We Recommend
Illuminating Women: Photographs by Mayotte Magnus
Sat 8 Sept - Sun 24 Mar
National Portrait Gallery
This exhibition celebrating creative women revisits key portraits from Magnus including artists Liliane Lijn and Glenys Barton, authors Marina Warner and Margaret Drabble, actresses Glenda Jackson and Judi Dench or Nadine Gordimer.
Visual Arts
Renzo Piano – The Art of Making Buildings
Sat 15 Sept - Sun 20 Jan
Royal Academy of Arts
From The Shard in London to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the buildings of Renzo Piano have enriched cities across the globe. This exhibition reveals the vision and invention behind his pioneering work, showing how architecture can touch the human spirit.
Visual Arts
Courtauld Impressionists: from Manet to Cézanne
Mon 17 Sept - Sun 20 Jan
National Gallery
This exhibition traces the development of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings through a selection of over forty masterpieces from the collection of the Courtauld Gallery, including famous works by Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Manet and Seurat.
Visual Arts
Now, Now, Louison by Jean Frémon
Wed 19 Sept - Wed 19 Dec
Les Fugitives
Progressing by image and word associations, Frémon evokes Bourgeois's history and inner life, bringing a sense of fascinating and moving proximity to the internationally renowned artist... This is a phosphorescent account of Bourgeois’s life.
Books
Ulla von Brandenburg: Sweet Feast
Thu 20 Sept - Sun 31 Mar
Whitechapel Gallery
Ulla von Brandenburg takes previous Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Sweets (1973) as inspiration for this new commission. Von Brandenburg re-enacts this show with local children in a new immersive and colourful seating structure. With the support of Fluxus Art Projects.
Visual Arts
Pierre Huyghe
Wed 3 Oct - Sun 10 Feb
Serpentine Galleries
Pierre Huyghe, one of the world’s leading conceptual artists, presents a major new exhibition transforming the Serpentine Gallery into a porous and contingent environment, housing different forms of cognition, emerging intelligences, biological reproduction and instinctual behaviours. Exhibition supported by Fluxus Art Projects.
Visual Arts
Pin-Ups: Toulouse-Lautrec and the Arts of Celebrity
Sat 6 Oct - Sun 20 Jan
Scottish National Gallery
This exhibition focuses on Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographic posters, portfolio prints and illustrations which made stars of Montmartre’s venues and their entertainers such as Yvette Guilbert, Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant.
Visual Arts
Modern Couples – Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde
Wed 10 Oct - Sun 27 Jan
Barbican Art Gallery
Explore modern art and modern love; this major exhibition reveals how relationships can become a playground for creativity.
Visual Arts
Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah
Wed 17 Oct - Mon 17 Dec
MacLehose
Marie, a nurse on the island of Mayotte, adopts a baby abandoned by refugees and names him Moïse. But when she dies, Moïse is left alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil, set on a collision course with the gangs of the largest slum on Mayotte: Gaza.
Books
The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession by Tristan Garcia
Wed 24 Oct - Mon 24 Dec
Edinburgh University Press
Our lives today are oppressed by the demand that we feel and experience with ever greater intensity. Garcia argues that such intensity rarely lives up to its promise. It always comes at a price: one that defines the ethical predicament of contemporary life.
Books
For the Love of Corals
Sat 27 Oct - Sat 19 Jan
Obsidian Coast (Bradford-on-Avon)
Obsidian Coast presents its inaugural exhibition, For the Love of Corals by artist Sonia Levy, a cinematic inquiry that focuses on the daily labour of caring for endangered beings to resuscitate them from their imminent human-induced extinction. Supported by Fluxus Art Project.
Visual Arts
Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Enard
Wed 31 Oct - Mon 31 Dec
Fitzcarraldo Editions
In 1506, Michelangelo is invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci’s design was rejected. Then begins his epic project in the Ottoman Empire...
Books
The Mental Load by Emma
Wed 7 Nov - Mon 7 Jan
Seven Stories Press
In her first book, Emma reflects on social and feminist issues by means of simple line drawings, dissecting the mental load, i.e. all that invisible and unpaid organizing, list-making and planning women do to manage their lives, and the lives of their family.
Books
Drawing Europe Together by Forty-Five European Illustrators
Wed 14 Nov - Mon 14 Jan
Pan Macmillan
Are we still United in Diversity? Forty-five illustrators exhibit their powerful illustrations of the European Union's shared past and our unsure future. From Brexit bees to wall-jumping bulls, it is a unique collection portraying the European community...
Books
Ascension by Victor Dixen
Wed 21 Nov - Fri 21 Dec
Bonnier Zaffre - Hot Key Books
Six girls, six boys in the two separate bays of a single spaceship. They have six minutes each week to seduce and to make their choices, under the eye of cameras. They are the contenders in the Genesis programme, the world's craziest speed-dating show ever.
Books
Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures
Fri 23 Nov - Sun 17 Mar
Tate Liverpool
Enthralled by the vibrancy of modern life, Fernand Léger's paintings, murals, film and textiles were infused with the bustle and rhythm of the metropolis. (Re)discover his work in this first major exhibition to him in the past 30 years.
