The exhibitions in this round-up are mainly London-centric, with a couple of exceptions. But all are must-sees for 2024, from celebrations of a century of surrealism to brand-new sculpture parks. There's a major showcase of Naomi Campbell's 40-year career, a photo book that documents the horrors of South African apartheid and John Singer Sargent reframed as a fashion maven.
Commissioned by the BAM, Mons, Scottish artist Robert Montgomery will be showing five large-scale light poems and a fire poem at Mons en Lumiere, the first ever light festival in the historic Belgian city, which will celebrate 100 years since the birth of surrealism. He will also be unveiling his first major permanent installation in the city's Place Leopold. Montgomery has been hugely influenced by surrealist poetry, admitting that it "changed the course of my work" and led him to use text in his art. His works reference and pay tribute to three Belgian surrealist poets - Paul Nougé, Paul Colinet and Fernand Dumont but also honour the architecture of Mons. "I want my works to weave into the architecture of this very special place as almost a ghost voice, the ghost voice of poetry," he says.
"Will Thompson's previous work formed an investigation into the contemporary advertising industry's promotion of idleness as aspiration, rather than insult," says Grace Schofield, director of Union Pacific. "The Word Projector expands on these ideas of representation, in particular the intersection of industry and aesthetic, as well as notions of the uncanny as embedded in the everyday." Some of the paintings in this show are notable for their unconventional frames: which only add to the intrigue of his subject matter - portraits that are darkly glamorous, peculiar.
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