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The Midlands has a wealth of art galleries and museums hosting a range of fantastic exhibitions - both permanent and temporary. Here's a selection of what's showing across the region.
STORIES THAT MADE US
Stories That Made Us - Roots, Resilience, Representation is a new immersive exhibition which travels through the life of a single South Asian family in Coventry across a period of 40-plus years.
Created by Hardish Virk and his sister Manjinder, from Hardish’s personal archives, the exhibition reveals much about their activist father and Punjabi poet mother, not to mention Hardish himself, whose formative years were shaped by Coventry in the 1980s.
“Often the conversation, particularly around young people, is ‘We don’t know where we belong,’” says Hardish. “But also we’ve got people of my parents’ generation who feel like their story started in the 1950s and 60s. What I was very keen to say is that our story goes back at least 425 years, and we’ve contributed to every facet of British life.”
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until Monday 25 May
TEN.8 AFTERIMAGE
The legacy and enduring impact of Ten.8 - a photography journal that emerged from the Midlands’ radical cultural and political landscape in the late 1970s - is the subject of this fascinating exhibition. Engaging with the continued relevance of the concerns that the journal addressed - including Thatcherite neoliberal reforms and struggles against colonialism and state violence - the exhibition brings photographic works produced in the 1980s and 90s into dialogue with more recent artworks.
New Art Gallery, Walsall, Friday 1 May - Sunday 13 September
DAIGA GRANTINA - LILACS
Warwick Arts Centre’s Mead Gallery is here hosting the first UK solo exhibition by Latvian artist Daiga Grantina.
Drawing inspiration from bodies and landscapes, Daiga creates sculptures which explore how materials meet and react to each other in ways that make the viewer look again at their size, form and meaning. The interactions of the materials echo the ways that living systems and environments evolve - shifting, growing and unfolding across multiple dimensions.
For this month’s exhibition, Grantina has responded to the Mead Gallery’s architecture and natural light with new and existing works, to expand on ideas explored in What Eats Around Itself, her critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York.
“I am excited to be working with the Mead Gallery team,” says Daiga, “and to begin a dialogue with the gallery’s generous volumes. I hope my exhibition will offer audiences a sense of light relief during darker times.”
The Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Friday 1 May - Sunday 28 June
TROUBLEMAKERS AND PROPHETS
Described as an exploration of ‘art, isolation and extraordinary vision’, Troublemakers And Prophets is primarily a celebration of the output of Elizabeth Allen, a seamstress who lived in a small corrugated-iron shack in a wood in Kent for many years prior to her death in 1967.
Known by her childhood nickname of ‘Queen’, Elizabeth created colourful, symbolic and made-from-fabric artworks which focused on a wide variety of subject matter, from biblical prophecies concerning the end of the world, to quirky comments on aspects of modern life.
Alongside Elizabeth’s absurd, darkly funny and strikingly prophetic creations, the exhibition also features artworks produced by numerous other ‘visionary artists’.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Monday 31 August
CLAIRE HEWITT: EVERYTHING IN THE FOREST IS FOREST
Acclaimed photographer Clare Hewitt’s latest exhibition - a celebration of trees and their remarkable ability to nurture and communicate - is a direct response to a government report suggesting that loneliness and isolation are on the rise in rural areas of the country.
Setting up a studio within a circle of 12 oak trees, Clare documented the forest and its seasonal changes, exploring nature through a range of sustainable photographic techniques.
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, until Monday 31 August
SHAQÚELLE WHYTE: SHATTERED DREAMS
Growing up in Wolverhampton, Royal College of Art graduate Shaqúelle Whyte has cited visits to the city’s art gallery as being pivotal in the development of his creativity. Now - in his mid-20s - Shaqúelle has his very own exhibition at the venue!
What’s more, the gallery has recently acquired one of his paintings - the striking and nocturnal Blackbirds Singing In The Dead Of Night - for its permanent collection.
The painting takes its place in the Shattered Dreams exhibition alongside five other similarly dynamic and large-scale works, all of which serve to showcase Shaqúelle’s bold figurative style and vigorous mark-making.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, until Monday 31 August
THE COUNTRYSIDE THROUGH MID-CENTURY ART
The Countryside Through Mid-Century Art coincides with a rare opportunity to visit the three-acre Netherwood Manor Gardens, which are open for just a handful of weekends this year as part of the National Garden Scheme.
Growing out of a previously displayed collection of landscape paintings by World War Two war artist John Piper, the exhibition includes work by a number of his contemporaries, offering a compelling exploration of how the British landscape was represented across multiple media in the mid-20th century.
As well as original works by Piper - including a feature collection of fabrics - the show also includes artwork by, among others, Katharine Church, Elisabeth Frink, Rowland Suddaby and Robert Tavener.
The exhibition is curated by Fifties Art & Design - specialists in affordable mid-century art and stockists of a range of original pictures, prints and posters from the period.
The exhibition will run in two halves between 16th - 25th May and 5th - 14th June, with free entry to the gallery.
Private visits by appointment 26th May - 4th June. Curator’s tours of the show will be offered on Saturday, 16th May, 5 - 6.30 pm, and Friday, 5th June, 6 - 7.30 pm.
Netherwood Estate, Herefordshire, Saturday 16 - Monday 25 May & Friday 5 - Sunday 14 June
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR EXHIBITION
“We are facing urgent biodiversity and climate crises, and photography is a powerful catalyst for change.”
So says Dr Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, which has developed and produced this prestigious competition.
Now in its 61st year, the show features a host of awe-inspiring images capturing fascinating animal behaviour and breathtaking landscapes.
