2025? The best of our Art year? What stood out? Who threw the best cream pie? it might have been the one Pam Hogg aimed at Paul Sakoilsky back in the Summer? A best of? The year kicked off with the first piece of in real life art of this new year to really grab us is a piece from Paula Zvane at Shoreditch Modern… Shoreditch Modern didn’t last too long into the 2025 as a gallery and it was a year of artists and art spaces trying to keep things going (and one or two over hyped galleries not treating their artists too well). it was a tough year for artist and galleries and the gatekeepers, including the new breed of by-the-book I’ve done a degree in running a gallery rich kids seems to have more of a stranglehold on things that ever. There we’re good things though, the art year properly got going with Taylor Silk’s Soft Domme opening night at East London’s Wilton Way Gallery, so much more than just playful fun and Fanny Bleach‘s brilliant performance out on the rather packed rather cold East London pavement outside the gallery (the gallery itself proved to be a little disappointing as the year evolved but that was a hopeful start to the year).
It maybe hasn’t been the greatest of art years especially on the artist-led front, there still plenty to celebrate though, more than enough to look back on in terms of highlights and cherry picking and things to feast on from the artisrs, galleries and exhibitions we covered on these over busy pages in 2025….
We didn’t get to everything or if we did we didn’t feel the need to cover everything. Of course we didn’t get to everything of spend time covering everything we did see, that Kerry James Marshall exhibition that’s on at the Royal Academy right now or that Wayne Thiebaud show at The Courtauld for a start, as good as they both were they really didn’t need our time and space as much as other did. Organ has never been about those really big exhibitions or gigs or major bands or the painters that enjoy the attention of the mainstream media; there’s plenty of others covering those really big show, David Hockney, as much as his work still excites, really doesn’t need us to spend time saying so.
I would suggest we probably made it to and covered more of the smaller shows in the less established places than most people/publications/websites did again this year and there were hundreds of exhibitions, galleries, street walls and more explored on these pages again in 2025, there probably will be just as much coverage again next year? Or will there? Is all this needed? Indeed, is it appreciated or supported by the artists and gallery we cover? Support really does need to be a little more of a two way thing in 2026, there is the feeling here that a lot of this coverage is taken for granted…
Here then our highlights from our art year, out 2025, the pick of the shows and the art flavoured things we covered before we dive into 2026….
The first really big art event back at the start of the year remains the standout thing as we reach the end of the year, there was so much anticipation in the crowd waiting to get in that basement that night and nothing about it disappointed once we all got in…
1: Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos – The Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos thing in the Tate Modern’s brutalist concrete basement was part of the that excellent Leigh Bowery retrospective at the Tate Modern than really didn’t require too much coverage from us, it was all over the pages of establishment art press and it was of course one of the highlights of the art year. Now if only we could bottle that feeling as we waited in the big crowd in the basement of the Tate for the doors to open on that Ron Athey event (I can’t call it a show, it was more than that, more than just a show), it really was electric, it really was something that mattered…
2: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s show at Stephen Friedman‘s Cork Street gallery was something rather special in the middle of London’s rather over-hyped rather self-celebrating self congratualting London Gallery Weekend back in the middle of Summer not long after we had lost Jaune Quick-to-See Smith – ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend Pt.3 – Back to the Stephen Friedman Gallery and the freshly opened much anticipated Jaune Quick-To-See Smith exhibition. Oh look, this is a wonderful show, an important show, a celebration of a show, if you get a chance just please go and see it…
3: David Hepher‘s shows at both of Flowers Gallery spaces this year – And talking of brutalism as we were with that concrete basement at the Tate and that Ron Athey performance, there was David Hepher and his tower blocks. That show at Flowers’ now sadly not very often open big East London space that we do rather miss over on this side of town. David Hepher and Flowers did follow up with a second very strong show at their smaller West End space in the middle of Cork Street during Frieze Week, a second excellent show but it really was the space of the bigger East London gallery that really showed those truly exciting truly massive (in more than just the size sense) Hepher works at their best…
4: Hetty Douglas really did continue to semi-quietly evolve or was it more of a case of her bursting out of the London Art Scene as one of the significant painters in 2025 and really not being that quiet about? It felt like we kept on encountering the London-based artist’s work during the year and it was always thrilling to see her bold work, it does rather excite me at the moment…
I really like her refreshing energy, her use of paint, het bold colour as well as her movement. Right now I really don’t want to know too much about Hetty Douglas yet, I just want to stand in front of her paintings without knowing what she has for breakfast or what she’s thinking about as she paints, I don’t want to know any of that yet, I just want to connect with her movement or paint, her decisions and the energy of her colour, that’s more than enough for now. Discovering who she is can come later, for now I just want to walk into an uncluttered white space and see her work hanging on the wall like we did at Haricot Gallery or that short-lived and under used East London Space Bomb Factory ran for a few months this year where she shared the space with Katie Eraser. Here’s some links to those shows and more…
Six Hetty Douglas images…
And on with it, was anything really that dangerous in 2025?
