The Best Shows to See in London This November

Francis Bacon | National Portrait Gallery, London | 10 October – 19 January 

Francis Bacon’s beady eyes – the first thing visitors encounter in this comprehensive survey of the artist’s portraiture at London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) – exert an influence that permeates the entire exhibition. The painter, then aged 59, stares out like an inquisitive bird in a clip from Peter Gidal’s black and white film Heads (1969).

Here is an artist seemingly aware of his self-image and myth, sitting for an intimate filmic portrait so close-cropped you can’t see his ears. ‘Human Presence’ is the title of this show, yet it is undoubtedly Bacon’s presence that is felt most intently throughout the two burgundy corridors and several adjoining galleries that contain more than 55 works. – Sean Burns

Imran Perretta | Somerset House Studios, London | 27 September – 10 November

On 4 August 2011, London’s Metropolitan Police shot and killed Mark Duggan, a Black man, in circumstances which were contested. Duggan’s death, amid longstanding tensions between police and the Black community, catalyzed peaceful protests against police brutality. Following reports of clashes between the police and a teenage girl – set against youth alienation and acutely felt austerity measures – dissent morphed into civil unrest, with looting and rioting spreading across the country. In an immersive exhibition at Somerset House Studios, ‘A Riot in Three Acts’, Imran Perretta – resident artist, composer and filmmaker – has designed a replica of Reeves Corner in Croydon, where one of the House of Reeves buildings, a century-old family-owned furniture store, was set alight on 8 August 2011. – Ajeet Khela 

Michael Craig-Martin | Royal Academy of Arts, London | 12 May – 26 May 2025

It is more than half a century since Michael Craig-Martin premiered An Oak Tree (1973) at the Rowan Gallery in Mayfair – a short walk from the institution hosting this well-stocked retrospective of almost 150 works. An Oak Tree comprises a solitary glass of water perched on a shelf accompanied by a lengthy text, in faux-interview form, explaining how the artist has changed a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree ‘without altering the accidents of the glass of water’. It is a landmark work, though not quite canonical: unveiled a year later than, and an ocean away from, the bulk of the activity charted in Lucy Lippard’s canon-forming Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (1973), An Oak Tree’s suggestion of transubstantiation has a whiff of Craig-Martin’s childhood Catholicism that is at odds with mainstream New York conceptualism. – Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith 

Gustavo Nazareno | Opera Gallery, London | 12 May – 26 May 2025

In a series of paintings and charcoal drawings at Opera Gallery, Gustavo Nazareno depicts a cast of Orixás, divine spirits central to Afro-Brazilian religions, in human form. ‘Orixás: Personal Tales on Portraiture’ testifies to the artist’s spiritual journey within the syncretic Candomblé religion. In the basement of the gallery, Nazareno offers an interpretation of Candomblé – the word means ‘dance in honour of the gods’ – through what he described to me during a visit to the gallery as a ‘ceremony of charcoal drawings’, dedicated to his tutelary deity, Exu. – Oluwatobiloba Ajayi

Fabienne Verdier | Waddington Custot, London | 11 October – 9 November

In the introduction to his unfinished project, Mnemosyne Atlas, Aby Warburg described his mission to map ‘life...in motion’ – an approach Fabienne Verdier echoes in ‘Retables’, her latest show at Waddington Custot, where her triptychs trace the natural world in constant transformation.

As the title suggests, Verdier evokes the retable, an ornamental panel traditionally positioned behind church altars to frame the sacred. Each painting in her newest series is a triptych, referencing the solemnity and structure of religious altarpieces. Her subjects, however, are earthly rather than divine. In Au chemin des éclairs (On the Path of Lightning, all works 2024), a broad sweep of ink blends into rivulets, echoing river tributaries or veins of marble. Elsewhere, La cascade (The Waterfall) shows white paint cascading down the centre panel, emulating the fluidity of falling water. – Sofia Hallström 

^{Main image: Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne (detail), 1967. Courtesy: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024; photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin}