Internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei turns his critical gaze to the last 200 years of global history with his major new exhibition, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! , the artist’s most expansive presentation in the North to date. Turning his lens on two centuries of Chinese and British relations with inspirations from Manchester, a city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, Button Up! explores how historic systems of trade, empire and exploitation resonate in today’s humanitarian and political crises.
Conceived as a total environment, the exhibition brings together new and existing large-scale works on display in the UK for the first time. The monumental installation features porcelain, cotton, glass, bronze and even buttons and toy bricks. Each material contains a story of human invention and consumption. Together, they paint a picture of globalisation. Button Up! also features the world premiere of a new body of work created especially for the vast spaces of the Warehouse – Eight-Nation Alliance Flags made from hundreds of thousands of buttons, as well as a new version of History Of Bombs made entirely from toy bricks.
Learn more at factoryinternational.org.
