Visual Arts

Visual Arts previews from around the region

Craftspace: Queer + Metals

Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, until Sun 2 April

The multiplicity of queerness is here explored via metalwork and metalsmithing, in an exhibition that makes visible the ways in which LGBTQIA+ creatives are shaping, disrupting and contributing to contemporary culture. Featuring artworks, video interviews and an Instagram campaign, the Craftspace presentation aims to ‘make connections within a diverse, intersectional, complex and fluid community of making’. The physical element of the exhibition features responses from eight UK artists, one of whom is Roxanne Simone. Showcasing welded and hydroformed ‘imperfect’ objects (pictured), Roxanne’s work explores and reimagines identities formed through the impact of diaspora and migration.

Visual Arts

DearTomorrow: Dear Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton Art Gallery, until Sun 15 January

“The very core of our work has always been to change hearts and minds through a deeper connection to the climate crisis,” explains Jill Kubit, the co-founder of DearTomorrow, the climate storytelling & arts project presenting this exhibition. “We’ve learnt this comes most freely from pulling together the things that touch us most. Our community engagement exhibits allow people not only to consider what the climate crisis means on a personal and community level, but to establish climate actions that feel most meaningful and impactful to them. This is where real change starts.” Bringing together art, photography, film, design and poetry, the exhibition ‘presents landscapes built and inspired by letters written by the Wolverhampton community’.

Radical Landscapes

Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, until Sun 18 December

Organised in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, Radical Landscapes features more than 100 works by leading modern and contemporary artists, including Turner Prize 2022 nominees Ingrid Pollard and Veronica Ryan. The exhibition looks beyond the lush green hills most readily associated with landscape art, reflecting instead on the diversity of the British landscape and the communities which inhabit it. Focusing on a wide range of subjects, including activism, trespass and the climate emergency, the featured works illustrate the ways in which creatives have drawn new meanings from the land, using it to inspire ideas of freedom, experimentation, mysticism and rebellion.

Dutch Flowers

Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until Sun 15 January

The 17th-century emergence of Dutch flower painting - a genre of art that saw Netherlandish painters produce work which exclusively depicted flowers - has been attributed in part to the development of scientific interest in botany and horticulture and the Dutch Golden Age phenomenon of ‘tulip mania’. In the period which followed, Dutch flower painting blossomed, reaching the peak of its popularity in the late 18th century... This fascinating exhibition traces the development of the genre and features a selection of paintings from the National Gallery’s collection. The show includes works by leading artists in the field, such as Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Rachel Ruysch and Jan van Huysum.

Alberta Whittle: We Gather And Dream Of Grown Up In Britain: New Congregations 100 Years Of Teenage Kicks

Grand Union Gallery, Digbeth, Birmingham, until Sat 10 December

Alberta Whittle brings together public sculpture, film, workshops and community gardening with women’s groups ‘to address issues surrounding use and ownership of land, and to aid in the much-needed healing of our Birmingham community’. As well as contemplating issues of poverty and inclusion, the exhibition also poses questions about the effectiveness of grassroots community building, direct community action and positive healing gardening practices. A Birmingham 2022 Festival commission.

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until Sun 12 February

The everyday experiences and cultural impact of young people is celebrated in this long-running exhibition. Featuring photographs, objects and stories, Grown Up In Britain has been curated by and drawn from the extensive photographic collections of the Museum of Youth Culture, an emerging organisation dedicated to the styles, sounds and social movements innovated by young people over the last 100 years. The Museum has been gathering together photographs of youth and subculture movements for more than a quarter of a century. Its impressive collection includes everything ‘from the bomb-site bicycle racers in post-war 1940s London, to the Acid House ravers of 1980s northern England’.