January gets a bad rep
Central London quietens down — which make for weekend trips to an exhibition more enticing. Awards season delivers its best films at the theatres, perfect on a Sunday evening. Clementines taste insanely addictive. And we’re past winter equinox too!
I wanted to frame this month’s edit with that mindset, to make for better reasons to leave the house, learn something new, watch some good stories and get inspired, again.
Happy New Year!
Leo
Awards season makes for cosy movie nights
Some say that Hollywood drops all of their best movies around awards season because of recency bias. I like to blissfully think it’s an intentional choice to give people something to look forward to during the coldest and quietest time of the year. I did this last year, spending Sunday evenings watching the latest Oscar noms and it was the highlight of the month. Curzon and Everyman are miles ahead of the regular screens in the city but nothing beats my fave spot at Electric Cinema in Notting Hill. Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Hamnet are on my ticket for this month.
Getting your hands dirty
Using your hands is one of the best ways of slowing down time — which lends best to January when everyone looks for new hobbies and creative outlets.
Studio Pottery London and The Kiln Rooms offer stellar ceramics/pottery classes that are a standing evening commitment — not a one-off novelty, but a reason to leave the house midweek and focus on something physical for a few hours.
Print Club London and Pigment Press offer the same satisfaction, but in ink and paper…or card, or clothing.
January is for rummaging
January can feel like a treasure hunt for things to do which led me to hunt for exactly that. The Giant London Flea Market returns to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on Sunday 11 January — London’s largest indoor flea, with 100+ traders unpacking vintage furniture, homewares and small curios.
A week later, Walthamstow Flea Market lands at Big Penny Social on Sunday 18 January (11 am–5 pm), where 60+ hand-picked makers and dealers bring everything from reclaimed fixtures to oddball textiles.
I think I’m one step away from unlocking and a new upholstering hobby.
Exhibitions leaving the house for
When Zofia Rydet turned 67 in 1978 she set out to photograph the inside of every Polish household. The 20,000 negatives are now being exhibited at The Photographers Gallery.
When the Blitz kids turned a Covent Garden wine bar into a night club in style, the ripple effects reached far beyond London nightlife. Showing at The Design Museum.
When choreographer Wayne McGregor started treating the body like a research tool — something to test alongside tech, light, sound and code — “dance” stopped being the container. Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies is now at Somerset House.
When Wayne Thiebaud painted diner cakes, gumball machines and deli counters, it wasn’t nostalgia — it was America rendered in colour, edge, and appetite. Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life is at The Courtauld.
When Lee Miller moved from muse to maker, then from fashion to the front line, she rewired what a “photographer” could be. Lee Miller surrealist work is at Tate Britain.
Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World, photographs of the 20th century star elites, is at the National Portrait Gallery.
When Ryoji Ikeda turns data into light and sound, it stops being information and becomes atmosphere — something you feel in your chest. data-cosm [n°1] is at 180 Studios.