“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol

Loren Brand, No. 1 Twilight Spin

Loren Brand, No. 2 Diamonds In The Sky

Loren Brand, No. 3 Outer Bounds

In these deep, dark days at the beginning of February I’m going to look back over 2025 and talk about my favourite exhibitions of the year.

2025 was the year that I really began to feel that my interest in art and especially contemporary art is paying off for me. It’s the year when I’ve begun to get more images out of my head and on to print, paper and board. It feels as if it’s been a slow, long journey to reach this point. Going to the Create, Meet, Draw art sessions at Poplar Union on a weekly basis has been helpful. At first I restricted my physical art to that one session per week (not wanting to encroach further on my photography time) but in January of this year I’ve expanded that and I’m now painting at home. The payoff for this has been that I’ve got a piece of art going into the Tower Hamlets Women’s Spring Open Exhibition at the Brady Arts Centre at the beginning of March. I’m also now working on a slightly larger painting that’s a bit more complex.

This blog is a little bit longer than my usual. Either grab a coffee or tea and settle in for a longer read. Or, feel free to dive in and out because I’ve chunked this into 4 different headings.

All images in this blog have been taken by me (except the one of me right at the end, taken by my husband George). Click on the centre of any of the images to see them in full screen size, give it a try, they open in a beautiful lightbox.

1st - 5 LESSONS I LEARNED about art and photographing art last year.
2nd - my TOP 10 FAVOURITE EXHIBITIONS of 2024
3rd - my 3 FAVOURITE EXHIBITION SPACES and why I recommend them.
4th - a LIST all of the exhibitions and galleries I went to last year

5 LESSONS I LEARNED

1) Exhibition openings can be great for the buzz and chatting but they’re not always the best for taking photos. Some have been so busy it’s hard to even move around.

2) It’s surprising how many artists have assistants and yet not everyone who’s successful does. At a recent talk the interviewer commented on how many artists have their ideas manufactured nowadays so he was pleased to see that some at a high level are still hands on.

3) Thinking about making art myself has given me a new level of interest in materials, techniques and frames.

4) Keep an open mind! Yet again last year, I found out how easily my preconceptions about a type of art can be proved wrong.

5) I’ve learned even more ways in 2025 how to straighten art in a photo.

TOP 10 FAVOURITE EXHIBITIONS of 2025

I’ve chosen my top favourite and after that the remaining 9 are in no particular order. All of these exhibitions have now ended except for Triple Trouble at Newport Street Gallery which is open until 26 March 2026.

Hauser & Wirth, London, Michaela Yearwood-Dan, No Time For Despair

Once again it was tough to pick my overall favourite for 2025 but my winner is Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s show at Hauser & Wirth. It was the sheer joyousness of her painting style, text and colours that won me over.

Also, Hauser & Wirth ran a collage workshop alongside this exhibition and, being in search of something, I booked myself on it. In the spirit of the event, and inspired by her paintings I’d seen earlier in the week, I went along determined to produce something, no matter what. However, there was a shortage of glue which all the kids had gathered on their table. No adult was going to take the glue from a child, not me anyway! :) So I laid out all my pieces, took a photo, and decided to finish it at home. It coincided with my first visit to the art club at Poplar Union so I was able to take along something that first week to complete and that led me naturally to making other collages. What a lovely introduction to making physical art as a mature adult!

For each exhibition I’ve chosen for my top 10, I’ll summarise each one with a phrase. For this one it has to be

“Huge abstracts in gorgeous colours!”

White Cube, London, Howardena Pindell, Off the Grid

I went to the talk which started off the exhibition opening and I really enjoyed hearing Howardena talk about her life, her art and about her persistence in spite of little early recognition. Her background story and inventiveness in her use of materials was inspiring. Using hole punch discarded dots from the office where she worked, she painted them for some of her early work and they are beautiful creations. I really appreciated her straightforward way of talking which brought her story to life.

The star of the show was a vast piece (inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies) titled Oceanic Underwater. It was made up of thousands upon thousands of her signature dots.

I saw Monet’s Water Lilies in Paris at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Not only was Howardena’s work more attractive but the setting was also more pleasant. The atmosphere at the Orangerie was more crowded and we didn’t get a very good reception, having to queue outside in the rain and mud.

