The exhibitions and events you should be checking out this June

There’s no denying that times are strange, more than strange, in fact. But something we need to hold onto is that art and design are the avenues through which voices can be heard and change can happen. Art and design can shift paradigms and open our eyes, and they provide a platform for self-expression, so it’s more important than ever to keep supporting the places and spaces which allow these conversations to take place.

Below, we list a sprinkling of events and exhibitions taking place over the coming month. And we implore you to do what you can to support such spaces – whether it’s through visiting a local, independent gallery when it reopens or through streaming a live event from a larger institution.

Copy & Paste. Repetition in Japanese Imagery

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg

7 May – 30 August 2020

In Japanese culture, repetition and copying are regarded as the basis for artistic creation. In the exhibition Copy & Paste. Repetition in Japanese Imagery, about 100 sketches, colour woodcuts, hanging scrolls, books and folding screens from the East Asian Collection provide insights into the foundations of Japanese visual culture in the late Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

David Zwirner, Paris

Now open

David Zwirner’s Paris gallery will be opening its doors for an IRL exhibition of the works of Philip-Lorca diCorcia. The exhibition will feature images from a series of eleven editorial projects that the artist created for W magazine between 1997 and 2008, including several photographs that have never been exhibited before.

I See You

Victoria Miro and Vortic

2 June – 4 July 2020

I See You is an extended reality exhibition of paintings that brings together historical and contemporary works by female artists with a focus on the depictions of male subjects. Available exclusively online in the new virtual gallery on Vortic, the exhibiting artists include Celia Paul, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel, Lisa Yuskavage and Celia Hempton.

The show looks at how these women painters negotiate female sexuality, domestic life and the relationships between painter and sitter. Most though not all of the works are solo male subjects – for example, Sarah Ball’s androgynous figures problematise binary gender norms and are informed by a deconstruction of the Instagram selfie and the photo booth.

Drawn Together

Unit London, online

4 June – 12 July 2020

This June, Unit London is staging an expansive online exhibition. Drawn Together will feature the work of over 100 international contemporary artists to raise funds and awareness for frontline medical staff and vulnerable communities worldwide. Featuring work from artists such as Katherine Bradford, Chantal Joffe, Frank Auerbach, Maggi Hambling and Kenny Schachter, the exhibition taps into the newfound need for simplicity by presenting unique drawings and works on paper, the sale of which will benefit vulnerable individuals around the world, and those that make great sacrifices to help them.

Nathalie Du Pasquier

Pace Gallery, online

2 June – 16 June 2020

This exhibition traces the recent evolution of Nathalie Du Pasquier's singular language of forms, which playfully blurs the borders between painting and model, haptic and optic, representation and the real. It’s sure to be a treat for fans of the French artist.

About Time

The White Cube, online

25 May – 16 July 2020

“Time is a concept embedded in everyday experience. Within the fields of philosophy, science and phenomenology, it has long been analysed as a rational construct, a mechanistic means of spatial measurement, as well as an abstract idea of indivisibly flowing movement dependant on consciousness,” reads the opening paragraph of About Time’s description. This exhibition, hosted on the White Cube’s website, examines different ways artists have interrogated the theory of time and includes pieces by Olafur Eliasson, Cerith Wyn Evans, Mona Hatoum, and many more.

BP Portrait Award 2020

National Portrait Gallery, online

Now open

An annual event the art world looks forward to, the BP Portrait Award is selected from 1,981 entries by artists from 69 countries around the world, and represents the very best in contemporary portrait painting. This year the exhibition is being displayed online. Experience the BP Portrait Award 2020 virtually, step into the online gallery space to view the portraits on the wall, read the labels, gain insight from the featured artists, and explore each individual work in more detail.

Tetsumi Kudo – Cultivation

Louisiana Gallery, Humlebaek

5 June 2020 – 10 January 2021

Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo was a radical and visionary outsider. Almost forgotten until recently, the artist is being rediscovered internationally due to his foreboding depictions of an ailing world and the emergence of a “new ecology”.

This exhibition’s laboratory of remarkable cultivation environments studies Kudo’s radiantly coloured and grotesque propositions for the cultivation of life in a world, where humans, technology and polluted nature have merged.

The Potentiality of Drawing

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

2 June – 21 June 2020

This exhibition endeavours to re-examine drawing’s potential in a number of different contexts through expression, varied in kind, that employs line as a core medium of exploration. Featured are works that demonstrate contemporary approaches to drawing and which argue that “in our increasingly complex contemporary society, drawing – the simplest and most fundamental expression of art – remains a source of endless possibilities.”