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Waste Age: What Can Design Do? exhibition comes to mac
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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.
VICTORIAN RADICALS
Birmingham’s impressive collection of Pre-Raphaelite art is here being displayed in the city for the first time in more than five years.
Taking the subtitle From The Pre-Raphaelites To The Arts & Crafts Movement, Victorian Radicals features vibrant paintings and exquisite drawings presented alongside jewellery, glass, textiles and metalwork.
The show provides visitors with the chance to discover the story of the Pre-Raphaelites - Britain’s first modern art movement - and learn about their influence on artists and makers well into the 20th century.
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, until Sunday 5 January
THE FUTURE IS TODAY
Taking the subtitle Prints And The University Of Warwick, 1965 To Now, this brand-new major survey exhibition of work from the university’s art collection - and from other museums, artists and private collectors - examines the ideas that have been explored by successive generations during the 60 years since the university opened and the collection was founded.
The exhibition contains a free, working print studio, where visitors can make monoprints inspired by what they see in the show.
Image: Lubaina Himid, A Rake's Progress Hole in her Stocking (2022)
Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Wednesday 15 January - Sunday 9 March
EARTHBOUND
Work by nine artists and community makers is featured in this topical exhibition, a show set within the context of global anxiety about the climate crisis.
Addressing earthbound themes that connect people with soil, plants, seeds, mycelium, animals and birds - and the histories, cultures and knowledge surrounding these - the exhibition includes sculpture, drawing, painting and installation, as well as work produced via natural art-making techniques.
Image: Charmaine Watkiss, The warrior focuses intent to overcome adversity, 2022.
New Art Gallery, Walsall, until Sunday 8 June
UNSTILL LIFE
Unstill Life takes a look at a crucial aspect of the history of still-life painting: the expansion of empire, global trade and consumerism.
The emergence of Dutch still lifes coincided with the maritime transportation of colonial ‘rarities’ which were collected by the elite. These included gemstones and precious metals, silks and spices, animals, shells and ‘exotic’ fruits.
But celebratory paintings of this wealth and abundance obscured the brutal conquest of territory and suppression of local populations that was also taking place as global trade expanded...
Subtitled Global Mobility And Consumerism In Still Life Paintings, this fascinating exhibition challenges the viewer to reconsider the still-life genre, prompting the question ‘At what cost did the objects in these images get here?’
Barber Institute, University of Birmingham, until Sunday 26 January
RUBBISH REDESIGNED
This group exhibition reflects and celebrates the imaginative approaches which are being taken to circular design and waste innovation across the West Midlands.
The showcase highlights the creative uses of common waste materials, such as orange peel and cow manure, and addresses the pressing need to reconsider how the planet’s resources are utilised and recycled... Rubbish Redesigned forms part of MAC’s sustainability season.
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham until Sunday 2 March
REFLECTOR
Reflector is the culmination of an intensive professional development programme for emerging photographers, artists and curators from diverse backgrounds across the country.
The exhibition both celebrates the participants’ achievements to date and also provides an important step towards their future creative and professional development.
New Art Gallery, Walsall, until Sunday 9 March
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
“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.
“As we celebrate 60 years of Wildlife Photographer Of The Year,” adds Dr Gurr, “we also celebrate the generations of visitors who have been inspired by the beauty and majesty of its images, and the millions of connections made with nature.”
Visiting Birmingham as part of an extensive national and international tour, the exhibition features a host of awe-inspiring images capturing fascinating animal behaviour and breathtaking landscapes.
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, until Sunday 20 April
POP, PRINT, PROTEST
Featuring artwork created in the mid-20th century, this fascinating show explores how Pop Artists used mixed-media collage and combined text and image in order to protest against capitalism, racism and conflict. In the process of doing so, the artists were responding to some of the biggest social and political issues of the time, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War... The exhibition has been curated by Sophie Hatchwell, who is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Birmingham.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, until Sunday 11 May
Image credit: Bela Lugosi Journal (1964) Joe Tilson, © DACs
MATERIAL WORLDS: CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS AND TEXTILES
Hayward Gallery Touring’s new exhibition explores how simple everyday materials are being used to surprise and provoke, ‘creating worlds and telling stories ranging from the personal to the cosmic’.