Having heard her in the pre-exhibition talk and listening to her stories made me more favourably inclined to like her work as well. In the flesh, this work is mesmerising! Such a good idea to create a curved wall around it and place benches so that you could sit and admire it or lose yourself in its blue, watery depths.

“Deep and mysterious dots”

White Cube, London, Cai Guo-Qiang, Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015 - 2025

This was a very eventful opening night, ending in a protest about Cai Guo-Quiang’s use of fireworks on a sacred mountain. I wrote a blog about it with images of his work and the protest and you can click to read it here.

“Fiery in more ways than one”

Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, Ken Nwadiogbu, Yellow is the New Black

Love his paintings! I went to the private view but it was far too busy so I had to go back again to take photos when the gallery was quiet. I really appreciated that second visit when I could look for a long time.

These are paintings that I like even more every time I look at them. Fabulous!

“Hello mellow yellow!”

Gagosian, London, Kathleen Ryan, Roman Meal

I went into this gallery having absolutely no idea of what to expect. What an eye opener! This was some of the most detailed art I’ve ever seen.

I wrote a blog about this back in August, titled Best Thing Since Sliced Bread? Click here to read it.

“Absolutely stunning beadwork”

Now Gallery, London, Various artists (anonymous), Secret 7"

This was an entirely new concept for me. Artists submitted anonymous artworks for 7” single records. You could browse all the artwork in the gallery and then place a bid on any pieces you liked. If you were the winning bidder for a piece you were given a recording on a single, selected randomly from a choice of 6, with your purchased artwork on the cover. Only after winning the bid was the artist of your piece revealed.

I bid on 3 pieces but I wasn’t very committed when it came to the crunch. I was on holiday and a bit distracted so I didn’t follow any of them through once the bidding started to go higher.

I would definitely do this again. You really can’t lose because all the proceeds go to the charity War Child.

Below is a small part of the extensive display along with the 3 pieces I placed bids for. I wonder where they ended up?

“A very fun way to indulge in art and contribute to a worthwhile charity”

Newport Street Gallery, London, Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, Invader, Triple Trouble

- until 29 March 2026

This is a 3 artist exhibition in Damien Hirst’s gallery in the Vauxhall area of London.

I had gone to this exhibition expecting to see separate works from each of the 3 artists (I never research too much into what I’ll see before I go, I like to be surprised) but what I found was that their styles had been fused into a mash up of art where two or three of them had united their styles into 1 piece. So for instance, you have Damien Hirst’s cherry blossom with Invader’s Space Invaders. I did get lots of surprises. For instance, I was looking closely at one piece and I couldn't say I was warming to it but when I looked back at it later from farther away, I saw that the Wave by Hokusai (The Great Wave Off Kanagawa) had been incorporated into it and I don't exactly know why but that gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, thinking that it had been recreated in a very different style to its original incarnation. I've now seen the Wave recreated in a few contemporary pieces of art and I've enjoyed seeing them all. I was also really impressed by the quality of the materials, one piece in particular was a huge mirror frame containing 3 female faces. The frame was stunning and each of the face artworks had been sliced into large card sized pieces which were propped on mirrored shelves inside this frame. It had a huge impact both from the distance and close up. I could go on and on about this exhibition but I'll just tell you about one more interesting piece which was a huge ashtray (about 2 metres wide perhaps) which was full of fag ends and cigarette packets. It really smelled like a gigantic real ashtray and the effect it had on me was gratitude that I gave up smoking years ago. Thank goodness, otherwise that smell could have been the signature scent to my life. I really recommend seeing this exhibition and it's open until 29 March 2026. I even learned that 2 of the artists have a work in space - Damien Hirst on Mars and Invader on the International Space Station.

An added bonus was entry into a cafe/bar area which wasn’t serving drinks but which was entirely decorated in a pharmacy style.

“Wow! The quality of the artworks and materials was off the charts!”

I couldn’t remember hearing Shepard Fairey’s name before but I did recognise his work. Here’s a piece of his street art in Shoreditch which I took back in 2019. It has his trademark flower symbol on the cap.

