June diary: this month’s best exhibitions and events

Date
2 June 2017

June is packed with inspiring exhibitions, festivals and events to help you make the most of the longer summer days. Here we’ve rounded up our top ten: five in the UK and five around the world. There’s the East End Film Festival or Howard Hodgkin’s paintings of India, a vast survey of Marie-Louise Ekman’s brilliant work and the many events taking over Basel.

Howard Hodgkin: Painting India
30 June – 8 October 2017, Hepworth Wakefield

The Hepworth Wakefield presents the first comprehensive exhibition to explore the enduring influence of India on the late artist’s work. Hodgkin returned to India almost annually for 50 years, and the gallery will show 35 works spanning his earliest from the 60s up to new pieces, alongside photographs and documents from the artist’s personal archive.

East End Film Festival
2 June – 2 July 2017, various locations around east London

One of the UK’s largest film festivals returns for its 17th year, with screenings to suit any taste. The festival is split into five themed weekends, including East End Roots – showing films celebrating the communities of the area. Featured is Richard Turley’s short Sticky (above), shown as part of a curated programme called Love, Etc at Curzon Aldgate, and Ken Loach’s Spirit of ’45 at Hackney Picturehouse.

Fahrelnissa Zeid
Tate Modern, 13 June – 8 October 2017

The UK’s first retrospective of Istanbul-born artist Fahrelnissa Zeid, known for her large-scale colourful canvases, some over five metres wide. The show will feature her immersive, abstract paintings, which fused European approaches with Byzantine, Islamic and Persian influences, and her later portraiture.

Wait – Wilson Oryema
3-4 June 2017, Doomed Gallery, London

Wilson Oryema is set to hold his first solo exhibition at Daston’s finest DIY art bunker Doomed Gallery. Titled Wait, the exhibition uses film, image and sculpture to map “the various ways people put the ‘trash’ from their homes on the street”, drawing on the themes of consumerism at one end of the spectrum, and repurposing on the other.

Sculpture in the City
From 27 June, various locations around the City of London

The City of London’s annual public art programme will this year exhibit sculpture works by Ryan Gander, Martin Creed, Paul McCarthy, Karen Tang, Gavin Turk, Damien Hirst and Mhairi Vari. The pieces will be dotted around the Square Mile.

Above

Wang Guofeng

[Im]possible to see: North Korea
22 June, The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Russia

This group show of contemporary photography aims to document one of “the most closed countries” North Korea. It features photos by The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright alongside Martin Parr, Philippe Chancel and Alice Wielinga, alongside photos taken when the USSR and DPRK were allies, which served to present the ideology of a “friendly socialist country”.

Marie-Louise Ekman
17 June – 17 September 2017, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

A expansive exhibition of the work of artist Marie-Louise Ekman, whose painting, sculpture, film and drama pieces expose the absurdity of everyday life. There will be almost 350 works on display, from comic strips and paintings to monuments and films, each showing the artist’s irreverent, satirical and comedic creative approach.

Above

Reine Paradis: 7/11
Courtesy the artist and Catherine and André Hug Gallery

Photo Basel / Art Basel / Design Miami
13-18 June, Basel, Switzerland

The global arts and design communities descend on Basel for Photo and Art Basel, the latter of which Design Miami/Basel is integrated with, where galleries exhibit shows by their selected artists. Photo Basel has a new section this year called Tape/Basel dedicated to the moving image, featuring artists’ films and videos. Swarovski is showing the final commissioned pieces by its Designers of the Future winners Takt Project, Marjan Van Aubel and Jimenez Lai.

Marina Abramović – The Cleaner
17 June – 22 October 2017, Louisiana Gallery, Denmark

The Louisiana Gallery is restaging The Moderna Museet’s major Marina Abramović retrospective, comprising over 120 works and spanning over five decades. Known as a pioneer in performance art, and one of the most radical contemporary artists in recent times, the artist’s work will be explored through concept sketches, paintings, sound works and presentations of some of Marina’s performances.

Young Architects Program 2017
From 29 June, MoMA PS1, New York

MoMA PS1’s courtyard this summer will be overrun with a forest of structures under a canopy knitted out of recycled photoluminescent material by – what else? – robots. It can only be Jenny Sabin Studio’s winning entry to this year’s The Young Architects Program (YAP). 

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