Speaking about the show, its curator, Caroline Achaintre, said: “I wanted the exhibition to emphasise the transition from something quite everyday, domestic and supposedly unspectacular, into the creation of fantastical and extraordinary works, worlds, and visions.
“It has been an enriching experience to encounter such a diverse realm of artists and to create this exhibition, which features pieces by both upcoming and established artists from different generations.”
Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, until Sunday 15 December
ATCHIN TAN: TRAVELLING THROUGH ART
Oral histories, traditional storytelling, poetry and music all feature in this brand-new exhibition, which takes viewers on a visual journey through the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
Co-curated with members of those communities, the show presents works by Turner, Munnings and Gainsborough alongside newly commissioned artworks by Romani artists, some of which demonstrate skills from endangered crafts.
Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, until Sunday 5 January
PEACE AND NOISE: SOUNDS OF THE LANDSCAPE
Peace And Noise aims to introduce visitors to the elements of implied sound evident in historical landscapes.
The exhibition brings together some of the most sonically interesting examples of landscape prints and watercolours in the Barber’s collection, from rural Dutch scenes of the 17th century, through Gainsborough’s drawings of the rolling English countryside, to noisy, bustling Hogarth cityscapes.
Barber Institute, Birmingham, until Sunday 26 January
SCENT AND THE ART OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITES
“The exhibition is going to have a sensory experience,” explains Andrew Davies, communications & marketing manager at the Barber, in talking about Scent And The Art Of The Pre-Raphaelites. “We’re actually going to be producing scent in the gallery. There was a belief in Victorian times that you could smell a rainbow - it smelt like spring flowers and meadows... “One of the paintings we’re borrowing comes from Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. It’s called The Blind Girl, where they’re breathing in the scent of the rainbow in the background.”
Barber Institute, University of Birmingham, until Sunday 26 January
CHILA KUMARI SINGH BURMAN: SPECTACULAR DIVERSIONS
Highly rated contemporary artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman works in multiple media, with drawings, prints, collage and sculpture all featuring in her output.
An installation of her famous neons will light up the façade of Compton Verney, with Hindu deities and mythological creatures mingling with animals and ice creams in a glowing display.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Sunday 26 January
FRIENDS IN LOVE AND WAR: L'ÉLOGE DES MEILLEUR·ES ENNEMI·ES
An exhibition exploring the nature and role of friendship in contemporary life, Friends In Love And War features paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, textiles, film, sculpture and installation.
The exhibition is showing at Ikon as part of the venue’s 60th anniversary year.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Wednesday until Sunday 23 February
WASTE AGE: WHAT CAN DESIGN DO?
MAC’s first collaboration with the Design Museum is a group exhibition focusing on a new generation of designers who are ‘rethinking our relationship to everyday things’.
Telling the story of the environmental crisis, the show explores how design can transform waste into valuable resources.
The exhibition features a new sculptural commission inspired by clothes waste markets in Nigeria. The work has been created by Birmingham-based artist Abdulrazaq Awofeso.
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, until Sunday 23 February
THE REFLECTED SELF: PORTRAIT MINATURES, 1550 - 1850
Across a period exceeding 300 years, portrait miniature paintings created in Britain performed numerous functions. Not only did they serve as emblems of love and loyalty, they were also used as markers of royal favour and exchanged as diplomatic gifts between foreign courts.
Compton Verney’s new exhibition celebrates these exquisitely painted portable portraits, bringing together artwork from the gallery’s own collection with important loans from the Dumas Egerton Trust Collection and private lenders.
The exhibition also includes specially commissioned films, bringing to life the highly personal nature of the portraits. Work by contemporary artists - demonstrating the miniatures’ ongoing relevance and ability to captivate - also features.
Image: Simon Bevan
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Sunday 23 February
NO GOING BACK
A thought-provoking and, for visitors of a certain vintage, memory-stirring exhibition, No Going Back is presented by North Staffs Miners Wives and revisits the Miners’ Strike of 1984/85.