5: Geneva Jacuzzi‘s packed to bursting performance at Hackney’s Moth Club back in February really was indeed art being dangerous and yes, it might have been a gig but really it should be on this list or round up or whatever this is, that was serious performance art: Geneva Jacuzzi’s art certainly is dangerous, a cold night in East London more than warmed up at Hackney’s Moth Club…
6: Lauren Halsey – Now Frieze London itself, as well as the whole week in general and all the other things that tend to happen in town during Frieze, and especially the lack of any artist-led challenge to what was an even more conservative week this year than it was last year (or the year before that) may have been a disappointment, however, seeing and standing in front of some of Lauren Halsey’s work at Frieze itself certainly wasn’t; Frieze week – The Fair itself Part Three; Lauren Halsey brings a bit of attitude, a bit of a challenge, a bit of bite… (Gawd, Frieze and the whole week was rather lacklustre in 2025, surely it can be so underwhelming in ’26?)
Here’s six Lauren Halsey images….
7: Alexandre Diop‘s debut show with theStephen Friedman Gallery and his first solo exhibition in London was another show that stood out just for that almost timeless (in a very contemporary way) use of paint alongside everything else he was using in those rather thirilling, rather big, extremely busy pieces that really did demand time…
Big busy pieces that hum with colour, that dance with rhythm, that combine found and recycled materials in such an exciting way. Bits of scrap metal, wood, leather, textile remnants, things stitched the things, bits of packaging and then in it, over it, beneath it, big bites of oil painting not fighting with, the not there is important, not fighting with the layering, the burning, the tearing, stapling and collaging and a whole load of artistic languages – ORGAN: Frieze Week – Alexandre Diop’s debut at Cork Street’s Stephen Friedman Gallery is a show alive with so many exciting layers of…
8: A Gesture, An Action and probably our favourite Artist-led group show of 2025. Really good artist-led shows were, to say the least, a little thin on the ground this year, this one back in Spring over at APT Gallery in Deptford, South London stood out. It wasn’t radical, it probably wasn’t that challenging, it was just a really really stong show of paintings from a collection of London artists who shared the space so well – Sabine Tress, Lindsay Mapes, Karl Bielik, EC, Tony Antrobus, Stephen Buckeridge, Dido Hallett, Catherine Long, Patrick Jones and Steven Walker – a show that really was worth spending time with and that just spending of time really was more than enough – A Gesture, An Action and a very very (very) rewarding set of contemporary abstract painters and paintings over at APT Gallery, Deptford, South London…
I don’t what it says about the current state of the London Art Scene, or maybe what it says about us? That so many of out highlights this year were found in and around Cork Street and the West End’s establishment spaces. That so little in terms of significant art was to be found in East London, or Deptford or indeed Peckham now, very little really took a bite in terms of the artist-led shows or in what we’re told by the self-congratualting art press are the cool new kids on the block galleries (and yes we did go to so many of their shows).
And so back to Cork Street for Brandon Ndife’s show that happened around the time of Frieze Week at Holtermann Fine Art…
9: Brandon Ndife’s Palimpsests – ORGAN: Frieze Week – Here we go then, but where is the buzz? Well Brandon Ndife’s, Palimpsests at Holtermann Fine Art is at least a good start… and there was a film of artist Brandon Ndife talking about his excellent Palimpsests exhibition, currently on show at London’s Holtermann Fine Art…
Actually there was a number of good shows at Holtermann including that Balancing Act group show that happened during and either side of the much hyped mostly annnoying London Gallery Weekend; “…In through the glass door where there’s a three piece three artist show just opening; “Balancing Acts is an in-focus exhibition – comprising two sculptures and one painting – that showcases the work of three contemporary artists: Neil Gall, Michel Pérez Pollo and Olivia Bax.” – There’s always a bit of an attitude in this small space, a bit of a positive challenge when so many of the Cork Street spaces play it all a little too safe… London Gallery Weekend Pt.4 – That excellent Balancing Acts group show at Holtermann Fine Art, Leonardo Drew at Goodman, the Virginia Chihota exhibition at the always welcoming Tiwani Contemporary and that Gallery Weekend car that wouldn’t give us a ride… Was that Peter Buggenhout show at Holtermann this year as well or was that last year? I rather like going to Holtermann Fine Art
10: Jennifer Binnie at Richard Saltoun Gallery and a show that I guess, as I go back over the year’s pieces here on the Organ website, was visited on a wet Friday? Actually I went a few times, there’s always time for Jennifer Binnie’s adventures and it was a genuine highlight of the year, here’s a link to the review – On a wet Friday in London part one, Jennifer Binnie at Richard Saltoun Gallery, Lilly Fenichel’s Against the Grain at Gazelli Art House…
And that was first ten, do you want more? Shall we take it to twenty? Everyone likes a list, the art of lists… Part Two: Eleven to Thirty can be found here – ORGAN: Our Best Art Shows of 2025 Part Two with Steven Appleby, Susie Hamilton, Jakkai Siributr, Erin M Riley, Jim Hodges, Tricia Gillman, Lady Pink, Sasha Stiles, Canalboat Contemporary, Bianca Raffaella, Alison Chaplin and more…
THE ORGAN 
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