Gagosian, London, Derrick Adams, Situation Comedy

I rarely plan to go into Gagosian but the small gallery on Davies Street is very close to Phillips so if I’ve been to Phillips it seems silly not to cross diagonally to see what’s on. By doing that last year I saw Kathleen Ryan, Maurizio Cattelan and Derrick Adams. Kathleen Ryan I’ve covered already in this list and Derek Adams has also made it into my top 10 so that’s quite a good ratio of 2 out of 3. To be fair, I also found the Maurizio Cattelan exhibition very interesting but it just wasn’t as memorable in the longer term as the other two.

I only took two photos and it was almost a year ago in March when I saw the exhibition but somehow it has stayed clearly in my mind. I think because the paintings are just so wonderfully graphic.

“Sharp and super cool!”

British Museum, London, Utagawa Hiroshige + Emily Allchurch, Hiroshige: artist of the open road

I do love a Japanese print. However, that wasn’t my main reason for going to see this show. I follow a contemporary digital photo collage artist called Emily Allchurch and she had one of her prints shown as part of the exhibition.

Emily created a contemporary version of one of Hiroshige’s prints using her own recent photos. Very beautiful!

The British Museum bought a set of 10 of Emily Allchurch’s prints. Only 3 were on display during this exhibition but hopefully they’ll all be on show on another occasion.

“Absolutely wonderful! I can’t quite work out how she does it so beautifully.”

Emily Allchurch, Spring Festival (after Hiroshige), 2020

Utagawa Hiroshige, Suido Bridge and Saragadai, 1857

Somerset house, London, Various including Peter Blake, London Original Print Fair

Last, but not at all least, the London Original Print Fair was packed full of a huge variety of art but it was also very crowded. There were one or two gems which were very tempting. An old Japanese print in a beautiful frame and a print version of the Wave are the two still on my mind.

The Wave print contains some reflections which I couldn’t eliminate. However, it’s such a beautiful print, I still wanted to show it so please imagine them blocked out.

“An inspiring array of gorgeous prints worth crowding in for.”

Tartaros , Realcamo World Automatic WAVE $Tortoiseshell flower pattern

Kawase Hasui, Snow at Kiba, 1934

3 OF MY FAVOURITE EXHIBITION SPACES IN 2025

Photography Museum of Madeira

Although I went here to see an exhibition, the real star of the show was the building itself, both the exterior and interior. It was an old, beautifully preserved photographer’s studio complete with his equipment, stage and sliding backdrops. I’ve only ever seen something like this in films so to see this unexpectedly in such a well-cared-for condition was really special.

White Cube, Bermondsey

I read on their website that this is the largest commercial gallery space in Europe. I really enjoy their artist talks and I appreciate the range and quality of artists they show there. Given that this gallery is only a short bus ride away from where I live as well, this has been a real asset to me this year both in terms of enjoyment and learning.

Newport Street Gallery

This has made it on to my top 3 venues this year because of its scale, the quality of the light (the top level having quite a lot of glass ceiling) and the quality of the art on offer.

The current exhibition Triple Trouble has a fantastic range of art made of top quality materials. They really have the wow! factor. I’m sure it has all been professionally manufactured and that’s good to see in certain cases. Personally, I like to see hand made and manufactured art, both have their place.

LIST OF THE EXHIBITIONS AND GALLERIES I VISITED IN 2025

Starting from December and working back to January, here is a chronological list of all the exhibitions I saw last year. Some are repeated if I went twice on separate occasions. If you want to chat about any that you also saw or you would have liked to have seen, send me a message and we can chat by email, a call or a video call.

Name of Venue, City, Artist, Exhibition Name

Artist's studio, London, Anelys Wolf, recent works

Photography Museum of Madeira, Funchal, Rosangela Renno, Fantastic Realism

Poplar Union, London, Various members of Create, Draw, Meet, Group exhibition

Hypha Gallery, London, Matthew Swift, Flowing, Seeping, Staining

Tate Britain, London, Turner & Constable, Rivals and Originals

Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, Celina Teague & Alexandra Searle, Take a Seat Before You Change Your Mind

White Cube, London, Howardena Pindell, Off the Grid

White Cube, London , Beatriz Milhazes, Além do Horizonte

1. Newport Street Gallery 2. Cabinet Gallery 3. Gasworks 4. Corvi-Mora 5. Greengrassi, London, 1. Damien Hirst, Shephard Fairey, Invader 2. Ghislaine Leung 3. Marie Claire Messouma 4. Che Lovelace 5. Alessandro Pessoli , 1. Triple Trouble 2. Reproductions 3. Mémoires des corps 4. Yankee Gone 5. What People Do