Featuring photographs and memorabilia recalling an event which radically changed Britain’s industrial landscape forever, the display will remain available to view until early March, its closure coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the end of the strike.
The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, until Sunday 2 March
PAINTED DREAMS: THE ART OF EVELYN DE MORGAN
Pre-Raphaelite artist Mary Evelyn Pickering De Morgan (1855 - 1919) painted in an elegant style inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings - particularly the work of Botticelli - and often featured female figures and mythological or allegorical subjects in her work.
This month, Wolverhampton Art Gallery exhibits 30 of De Morgan’s oil paintings and drawings. And it’s not the first time that her work has visited the city... The exhibition - titled Painted Dreams - is a recreation of a show held at the same venue in 1907.
The artworks will be reunited for the first time in 120 years, having been loaned for exhibition from private collections and by the Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation.
De Morgan studied at Slade School of Art at the University of London, where she excelled, winning a full scholarship and prizes for her work. During her time at the school she chose to paint under her ambiguously gendered middle name, Evelyn. This decision was made so that her work would be judged equally alongside that of her male peers, rather than being subject to the prejudices held against women painters at the time.
These prejudices created an environment in which female artists’ work was rarely showcased in modern galleries - the pursuit of art was not seen as a suitable occupation for women.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s curator in the early 20th century, JJ Brownsword, first encountered De Morgan’s work while he was visiting her husband, ceramics designer William De Morgan.
Brownsword was enthralled by what he saw, writing in 1906 that De Morgan’s paintings were “vividly impressed on my memory”.
As curator, Brownsword was invested in bringing the work of unknown artists to exhibit in Wolverhampton. So he wrote to De Morgan, asking her if she “would be so kind as to lend” her artwork “to the Corporation of Wolverhampton for an exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery”. At the time, it was particularly unusual for a female artist to be the subject of a solo exhibition.
The 1907 show was to be the largest of De Morgan’s career and certainly made an impression. One reviewer at the Wolverhampton Express & Star newspaper described the pictures as “painted dreams”, from which the gallery’s 2024 exhibition takes its evocative title.
The new exhibition will present the works chronologically, across three galleries, to highlight some of the themes that De Morgan revisited throughout her career. She frequently drew from mythological subjects, one example of which is Flora - a lifesize painting featuring the Roman Goddess of Spring.
She also painted in an allegorical style, in pieces which reimagine abstract ideas as human figures. One such example is her impressive painting, The Storm Spirits, which shows thunder, lightning and rain represented as three beautiful women.
Three pictures which were originally exhibited in 1907 were sadly lost in a warehouse fire in 1991. However, local artist Paul Francis-Walker, who also works in the Pre-Raphaelite style, has recreated these paintings for inclusion in the exhibition. The recreation of the lost pieces ensures that the new show is as close as possible to the 1907 display.
Painted Dreams not only showcases the work of a talented artist, but also offers a unique opportunity to dive into the past of the gallery itself. In the recreation of this ground-breaking exhibition, Wolverhampton Art Gallery reconnects with its history - to a time when it was a key player in recognising and elevating De Morgan’s work, and in celebrating a female artist who might otherwise have been disregarded and forgotten.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, until Sunday 9 March
COLLECTING COVENTRY
Seventy-five years of collecting is being celebrated in this brand-new and long-running exhibition.
Featuring a selection of objects dating from the founding of the Herbert Art Gallery in 1949 through to the present day, the show is being presented across four of the Herbert’s rooms.
Featured objects and curiosities include a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, a Covid testing kit, LS Lowry’s famous painting of Ebbw Vale and a number of items being displayed for the very first time.
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until Sunday 27 April 2025
GREENER GLASS
With an emphasis on eco-friendly practices and the artistic exploration of environmental themes, the future of glassmaking is brought firmly into focus in this long-running exhibition.
The show - co-curated by UK artists in collaboration with University of Birmingham students - features a diverse array of glass artworks produced using a wide range of techniques, including kiln work, glass blowing, mosaic, flame working and cast glass.
Stourbridge Glass Museum, Wordsley, until Sunday 27 July
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 Tues 21 February 2026