Culture

Cathy Come Home, the 1966 BBC TV play directed by Ken Loach, exposed how unemployment, poverty and overcrowded and inadequate housing were condemning thousands of families to homelessness — and dividing parents from their children. The play provoked a public outcry, the setting up of homelessness charity Crisis, and eventually the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act of 1977.

This exhibition of artists’ responses to conflict since the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 ranges from sculpture to video installations.

It includes well known pieces such as Ai Weiwei’s marble surveillance camera on a plinth, Ivan Navarro’s “inverted columns” effect created with mirrors, as well as the vase Grayson Perry was working on as the terror attacks happened, which he proceeded to embellish with possible figures and comments possibly made by those caught up in the bombing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Another Kind of Life is a large and ambitious exhibition. There are works by 20 photographers, covering a period from the 1960s to the present.

The people depicted cover a huge range of very different experiences, from the desperate homeless to neo-Nazis in the American wilderness, and many trans people across different societies surviving in the teeth of oppression.

Mark E Smith, enigmatic, unruly founder, frontman and driving force of the influential rock group The Fall died, aged 60, in late January. He was an often inspired, regularly drunk, sometimes awkward and, more often than not, brilliant musical artist.