Visual Arts
Édouard Glissant, A Poetics of Resistance by Sam Coombes
Wed 28 Nov - Mon 28 Jan
Bloomsbury
Sam Coombes offers an analysis of Glissant's thought, setting out the reasons why his vision for a world of intercultural interaction reflects and seeks to provide a correction to some of the leading tendencies associated with contemporary theory today.
Books
The Arab of the Future III by Riad Sattouf
Wed 5 Dec - Tue 5 Feb
Hodder & Stoughton
After having followed her husband to Libya and then to Syria, Riad's mother can't take any more of village life in Ter Maaleh: she wants to go back to France. Young Riad sees his father torn between his wife's aspirations and the weight of family traditions...
Books
An evening with Leïla Slimani
Wed 12 Dec
The Diamond, University of Sheffield
Franco-Moroccan novelist Leïla Slimani won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt Prize in 2016. She will be talking about her novel Lullaby, now a global literary sensation.
Talks
Quatuor Ebène – Beethoven and Brahms
Wed 12 Dec
Wigmore Hall
Major ensemble in the European music chamber landscape, Quatuor Ebène will stop in London in the middle of its current tour. With their unique style, they will perform two Beethoven quartets and Brahms’ first quartet.
Classical Music
Papooz
Wed 12 Dec
Scala
Postponed from earlier in the year, the duo of Ulysse Cottin and Armand Penicaut return with jangly guitars, brisk, danceable rhythms and an uncanny knack for memorable hooks on tunes like Anne Wants to Dance.
Contemporary Music
Lévi-Strauss, A Biography by Emmanuelle Loyer
Wed 12 Dec - Tue 12 Feb
Polity
In this award-winning biography, historian Emmanuelle Loyer recounts Lévi-Strauss’s childhood in an assimilated Jewish household, his promising student years as well as his first forays into political and intellectual movements.
Books
Bertrand Chamayou
Thu 13 Dec
Wigmore Hall
The world-acclaimed French pianist, Bertrand Chamayou, who won several awards including the Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, returns in the UK to perform pieces by Schumann, Ravel and Saint-Saëns.
Classical Music
Quatuor Arod – Haydn and Beethoven
Sun 23 Dec
Wigmore Hall
Newly appointed to the ECHO Rising Star for the 2018-2019 season, the young French string quartet, Quatuor Arod will perform Haydn’s late set of six quartets and the last of Beethoven’s set of three commissioned by the Russian ambassador to Vienna.
Classical Music
London International Mime Festival
Wed 9 Jan - Sun 3 Feb
Various Venues
This Festival spans the spectrum of contemporary visual performance. Watch out for French artists Olivier de Sagazan, Les Antliaclastes, Theatre de l'Entrouvert and Plexus Polaire. As part of En Scène!
Performing Arts
Léonie Pernet
Thu 10 Jan
The Waiting Room
The DJ and drummer has created a debut album, Crave - arriving three years after her first EP releases - that is as multi-layered and complex as its creator, combining liturgical chants, new wave pop and minimalist techno production.
Contemporary Music
Nash Ensemble
Sat 12 Jan
Wigmore Hall
Depicted as “a chamber music group beyond compare”, the Nash Ensemble, a resident chamber ensemble at London’s Wigmore Hall will offer two performances, interpreting pieces by Schumann, Brahms, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.
Classical Music
Beatrice Gibson: Deux sœurs qui ne sont pas sœurs
Fri 18 Jan - Sun 31 Mar
Camden Art Center
This film takes inspiration from the 1929 unrealised script by American Novelist Gertrude Stein. Beatrice Gibson uses Stein' script as a talismanic guide through a contemporary moment of social and political unrest. With the support of Fluxus Art Projects.
Visual Arts
Etienne Daho
Sat 19 Jan
Electric Brixton
Blitz, the most recent, psych-influenced album from the godfather of the current French pop scene, is one of the most acclaimed of his stellar career. It was also heavily inspired by London, so it's fitting that it's finally getting a live airing in the UK.
Contemporary Music
Borderline & Welcome to the UK
Tue 22 Jan - Sat 16 Feb
The Bunker Theatre
The Borderline company presents the world premiere of their new show Welcome to the UK. They will also be performing their first show, Borderline, a satire of Calais Jungle devised and performed by a mixed ensemble of refugee and European performers.
Performing Arts
Notre Dame de Paris
Wed 23 - Sun 27 Jan
London Coliseum
After touring in 23 countries worldwide over the last 20 years, the smash-hit French musical based on the novel Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo returns to London with an international team of singers, dancers, acrobats and music composed by Richard Cocciante.
Performing Arts
Pierre Bonnard, the Colour of Memory
Wed 23 Jan - Mon 6 May
Tate Modern
The exhibition concentrates on Bonnard's work from 1912, when colour became a dominant concern in his work and his unconventional use of it.
Visual Arts
BETT 2019
Wed 23 - Sat 26 Jan
ExCeL London
BETT is the first industry show in the education technology landscape. Visit the French stand to meet French leading companies and exciting new start-ups.
Talks
Calogero
Tue 29 Jan
02 Shepherds Bush Empire
Following the release of his latest album, recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, Calogero’s Liberté Chérie tour began in March and has seen him performing to sold-out audiences in France and Asia. He is now bringing his French pop-rock melodies to London for a one-off show.
Contemporary Music