What’s On: Art & Design in 2022

Aesthetica takes a look at the second half of 2022. We spotlight one unmissable show for each month, in a selection which spans museums worldwide.

Digital Taxonomy

A new botanical encyclopaedia documents plants and flowers seemingly impossible in nature, with digital stems bending and twisting.

Reclaimed Materials

The UK generated 222.2 million tonnes of total waste in 2018. We’re sharing five Aesthetica Art Prize finalists using discarded objects in new ways.

Pride Month 2022: Art to Discover

Explore five exhibitions and events taking place in the UK and US, from photography shows and art tours to the launch of a brand new museum.

Designs for Tomorrow

How can we reinvent design practices, and work towards a circular economy? A new generation of creatives looks to answer this question.

Photographic Imagination

In the 1900s, popular culture imagined flying cars, robot assistants and artificial intelligence gone awry. Now, Getxophoto asks us: what happens next?

Exploring Relationships

A new group show hones in on “contemporary photographers who delve into their own family history, examining and exploring their past.”

The Power of Illumination

In Italian artist Marinella Senatore’s radiant installations, green, red, blue and yellow bulbs form intricate grids and decorative motifs across London.

Hyperreal Photography

Here are five photographers engaging with ideas of simulation and artificiality – presenting intriguing visions of landscapes and cities through the lens.

Signs and Symbols

These artists explore the nostalgia – and future – of text-based signage and graphic design, from saturated paintwork to dazzling neon.

New Talent:
Shows to See This Summer

Art, design and film, as ever, hold up a mirror to our world. Discover those paving the way, with our round up of unmissable graduate shows.

Cecile Lobert: Video Profile

Brussels-based neurodiverse abstract expressionist Cecile Lobert addresses consciousness in its raw form. Nonverbal and an outsider to conventional development, her impromptu style is best known for its emancipation from normative methods – challenging viewers to empathise with their true selves, untouched by their histories and upbringings.

Intimate Narratives

Tyler Mitchell’s practice has moved from magazine pages to museum walls as the artist has developed a vision for what he describes as a “Black utopia.”

Fascinated by Flowers

Our love for flowers has endured for millennia. They have become intertwined with human experience. A new book explores this through photography.

New Definitions

New York’s Museum of Modern Art presents two photography exhibitions in tandem, exploring the diverse perspectives of women behind the lens.

Drenched in Colour

Wuthipol Ujathammarat’s vibrant abstract images present the buildings, floodlights, security cameras and fire escapes of Bangkok as never before.

Abstract Wonderland

Florian W. Mueller abstracts perceptions of the city, inspired by the intersecting lines and colours used by Expressionist painter Lyonel Feininger.

Distort and Reveal

Andrea Alkalay’s Landscape on Landscape series examines the radical act of observation through the poetic and political potential of photographs.

Studies in Botany

Anne Mason-Hoerter celebrates the vivid colour and unique details of plant specimens, from valerian roots and blue thistles to wild garlic.

Worlds Under Threat

Florida is a complex place with many contrasting ideologies. Anastasia Samoylova investigates the inner-workings of this subtropical fever-dream.