wide-ranging array of photographs, captured across multiple decades, all of which depict an interaction between lovers who are not making eye contact with the camera. Co-curators Iwan Schumacher and Peter Pfrunder describe the show as a “a playful associative presentation”: not only is each image a candid snapshot of a moment in the individual couple’s stories but, when presented in dialogue with one another, the photographs reveal fresh narrative possibilities.
Francis Alÿs: Ricochets at the Barbican, London: June 27 – 1 September, 2024
Belgian artist Francis Alÿs explores art as a vehicle for witnessing social and political change, his multifaceted practice spanning painting, drawing and photography through film and animation. At the end of this month, Alÿs will unveil an immersive, large-scale exhibition at London’s Barbican, examining “the universality and ingenuity of play”. Over the past two decades, the artist has travelled the world to record children at play in different contexts and environments, resulting in his acclaimed series Children’s Games, which will be shown for the first time in the UK here, alongside a new body of animated films.
The Lore of Loverboy at Somerset House, London: June 8 – September 1, 2024
For ten years, Scottish designer Charles Jeffrey has been disrupting the fashion world with his interdisciplinary merging of art, design and music, garnering a devoted following for his now-legendary club nights and his avant-garde label, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy. This month, he is the focus of a dedicated exhibition at Somerset House, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how he built “a fashion business from scratch [and] the artistry that lies behind every process”. It promises to be a typically theatrical and sensory affair, tapping Jeffrey’s bold use of colour, pattern and texture – and we can’t wait.
Sisters, Saints, Sibyls at The Welsh Chapel, London: Until June 23, 2024
For the second iteration of Gagosian Open, a series of off-site projects showing remarkable artworks in unusual contexts, Nan Goldin is presenting her taboo-busting work Sisters, Saints, Sibyls in the Welsh chapel in Soho. Inside the deconsecrated church, the US image-maker’s three-channel video work screens in “a visceral environment that references 19th-century operating theatres”. The film consists of three threads: the myth of the martyred St Barbara, the story of Goldin’s late sister Barbara, who was fatefully institutionalised by Goldin’s parents on account of her rebellious behaviour, and Goldin’s own unorthodox path, inspired by her sister’s life.
Boscoe Holder | Geoffrey Holder at Victoria Miro, London: June 1 – July 27, 2024
“Two boys and all they want to do is to dance and paint,” said the late artist and performer Geoffrey Holder of himself his older brother Boscoe. Hailing from Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, both boys would go on to have extraordinary careers in both the visual and performing arts – Boscoe in the UK and Geoffrey in the US. Victoria Miro’s concurrent exhibitions present the siblings’ paintings in tandem for the first time, exploring the ways in which the gloriously colourful figurative works informed, and were informed by, their accomplishments as choreographers and performers. A must-see for art and dance lovers alike.
Berlin, Berlin at the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin: June 7, 2024 – February 16, 2025
Marking 20 years since the opening of the Helmut Newton Foundation, the Berlin institution will soon open a major new show centred on the German capital, the city where Newton was born. This will comprise around 100 career-spanning works by the photographic provocateur himself, captured in his storied hometown, alongside an equally extensive array of work by fellow photographers and filmmakers – including Maria Sewcz, Michael Schmidt, Wim Wenders, Arno Fischer and Will McBride, shot in Berlin across the decades.
There are lots of great live events to keep us entertained this month in the likely event of summer rain. In 1999, British theatre innovators Complicité and the National Theatre wowed audiences with Mnemonic, a visually stunning meditation on origins and memory. From June 22 to August 10, the play will return to the London venue, 25 years after its opening, where it will no doubt beguile audiences once again.
Get booking now for the UK premiere of Slave Play, the 12-time Tony-nominated work by Jeremy O Harris, which “rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender and sexuality in 21st-century America”. Running from June 29 to September 21 at London’s Noël Coward Theatre, it’s likely to be one of the most talked about productions of the summer. At the Almeida from June 11 to July 20, meanwhile, award-winning playwright Kendall Feaver will premiere her anticipated sophomore offering Alma Mater, “a pin-sharp new look at the ever-growing generational divide between feminists”, set on a university campus.
Finally, there’s My Father’s Fable, at the Bush Theatre from June 15 to July 27. Written by another ascendant playwright, Faith Omole, it’s billed as “a gripping story of grief, belonging, and a family on the edge”.
For those seeking out sublime dance encounters, check out this year’s Flamenco Festival, at Sadler’s Wells from June 4–15. Highlights include Yerbagüena, lauded dancer Eva Yerbabuena’s passionate reflection on her 20-year career, and En Este Día en Este Mundo, a stirring new work from sisters Florencia Oz and Isidora O’Ryan, composed of “organic dance rhythms influenced by light and the natural environment around us”. And for the funk-inclined, there’s the 2024 edition of Meltdown Festival, curated this year by none other than the genre’s reigning queen: Chaka Khan. The line-up includes Malian supergroup Les Amazones d’Afrique, So-Cal funk pioneers War, and feminist punk band Big Joanie.
