5 amazing art shows to see this March

Sculpture by legendary names, ancient craft and work by Warhol – here are five great art shows to put a spring in your step this month

Louise Bourgeois SPIDER, 1996, installed at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY in 2007 Christopher Burke © The Easton Foundation Licensed by DACS, UK

1. Catch a spectacular opening

Sculpture aficionados: there’s a special staging for you this month. Compton Verney in Warwickshire, with its glorious Georgian designed landscape, is the setting for a new sculpture park. The work of eight major artists feature, among them Sarah Lucas, Larry Achiampong, Helen Chadwick and Louise Bourgeois. The grouping is inspired, say the curators, by the history and setting at Compton Verney, ‘yet will also challenge the idea of the 18th-century landscape design as a form of utopia’. Into the mix will be an important new commission by Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti.

21 March 2024–2 May 2027; comptonverney.org.uk

Installation view of the Navigation Charts exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol, 2017. Image: © Lubaina Himid. Image courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens, London and National Museums, Liverpool. © Spike Island, Bristol. Photo: Stuart Whipps

2. Navigate the past

Pictured here is Naming the Money, 2004, Lubaina Himid’s Turner Prize-winning installation. It’s just one of the highlights in Entangled Pasts, 1768–Now: Art, Colonialism and Change, on at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition explores the role art plays, and has played, in shaping narratives around empire, enslavement, resistance, abolition and colonialism. ‘It’s about filling in the gaps in a huge story,’ says Himid. To do so the curators have collated over 100 outstanding works from past and present. The academy, founded in 1768, is undertaking ongoing research into its links with colonialism; for this show it has engaged artists connected to them, such as Himid, Hew Locke and Sonia Boyce, to explore themes of migration, artistic traditions, identity and belonging. Works by past artists – among them Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and JMW Turner – help mine questions of power and representation.

Until 28 April; royalacademy.org.uk

Outi Pieski, Beavvit – Rising Together II 2021, detail. Image: © The artists. Photo: Tor Simen Ulstein/KUNSTDOK

3. Head to Cornwall…

…to Tate St Ives to discover duodji. This old craft practice belongs to the Sámi people who live in the region of Sápmi, which includes the northern part of Scandinavia and Kola Peninsula in Russia. It's a major influence in the work of Sámi visual artist Outi Pieski; see how it features in the gallery’s staging of her first UK large-scale exhibition. Based in Ohcejohka (Utsjoki), Finland, Pieski makes truly soulful art. It is deeply connected to the land and explores themes such as ancestral return, Indigenous people’s rights and the relationship between humans, animals and nature.

Until 6 May; tate.org.uk

Claire Falkenstein, Chain, c.1963–71. Image: Courtesy The Levett Collection © The Falkenstein Foundation, Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York/Photo: Fraser Marr

4. Revel in the pioneers

The post-World War II period continued to see the work of male artists eclipsing that of female counterparts. Yet Turner Contemporary in Margate has opened a new show that reveals just how pioneering women artists from across the globe were making their mark in the development of art, particularly abstraction, at this time. Spurred by their wartime work experiences and resisting a return to roles as homemakers, the 50 artists featured in Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950–1970 challenged art world critics and the viewing public with art that explored topics from politics to the human form. The results? A show that makes for feisty viewing.

Until 6 May

turnercontemporary.org

Textile of large nautical flags, skirt, c.1957–58 © 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc/Licensed by DACS, London

5. Wonder at Warhol

We don’t usually associate Andy Warhol, pioneer of Pop Art, with textiles. But dip into this show at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios and you’ll discover a whole new area of the artist’s interests. Recently discovered pieces are being shown, which makes one muse on why Warhol, who loved to cultivate publicity, created and sold his textiles anonymously. His actions have seen these fresh, playful fabrics sit in obscurity for decades. Exhibition curators Richard Chamberlain and Geoff Rayner comment on how this show ‘builds on over a decade of research, chance encounters and strokes of luck to bring together this previously unknown but important aspect of Warhol’s oeuvre’.

Until 18 May; dovecotstudios.com

For more inspiring shows see The Arts Society Magazine, available exclusively to members and supporters of The Arts Society (to join, see theartssociety.org/member-benefits). And for our online monthly ‘5 amazing art shows to see’, sign up at theartssociety.org/signup