Image credit: Parham Pourahmad
Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery, until Saturday 20 June
GENEVIEVE ROBERTSON
Working at the intersection of visual art and environmental studies, Canadian artist Genevieve Robertson produces work which is powerfully informed by a personal and intergenerational history of forestry labour in remote locations across British Columbia.
Genevieve’s practice is grounded in drawing and painting but also extends to video, installation and various forms of collective work and collaboration. Her exhibition in Birmingham will explore the interconnection between natural and industrial histories, vegetal intelligence and ecological trauma.
The display examines two forested sites separated by 310 million years and 7,000 kilometres: the ancient swamps of the Black Country and a recently fire- and logging-affected slope in British Columbia.
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, until Sunday 5 July
THE CHURCHILL SCREEN
This fascinating exhibition, exploring The Churchill Screen, opens just a handful of months after the unveiling of one of the artwork’s conserved original panels.
Produced by artist Edward Bainbridge-Copnall for Dudley’s Churchill Shopping Precinct, the Screen was a 40-foot-long appliqué glass mosaic weighing five and a half tonnes and consisting of 17 panels.
The new exhibition explores its complex history - from Bainbridge-Copnall’s creation of it in 1969, through to the impact of vandalism in the 1980s and its removal from public view in the 1990s.
Archival photographs, conservation documentation, surviving fragments of the destroyed portrait, and public responses all feature in the exhibition.
Stourbridge Glass Museum, opens Saturday 25 April
SPACE VAULT EXHIBITION
Immersive visuals and unique artefacts tell 12 stories of human space exploration in this illuminating exhibition.
Highlights of the display include the mission checklists that saved the crew of Apollo 13 when its oxygen tank exploded, lunar dust from the Hadley Rille landing site of Apollo 15, a rare Soviet pressure suit, and part of the nose cone of the first starship to reach space.
Image Credit: NASA. CDR Dave Scott, Apollo 15. Communications umbilical in image is on display in the Space Vault Exhibition.
Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum, Millennium Point, until Sunday 17 May
I PHOTOGRAPH COMEDIANS!
If you love a laugh, you should get along to Andy Hollingworth’s new exhibition.
As its title makes clear in a refreshingly straightforward manner, Andy photographs comedians - and it’s a selection of his images of some of the UK’s best-loved comics that forms the basis of this Gas Hall-located display.
Photographs of Ken Dodd, Sarah Millican, Victoria Wood, Rik Mayall and Rhod Gilbert all feature, as do pics of such Midlands masters and mistresses of mirth as Jasper Carrott, Stewart Lee, Lenny Henry, Joe Lycett, Jo Enright and Shazia Mirza. The images of the latter four in that list are brand new and have never before been exhibited.
The display also features numerous items connected to particular comedians, including a jacket worn by Lenny Henry during his 1984 tour, a signed pair of Rik Mayall’s underpants, and Joe Lycett’s teddy suit, as worn in the advertisement for series two of Late Night Lycett.
“This retrospective of my work over the last 30 years reflects the changing faces of comedy in the UK and my interaction with them,” says Andy. “I’m delighted that it’s being displayed in Birmingham, a city that’s produced and been associated with many notable comedians over the years and a vibrant comedy scene which includes the UK’s second longest running comedy festival.”
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, until Sunday 31 May
WHAT ARE THE ODDS?
An Ikon gallery exhibition which is being presented at the Library of Birmingham, What Are The Odds? explores the role of art in supporting health and care systems. The exhibition’s graphic identity has been designed by Birmingham-based artist Foka Wolf. Playing on a 1970s ‘game of life’ TV show aesthetic, the presentation simulates a journey through the different institutions that define a life course, along the way reflecting a range of lived experience, from diversity in infant feeding to ageing and dying well.
Library of Birmingham, until Saturday 27 June
BRUEGEL TO REMBRANDT: DRAWING LIFE, SKETCHING WONDER
More than 60 works on loan from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium sit at the heart of this historically informative exhibition.
Showcasing artists from across the 16th and 17th centuries - and artworks created using charcoal, ink and chalk - the show explores the magic of drawing, both as an artistic tool and as a means of storytelling during what was a period of significant social, political and religious change.
The exhibition includes Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Prudence (1559/60) - a rare work from his celebrated Seven Virtues series - as well as pieces by Rembrandt, Rubens and Jordaens.
Complementary loans of paintings, prints and drawings from numerous UK-located collections, including London’s National Gallery, also feature.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Sunday 28 June
BREAK THE MOULD
The final chapter in a trilogy of exhibitions exploring craft, art-school pedagogies and contemporary art practice, Break The Mould focuses the spotlight on ceramics.
Bringing together a dynamic cohort of ceramicists for a series of residencies, the exhibition also explores the ways in which the craft and medium of clay can ‘speak to the future’.
Ikon, Birmingham, until Sunday 6 September
DIPPY IN COVENTRY: THE NATION'S FAVOURITE DINOSAUR
The Natural History Museum’s iconic Diplodocus cast - life-size, made of plaster-of-paris, and affectionately referred to as Dippy - has taken up residence in Coventry for an initial period of three years.
Diplodocus carnegii, to give it its official name, lived during the Late Jurassic period, somewhere between 155 and 145 million years ago. Huge, plant-eating dinosaurs with long, whip-like tails, they grew to about 25 metres in length and are believed to have weighed around 15 tonnes, making them three tonnes heavier than a London double-decker bus.
Dippy first arrived in London in 1905 and recently visited Birmingham as part of an eight-city tour that attracted a record-breaking two million visitors.
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until February 2027