Cultural Highlights of 2025
The most memorable exhibitions and events I saw in the past year
But is it memorable? This is the question I ask myself when thinking about art. Did the work continue to resonate in the months that followed? Did it change how I see the world?
Memorability is intensely personal and awkward to fit into a system of aesthetic standards, but it provides an excellent foundation for creating end-of-year review lists like this one.
And so, rather than compile a hierarchical top ten, I’ve separated works into increasingly whimsical categories to help explain what made them memorable to me.
Best Exhibition
Peter Hujar — Eyes Open in the Dark
It sometimes feels like few in the art world care about beauty. Their hearts have hardened, their spirits are weak. For many, art is simply a vehicle for social change rather than a source of aesthetic bliss. So when an exhibition comes along that is devastatingly beautiful—in all its abject, tender, and spiritual forms—it is all the more shocking.
Peter Hujar’s pictures are alive. The prints—both Hujar’s originals and the recent ones by co-curator Gary Schneider—possess a powerful aura that allows them to transcend their time while also being essential documents of the era. I am even tempted to make a pilgrimage to Bonn next year to see the show a third time.
Read my interview with the exhibition’s co-curator, and Peter Hujar’s biographer, John Douglas Millar.
Most Ambitious Exhibition
Wolfgang Tillmans — Nothing could have prepared us, Everything could have prepared us
Before the Pompidou closed for five years of renovation, Wolfgang Tillmans took over an entire floor of the library — including the photocopiers, the ageing fire alarms, and the terrible coffee machine — for a kaleidoscopic greatest hits package. His prints are sometimes casual—pinned simply to the wall—at other times they are formal. He works with magazines, but is equally at home in a fine art context. In Paris, it all served to highlight the possibilities of photography.
Although I am sceptical about Tillmans—particularly his awful music and inept attempts to fix liberal politics—his photography remains vital. No one better shows the delights of practical liberalism.
Best Live Art Performance
Berger & Wirz — LIVE @ White Cart Water
On a chilly night in March, Josh Wirz put on a wetsuit and lay in a rubberised orange cage in White Cart while live-streaming for an hour. Up on the bridge above, David Hicks (standing in for Axel Berger due to illness) spoke as if appearing on a rolling news report.
In the crowd’s reaction and the sense of peril, it was a brilliant piece of performance art, which I have been thinking about all year. Check out my series of photos to see more of the performance.
Best Artist Talk
Mark Leckey at Strangefield
All I really knew about Mark Leckey before attending his talk was that he had won the Turner Prize and that a friend loved his breakthrough work, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.
In his talk, Leckey described coming of age in the Acid House era and how he wanted to make art that evoked similar feelings of ecstasy. This has been spectacularly achieved in recent video works, Carry Me into the Wilderness and To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body), where Leckey approaches a religious epiphany. A similar moment of sublimity can be seen in his current Guggenheim Bilbao installation.
Most Instagrammable Exhibition
Ugo Rondinone — the rainbow body at Sadie Coles HQ
In Claire Bishop’s latest book, Disordered Attention, she makes the point that, whether we like it or not, the phone is now a part of our aesthetic lives. Rather than see it as purely negative, she makes the case that we use it to commune with others and discuss ideas.
This extravagantly colourful exhibition by Ugo Rondinone seemed designed for maximum social media engagement. The moulded figures looked melancholy and bored, probably because they had no phone to doom-scroll on.
Most Welcome Magazine Revival
Variant Magazine
A couple of years ago, I picked up a few books from the late Leigh French’s library. The donation I made went towards the production of a one-off relaunch of Variant magazine to honour French’s contribution to culture.
And what a superb job Ben, Neil and John did editing it. My favourite was Paul Pieroni’s article on Daniel Buren’s bollards for the Glasgow Garden Festival, which is the kind of connection between social history and art that makes my world—and my daily walks—come alive.
Most Steps Walked to Experience the Sublime
Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii
Before I went to Naples, I did a little research and learned that one could avoid the crowds that overwhelm Pompeii and simply visit Herculaneum, which is a more modest and better-preserved archaeological site. Thankfully, the hotel staff said that this was wrong and that we must visit Pompeii.
At the end of a long, hot day walking in its ruins, we found ourselves in the Villa of the Mysteries, where we were enchanted by a well-preserved fresco devoted to a Dionysian cult.
Most Frenetic Tour Experience
The Vatican Museum Tour
Thanks to Italy’s superb railway system, one can easily do a day trip to Rome from Naples. I have always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, but seemingly the only way of gaining access is to take a pre-booked tour. What this means in practice is to jostle amongst the dozens of other tours for a rushed overview of the most notable works. Yet, even this compromised experience was sublime, so incredible is the collection.
Most Intense Book Event
Tony Tulathimutte’s book Rejection did what I thought was impossible and depicted phone consciousness in literature. The squalid mind of the scroller, the pettiness of texting, post-Tinder dating horror show, it’s all grimly detailed in his collection of linked stories.
On his UK book tour, the peerless Alasdair Gray Archive got Tony to talk with Elle Nash about Rejection (the scabrous Ahegao) and then with Rodge Glass about Alasdair Gray’s sickly erotic novel, 1982, Janine.
Best Drinks at an Opening
A mention must be made of Fraser Kerr’s debut exhibition ‘DOMI DEMO DE NOVO’ at The Little Art Factory in Kilmarnock. I went to it because Fraser is a great guy, a superb activist photographer, and because I would like to do my own exhibition at some point and was curious how he would arrange the photos. In his recap of lessons learned, he mentions spending £120 on whisky for the opening, which may not have made financial sense but definitely made the event memorable. Check out his zine of the show.
Most Glasgow Miracle Experience
Never Go Out at SWG3
Never Go Out was ostensibly a fundraiser for Marissa Keating’s forthcoming film about GSA’s famous Sculpture and Environmental Art course, but the main effect was to revive the notion—in my mind, at least—that there is something magical in the soil that keeps Glasgow relevant.
The night featured bands like The Tenementals and Saint Sappho, advice from people like Sam Ainsley and Alan Dimmick, DJ sets from Optimo (Espacio), and art from recent graduates.
One of the main reasons I wanted to attend Never Go Out was to see the band Nurse for the second time. They are a doomy Joy Division-ish electro band whose music has urgency and intensity. They also have no social media and no Bandcamp, which only adds to the charm.
The paradox of memorability is that almost anything can stick in the mind if you dedicate enough attention. Even the act of photographing an event helps solidify it in one’s mental archive. It is no coincidence that half of the things I’ve listed here were ones I documented. So be it. What we pay attention to is what makes up a life. Here’s to more memorable cultural experiences in 2026.
Looking forward to seeing your reads of 2025! 🙏
Superb lineup. Alas few of these I did in 2025 but I shall seek out more quirks and happenings. One thing I want to do most of all is try and find some ambient music stars to see live, or even better, some Carnatic / Hindustani singing. We live in hope