A spectacular line-up of modern British art exhibitions will head upthe 2012 Cultural Olympiad, writes Lesley Bellew, who has beenquick out of the starting blocks to view the first shows coming up in Kent and further afield.

The best of Kent's exhibitions this year...

Hamish Fulton: Walk

Turner Contemporary, Margate

Tuesday, January 17 to Monday, May 7

This will be Hamish Fulton’s first one-person show in a UK public gallery since 2002. The exhibition will bring together works from the early 1970s to the present, including a new film of a group walk in Margate commissioned by Turner Contemporary in the lead up to the opening of the gallery. With a studio in Canterbury, Fulton has made walking the basis of his practice for the past three decades, producing photography, text and sketches that evolve from the experience of solo and group walks in the landscape. One of the earliest works in this group, The Pilgrim’s Way (1971) is the result of a walk from Winchester to Canterbury, along the ancient route known as the Pilgrim’s Way. For two days in 2009 Fulton was the oldest British person to have climbed Mount Everest and while he does not claim to be a climber or mountaineer, his walks have increasingly embraced the challenge of conquering some of the world’s largest mountains.

Info at www.turnercontemporary.org

Turner and the Elements

Turner Contemporary, Margate

Saturday, January 28 to Sunday, May 13

A major exhibition showcasing 95 works, including several of Margate and the north Kent coast. JMW Turner was a frequent visitor and is said to have remarked to John Ruskin that “the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe”. In the 1820s and 1830s Turner lodged with Sophia Booth in a house that was on the same site as Turner Contemporary. The windows from the house provided Turner with an ever-changing view over the beach, pier and jetty and Margate became a central subject in many of his works made at that time. The exhibition will illustrate how his painting technique and the influence of the latest scientific and technological developments of his time, revolutionised landscape painting. In the images of Margate and the Kentish coast, Turner’s fascination with the elements, air and water, is apparent. The exhibition focuses on the theme of the elements in the artist’s work and is divided into five sections: Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Fusion.

Info at www.turnercontemporary.org

Rail Art

The Guild of Railway Artists in No.1 Smithery: The Gallery, the Historic Dockyard, Chatham

March 31 to May 11

There is always something romantic about rail art. Monet, Turner and Bourne depicted the heyday of the steam railway and post-war a new era emerged with paintings by Terence Cuneo, Hamilton Ellis and David Shepherd. Formed in 1979, The Guild of Railway Artists was established to forge a link between artists whose interests include the depiction of the railway scene. Although predominately oils, acrylics and watercolours, members also produce works in pen and ink, pencil, pastel, crayon, gouache and even digital.

Details at www.thedockyard.co.uk

Billy Childish: Art War

Historic Dockyard Chatham

Friday, June 1 to Sunday, September 30

There is no other artist so intrinsically linked to Chatham than Billy Childish, whose flair and distinction have made him an internationally recognised painter, writer and musician. Art War will contain a large collection of works relating to his time as an apprentice stonemason including; Drawings from the Tea Huts of Hell: an infamous collection of drawings that led to his acceptance to Central St Martin’s School of Art.

Details at www.thedockyard.co.uk

And here is a list of the art exhibitions taking place in London...

Driven to Draw: Twentieth-century Drawings and Sketchbooks from the Royal Academy’s collection

Tennant Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts

Running until Sunday, February 12

Featuring rarely seen 20th century drawings and sketchbooks, this exhibition aims to capture the magic of drawing done for its own sake. It includes works by LS Lowry, Laura Knight, Edward Bawden, John Bratby and Michael Landy.

Details at www.npg.org.uk

Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

British Museum

Running until Sunday, February 19

Winner of the Turner prize in 2003, the 6ft Essex transvestite has become well-known for his slightly wonky, decorated ceramic urns. His art and persona are linked and the more public a figure he has become, the more confident his art. The show is full of wonderful objects with Perry installing his new works alongside those made by unknown men and women throughout history from the British Museum’s collection. He takes you to an afterlife conjured from his imaginary world, exploring craftsmanship and sacred journeys – from shamanism, magic and holy relics to motorbikes, identity and contemporary culture.

Details at www.britishmuseum.org

Sandra Lousada: Work and Performance

National Portrait Gallery

Running until Sunday May 20

Celebrating the 50-year career of photographer Sandra Lousada from the early 1960s. Lousada captured the actors Sarah Miles, James Fox, Vanessa Redgrave and Hayley Mills, composer Arthur Bliss, writers Richard Hughes and Laurie Lee and sculptor Lynn Chadwick. The display will include previously unseen portraits of models Jean Shrimpton and Celia Hammond. Formal commissioned portraits are shown alongside behind the scenes photographs taken on film sets and unguarded portraits of sitters captured at home. Lousada says: ‘They did relax, those people, they trusted me not to be selling pictures all over the place. I got the sort of picture you wouldn’t normally get with stars because they knew and trusted me."