V&A East Storehouse, London, David Bowie, David Bowie Centre

Newport Street Gallery, London, Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, Invader, Triple Trouble

Tate Modern, London, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Emily Kam Kngwarray

White Cube, London , Andreas Gursky, Frieze late-night opening

Sussex Mansions, London , Banksy, Banksy Limitless

White Cube, London, Cai Guo-Qiang, Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015 - 2025

Tate Modern, London, Do Ho Suh, Walk the House

Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, Ken Nwadiogbu, Yellow is the New Black

British Museum, London, Utagawa Hiroshige + Emily Allchurch, Hiroshige: artist of the open road

Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, Ken Nwadiogbu, Yellow is the New Black

City of London, London, Various, Sculpture in the City

Folkestone, Folkestone, Various, Folkestone Triennial 2025

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Rooted in Memory

Gagosian, London, Kathleen Ryan, Roman Meal

Phillips, London, Various, Crossing Borders - Modern Art from South Asia

Turner Contemporary, Margate, Anna Boghiguian (& Turner), The Sunken Boat: A Glimpse into Past Histories

Tate Modern, London, Richard long, Artist Rooms - Richard Long

Hauser & Wirth, London, Michaela Yearwood-Dan, No Time For Despair

Phillips, London, Various, Damien Hirst & various including Andy Warhol, Banksy, Pablo Picasso, Yayoi Kusama

Gagosian, London, Maurizio Cattelan, Bones

Phillips, London, Various, Digital Art Awards

Tate Modern, London, Do Ho Suh, Walk the House

White Cube, London, Richard Hunt, Metamorphosis - A Retrospective

Camden Arts Centre, London, Richard Wright, -

Woodbury House, London, Blek Le Rat, Open Gallery Day

Now Gallery, London, Various (anonymous), Secret 7"

Newport Street Gallery, London, , 1. Raging Planet 2. The Power and the Glory

Phillips, London, Various including Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Picasso, Kaws, Anthony Gormley, London Private Sales Salon

Gagosian, London, Derrick Adams, Situation Comedy

Somerset house, London, Various including Peter Blake, London Original Print Fair

Evolution London, London, Various, Affordable Art Fair

Saatchi Gallery, London, Various including Rebecca Louise Law, Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture

White Cube, London, Alia Ahmad, Fields

Tate Modern, London, Various, Materials & Objects (permanent collection)

White Cube, London, Theaster Gates, 1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise

David Zwirner, London, Thomas Ruff, Experiences lumineuses

Tate Modern, London, Various, Electric Dreams

Frameless, London, Various, Frameless

David Zwirner, London, Thomas Ruff, Experiences lumineuses

I saw a good variety of artists and genres in 2025 and it helped me to hone in on not just what inspires me but also to think about the practicalities of making art. Similar to how I’ve progressed in photography I’ve been looking, imagining my own take on what I would produce and then worked out how to create it. I’ve enjoyed my visits to Jackson’s Art Supplies in Dalston and with the help of YouTube, face to face help and various books, I’ve loved learning about artists’ materials and paint.

If you’re interested in art, photography or you’d just like to follow my challenges and learning, please CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY MONTHLY NEWSLETTER. In it, I’ll let you know what I’ve been doing over the past month, upcoming exhibitions I’m planning to attend, and I’ll also link to any blogs I’ve published (like this one) so that you don’t miss any.

If you’d like to join me at any openings or exhibitions, let me know. Also, if you’d like to invite me to any art or photography events, I’m keen to get involved.

If you’ve got this far and you’d like to re-read my summary of 2024, then click here to link to that blog.

Wishing you all a happy Valentine’s Day.

Loren x

Art That Inspired Me In 2025

1st - 5 LESSONS I LEARNED about art and photographing art last year.

2nd - my TOP 10 FAVOURITE EXHIBITIONS of 2024

3rd - my 3 FAVOURITE EXHIBITION SPACES and why I recommend them.

4th - a LIST all of the exhibitions and galleries I went to last year