Corridor8

As I walk into the first of three large rooms at Nottingham Contemporary, orange walls from floor to ceiling, my first thought is: where are the birds? I find the title intriguing. And the soul is for the birds is the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe of the Brazilian artist Chico da Silva, bringing together paintings from across his career. I am surrounded by artworks depicting fish that take me back to my own experiences of visiting the Amazon.

Scrolling through the Iranian-British artist Parham Ghalamdar’s Instagram, I stumble across an image caption in Arabic from Surah Ar-Rahman of the Quran, which, when translated, reads: ‘Then when the sky is split open and becomes rose-red like molten oil.’ Almost instantly, it recalls for me the hellish imagery of Tehran ablaze in early March due to overnight Israeli and American bombardment of oil facilities.

Absence at Liverpool’s Stable Gallery is a photography exhibition, produced in partnership with Open Eye Gallery. It brings together work by seven visual sociologists, alongside photographs selected from an open call across Liverpool City Region. Place is an important organising principle in the exhibition which presents photographic work made in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Palestine, Chicago, Berlin, Singapore and Liverpool.

Upon entering the gallery at New Art Exchange I felt like I had been transported somewhere else, an organised explosion of colour, a universe occupied by intricate and detailed handmade objects. Matrika: She Who Makes Worlds is a newly developed exhibition by Saroj Patel that explores women’s strength, ancestral memory and the futures that can be imagined.

Rough Terrain brings together ten artists working in, on, and about Cumbria. The exhibition’s curatorial framework draws on the writing of environment campaigner Marion Shoard, known for coining the term ‘edgelands’. In her articulation of the interfacial landscapes between urban and rural, Shoard calls for ‘expression[s] of the dynamism that the interface enshrines’. Rough Terrain sets out to meet this call and quickly expands upon it.

'Jason and the Adventure of 254' at Attenborough Arts Centre, 2026, a Wellcome Collection exhibition. Photography by Reece Straw, 2026. Jason Wilsher-Mills describes his work as “Think I, Daniel Blake meets The Beano”. I’m so glad he didn’t say The Dandy. I was never a fan of the Texan Desperate Dan and his cow pies. I much preferred The Beano’s mischievous Dennis the Menace and the other misfits that looked as though they’d been pulled directly from my primary school class photo.

I love visiting an artist’s studio for the first time and feeling a rush of recognition. Jessie Tam’s window at PINK in Stockport is covered in various sheets of semi-transparent white: a loose curtain with almost imperceptible embroidered lettering; a long sheet hand painted with swirling brushstrokes; the vertical slats of a pulled-back blind.

Louise Giovanelli: From Here to Here to Here, curated by Paulette Brien, is the Manchester-based painter’s second solo exhibition at Grundy Art Gallery. Containing work spanning 2014 to 2025, it charts the trajectory of her artistic practice, highlighting key moments from her career thus far.

Microtonal is an installation comprising 200 borindos (pronounced boreendo) – a clay wind instrument from the desert of Sindh, Pakistan. Officially added to the‘UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding’ during the twentieth session of the Intergovernmental Committee, in New Delhi, India, in December 2025, it gained global recognition as an instrument worth preserving.

Felicity Hammond’s installation ‘Reactor’ is an interrogation of technologies’ implications for the future of warfare. Located at Signal Film and Media in Barrow-in-Furness, an industrial town that is home to the largest indoor shipbuilding facility in Europe where submarines have been built for over 140 years, the exhibition could not be more relevant in asking questions about autonomous weapons systems and AI. This is Hammond’s second exhibition at Signal Film and Media.