June’s new movie releases promise something for everyone. For fans of experimental filmmaking, there’s You Burn Me, an essayistic film from Argentine director Matías Piñeirothere in which the Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet for an oceanside discussion of desire and death. Finnish filmmaker Selma Vilhunen explores polyamory in Four Little Adults, the Bergman-esque story of a middle-aged couple in crisis who decide to open their marriage. Next Sohee, by July Jung, follows a detective’s investigation into the death of a high-school senior during an apprenticeship in a call centre. A heartbreaking critique of labour exploitation in South Korea ensues.
Then there’s Àma Gloria by French director Marie Amachoukeli, a deeply moving drama about a six-year-old and her beloved nanny, Gloria, who have one last summer to spend together in Gloria’s native Cape Verde, where she has had to return to care for her own children. Yorgos Lanthimos is back again with Kinds of Kindness, a darkly comic triptych set in modern-day America. Per the BFI, it sees the Greek auteur spin “three wicked yarns from different threads of human cruelty”, using the same cast of actors to perform different roles in each story. Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s latest film Green Border is an urgent and angry drama about the plight of migrants stranded in the border region between Poland and Belarus.
This month’s best documentaries include Death of a City by João Rosas, which began as a film about the daily life of workers on a Lisbon construction site but developed into the thought-provoking story of the director’s relationship with his hometown and the people responsible for building it. Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s fascinating and unsettling film Eternal You shines a light on tech startups using AI to create digital doppelgangers of the deceased so that their loved ones can continue communicating with them. While Strike: An Uncivil War by Daniel Gordon takes a powerful look at the Battle of Orgreave, the most violent confrontation between miners and police during the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike, using personal testimony, previously hidden government documents and never-before-seen archive material.
And now for the month’s most mouthwateringly good culinary offerings. New York-style Italian restaurant and bar The Dover, a Mayfair favourite, has just launched a monthly Sunday Lunch Club. Inspired by founder Martin Kuzmarski’s childhood memories of luxuriously long weekend lunches, reinterpreted for a modern audience, the event takes an a-la-carte approach, serving an array of snacks, starters and mains in a relaxed, Italian-home style. Starters include burrata Puglise and smoked salmon and blinis, while mains range from chicken saltimbocca to lasagne verde and beef arrosto (it’s Sunday, after all).
Meanwhile from June 10–16, Petersham Nurseries will celebrate its 20th anniversary, offering a limited-edition, as-yet-secret menu by original chef Skye Gyngell, featuring classic dishes from the nurseries’ early days. This will be served in Petersham Nurseries Café for one week only, so reserve your spot now.
Michel Roux has just opened the doors of his newest venture, Chez Roux, at The Langham. There, guests can choose from an a la carte menu or Michel’s Tasting Menu, featuring six of the celebrated chef’s favourite dishes. Both options foreground “historical British classics and traditional French cooking methods”, with a refined, contemporary twist. Main courses include Lamb Chops Reform – inspired by a 1830s recipe, and consisting of herb-crusted lamb, faggot and Reform sauce – and grilled lobster with garlic butter, fries and béarnaise. While among the beautifully realised desserts, you’ll find chocolate mousse and summer fruit pudding.
For more sublime hotel dining, check out Alex Dilling’s new menu at Hotel Café Royal. The eight-course extravaganza – which includes such delicious dishes as clam chowder with confit potato and Dorset cockles, and Hunter chicken with mushroom duxelles, chicken mousse and Albufeira sauce – takes diners on an autobiographical journey, from the chef’s childhood in San Francisco through his time spent working alongside Hélène Darroze at The Connaught, and beyond.
There are also two bars on our radar this June. Labombe Wine Bar is located at Trivet, Bermondsey’s two Michelin-starred neighbourhood restaurant. There, every Monday, the in-house bar now transforms into Labombe, a concept inspired by a fictional bistro that Jonny Lake, the former head chef at the Fat Duck, once dreamed up for a school French project. Lake has created blackboard menu of elevated bar bites for the occasion, featuring small plates like green asparagus, anchovy cream and scallop roe, and larger ones such as costoletta alla Milanese, an Italian breaded veal cutlet served with white cabbage and salsa agrodolce. By-the-glass wine offerings from sommelier Isa Bal complete the experience.
Roth Bar, Somerset, a West Country hotspot, has opened in its new destination: in the Threshing Barn at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Aptly, the physical bar has been conceived as a site-specific artwork drawing on the history of Durslade Farm and made from salvaged finds from reclamation yards in the surrounding area. Cocktails are likewise inspired by the farm and its locale and include the Bacchus Martini, made with Black Cow vodka, Maid of Bruton Bacchus, Lillet Blanc, orange and fennel seed verjus and Bacchus Eau de Vie, and the Somerset Crusta, composed of Somerset Cider Brandy, lemon and Somerset Pomona. Cheers to summer!
