The Migrant Festival
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 30 May to 2 June
The Migrant Festival celebrates Birmingham’s diverse roots, welcoming new arrivals to the city. This year’s programme includes designer Osman Yousefzada’s fashion parade, a performance by Syrian Ood Player, Rihab Azar from Celebrating Sanctuary and a tour of the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) exhibition Handsworth Self Portrait: 40 Years On (23 March to 2 June).
2019 marks the year of Avengers: Endgame the final instalment in Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). After the previous film Avengers: Infinity War audiences were left with the losses of many characters and the uncertainty of what was to come.
Endgame is a three-hour epic that pulls audiences through every emotion there is, from sadness and grief to exhilaration and triumph.
This year is the 200th anniversary of the massacre of peaceful protestors at Saint Peter’s Field in Manchester. The People’s History Museum is marking the anniversary with their exhibition “Disrupt? Peterloo and Protest”. The aim of the exhibition is to tell the story of the massacre and examine its relevance today.
This is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of what I think is one of the most exciting and thought provoking artists around. Like all great art there is much more to it than just the initial response to how it looks; it has layer upon layer of meaning as well as layer upon layer of beads and other reused stuff.
Marking the centenary of the 1918-19 revolution in Germany, Glasgow’s Hunterian gallery has on display an impressive and wide-ranging selection of etchings, lithographs and woodcuts from the wave of printmaking in Germany during the first two decades of the 20th century, as well as works representing key influences on this movement.
For their latest exhibition, the V&A invites the viewer to “discover how Mary Quant launched a fashion revolution on the British high street”. The R-word features heavily throughout, used to describe everything from her use of coloured tights to a prescient view of the sweeping social change which characterised the 1960s.
It is interesting that, after many years of media obsession with serial killers, a new book, opera and TV documentary share an emphasis on the social conditions and attitudes that made some women more vulnerable to assault and allowed the killers to get away with it for so long.
Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Five uncovers the impoverished lives of the victims of the infamous Victorian killer, Jack the Ripper. She highlights the material circumstances which drove them into prostitution to keep themselves and their families alive.
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, set in 1980s Britain, three years after Thatcher came to power, is a play of binaries. The first two acts uncover the rampant competition and disregard some women have for one another in a world where monetarism and individualism are rife.
Dave first rose to fame as a teenager in 2016 through his freestyle clips on grime and UK rap platforms. Since then he has proved to all listeners that he’s a lyrical genius and a talented musician who can even play the piano.
More importantly, Dave must be respected as one of the brightest conscious and political rappers alive today. He supports Love Music Hate Racism and has dedicated his song Question Time to dissing Theresa May’s austerity. Psychodrama is the 20 year old artist’s debut album.