For details visit www.npg.org.uk

David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture

Royal Academy of Arts

Saturday, January 21 to Monday, April 9

This is the first major exhibition in the UK to showcase David Hockney’s landscape work. Vivid paintings inspired by Yorkshire landscape, many large in scale and created specifically for the exhibition, will be shown alongside related drawings, films and iPad drawings. Through a selection of around 200 works spanning 50 years, the exhibition will reveal the artist’s emotional engagement with the landscape he knew in his youth, as he examines on a daily basis the changes in the seasons, the cycle of growth and variations in light conditions.

Details at www.royalacademy.org.uk

Migrations

Tate Britain

Tuesday, January 31 to Sunday, August 12

This exhibition will explore British art through the theme of migration from 1500 to the present day. It will reveal how British art has been shaped by successive waves of migration, from the 16th and 17th century Flemish and Dutch landscape and still-life painters who came to Britain in search of new patrons, through to artists fleeing political and religious unrest, and on to Britain’s current position within the global visual arts landscape. Cutting through 500 years of history this exhibition will include works by artists from Lely, Kneller, Fuseli and Sargent to Epstein, Mondrian, Bomberg, Bowling and the Black Audio Film Collective, as well as recent work by contemporary artists.

Details at www.tate.org.uk

Lucian Freud Portraits

National Portrait Gallery

Thursday, February 9 to Sunday, May 27

The most ambitious Lucian Freud exhibition for 10 years is an important part of the London 2012 Festival. Freud is known for his realistic portraits of characters ranging from benefits supervisor Sue Tilley to artists and performers, even the Queen. The National Portrait Gallery will displaying more than 100 of his portraits, from the early 1940s until the artist’s death last July 2011. As well as several self-portraits, there are pictures of Freud’s lovers, friends and family, including Freud’s mother Lucie, artist Frank Auerbach (who spent his school days in Otterden, near Faversham), Francis Bacon and David Hockney.

Details at www.npg.org

Picasso and Modern British Art

Tate Britain

Wednesday, February 15 to Sunday, July 15

Picasso and Modern British Art is the first exhibition to explore Picasso’s lifelong connections with Britain. It will examine Picasso’s evolving critical reputation here and British artists’ responses to his work. With more than 150 works, the exhibition charts Picasso’s rise in Britain as a figure both of controversy and celebrity. It also examines his impact on 20th-century British modernism, through seven figures for whom he proved an important stimulus – Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney.

Details at www.tate.org

Damien Hirst

Tate Modern

Wednesday, April 4 to Sunday, September 9

Damien Hirst first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived Freeze, in London. Since that pivotal show, he has become one of the most influential artists of his generation. This exhibition includes iconic sculptures from his Natural History series, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991, in which he suspended a shark in formaldehyde. Also included will be vitrines such as A Thousand Years from 1990, medicine, pill and instrument cabinets and seminal paintings made throughout his career. The two-part installation In and Out of Love, not shown in its entirety since its creation in 1991, and Pharmacy 1992 will be among the highlights of the exhibition.

Details at www.tate.org.uk

Another London

Tate Britain

Friday, July 27 to Sunday, September 16

To coincide with the moment at which the eyes of the world are on London, Tate Britain will present an exhibition of 150 classic 20th photographs which take London as their subject. In the years between 1930 and 1980, some of the best-known photographers from across the world came to London to make work about the city and its communities. The show will include Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Frank, Leonard Freed, Emil Otto Hoppe, Marketa Luskacova, Dora Maar, Irving Penn, Willy Ronis and Al Vandenberg.

Details at www.tate.org.uk

A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance Art

Tate Modern

Wednesday November 7 to April 1, 2013

A look at the relationship between performance and painting since 1950. Contrasting key paintings by Jackson Pollock and David Hockney, the exhibition will consider two different approaches to the idea of the canvas as an arena in which to act: one gestural, the other theatrical. The paintings of the Vienna Actionists and the Shooting Pictures of Nikki de St Phalle will be represented within the performance context in which they were made. They will be juxtaposed with works by artists such as Cindy Sherman or Jack Smith that focus on the face and body as a surface.

Details at www.tate.org.uk