For autumn 2025, the Barbican presents two new exhibitions: Dirty Looks,London’s boldest fashion exhibition exploring our love of the imperfect and the transgressive through the work of over 60 iconic and emerging designers, and Rounds, a commission for The Curve by North American artist Lucy Raven examining the changing landscape of the western United States.
Eight years since the Barbican’s last major-scale fashion exhibition, Dirty Looks marks the beginning of a new era of fashion programming, building on the success of previous shows including The House of Viktor & Rolf (2008), Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion (2010), The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (2014) and The Vulgar (2017).This strand of programming, led by Barbican Art Gallery curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven, will focus on fashion as an interdisciplinary and ground-breaking artistic practice, reflecting the changing landscape of fashion today and showcasing futures in which fashion can be harnessed as a positive creative force for its makers, wearers, lovers and our natural environment.
In September 2025, the Barbican presents Dirty Looks, an adventurous new exhibition exploring how contemporary fashion has harnessed the rebellious, playful and regenerative potentials of dirt and decay.
Once considered the opposite of luxury fashion’s ideals of beauty and glamour, explorations of wear and tear have emerged as vital sources for artistic innovation over the past half-century. They have been used to rebel, provoke and empower, but also to experiment with ornament and materials, celebrate indigenous perspectives and imbue clothing with deeper spiritual meanings.
Creating a dialogue that unites iconic and emerging designers, Dirty Looks considers the rich and varied ways in which fashion has embraced its “dirty” aesthetic. From romantic gowns which celebrate their own ruination and garments which elevate stains into handcrafted ornament, to clothing submerged in peat bogs or created by transforming fast fashion waste, Dirty Looks speculates on where beauty lies and what fashion can be.
Alongside pieces from over 60 designers including Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Maison Margiela, the exhibition will include bespoke installations showcasing the work of visionaries such as Hussein Chalayan, Ma Ke, Yuima Nakazato and Bubu Ogisi of IAMISIGO. Connecting to London’s thriving ecology of emerging designers pushing the boundaries of fashion practice, the exhibition will also feature new commissions and installations by Paolo Carzana, Alice Potts, Michaela Stark, Solitude Studios, Elena Velez (New York) and Yaz XL.
The exhibition design sees the distinctive spaces of the Barbican Art Gallery transformed by Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck – known for its performative and cutting-edge designs for fashion shows and theatre – in a radical reimagining of the ways in which fashion is displayed.
Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue published by MACK, with essays by internationally acclaimed authors including Fabio Cleto and Stefania Consonni, Sunny Dolat, Caroline Evans, Akiko Fukai, Sandra Niessen and Sara Arnold, Ellen Sampson, Lou Stoppard, and curators Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Jon Astbury, featuring original object photography by Ellen Sampson capturing the intimate, tactile and bodily qualities of the garments in the exhibition.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an exciting roster of multidisciplinary programming, including a “Dirty Weekend” across the Barbican and an exclusive poetic performance. Full details to be announced later.
Featured designers in Dirty Looks include: ACNE Studios, Miguel Adrover, Ahluwalia, Matty Bovan, Buzigahill, Paolo Carzana, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons, Piero D’Angelo, Giles Deacon, Diesel, Di Petsa, Phoebe English, Dilara Findikoglu, John Galliano, JordanLuca, Andrew Groves, IAMISIGO, Hodakova, Nina Hollein, Ivan Hunga Garcia, Ayumi Kajiwara, Manon Kündig, Helmut Lang, Ma Ke, Maison Margiela, Yodea Marquel, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Hamish Morrow, Moschino, Yuima Nakazato, Louis Gabriel Nouchi, Rick Owens, Carol Christian Poell, Alice Potts, Paco Rabanne, Zandra Rhodes, Sterling Ruby, Marine Serre, Solitude Studios, Michaela Stark, Olivier Theyskens, Elena Velez, Vin + Omi, Viktor & Rolf, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Robert Wun and Xüly Bet.
Dirty Looks, 25th September 2025 – 25th January 2026 Barbican Art Gallery
In October 2025, the Barbican presents a major new exhibition by the North American artist Lucy Raven for The Curve, comprising the premiere of a large-scale kinetic sculpture co-commissioned by the Barbican and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Further, the exhibition will feature a new moving image installation, Murderers Bar (2025), shown for the first time in the UK and Europe.
Raven’s moving image installation is the third instalment of her acclaimed trilogy, ‘The Drumfire’, a series which explores themes of material state change, pressure, force, and cycles of violence in the formation of the Western United States. Previous works in the series include Ready Mix (2021) which examines the transformation of solid rock into concrete, and Demolition of a Wall (Album 1) and Demolition of a Wall (Album 2) (both 2022) which focus on extreme air pressure caused by shock. Showing at The Curve, Murderers Bar continues an exploration of the concerns that have underpinned the entire Drumfire series.
Murderers Bar focuses on the recent removal of a monumental, century-old concrete dam along the Klamath River in Northern California, part of the biggest dam removal project in American history. The dam, the immense reservoir behind it, and the river now coursing through both, are transformed through the duration of the work. Murderers Bar, in turn, finds its form from the release of water at such a colossal scale. Accompanying the film projection will be bleacher-style seating flanked by speakers for a quadraphonic soundtrack scored by Raven’s frequent musical collaborator, composer and percussionist Deantoni Parks.
The moving image installation will be experienced alongside a newly commissioned monumental kinetic light sculpture, Centrifuge. Like Raven’s moving image work, the piece speaks to themes of cyclical violence and unrelenting force, the legacies of which continue to shape the physical and imagined landscape of the Western United States today.
Following its debut at the Barbican, Lucy Raven: Rounds will open at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in May 2026. Commissioned by Barbican, London and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Lucy Raven: Rounds, 9th October 2025 – 4th January 2026 The Curve
