We look at what exactly the artist's monumental new Manchester exhibition highlights, and why it features so many buttons and lego pieces. Ai Weiwei has never been one to shy away from making noise, ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. At a certain point in Ai Weiwei: Button Up! at Manchester’s Aviva studios, it came to me that I must be ...

In the introduction to a selection of his plays published in 1991, the English writer Michael Frayn tried to diagnose what went wrong with Balmoral, his 1987 farce in which the British monarch’s ...

Aviva Studios in Manchester, part of Factory International, is a vast warehouse space. Renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has spent the last four years planning how to utilise this immense ...

A quote from George Santayana’s book The Life of Reason feels pertinent right now. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. As you walk around the Aviva Studios’ vast warehouse ...

The Chinese activist-artist, Ai Weiwei, opens his monumental exhibition Button Up! at Factory International’s Aviva Studios today, 3 July, featuring a mix of large-scale new and existing works, many ...

Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei has hailed Manchester for "achieving something amazing" by creating the city's flagship Aviva Studios. The Chinese activist, who has created political sculptures, ...

The artist’s latest show is a staggering takedown of colonial history, warfare and the migrant crisis, featuring buttons by the tonne and richly perfumed tea History has repeated itself all over Ai ...

Presented by Factory International, the exhibition runs from 2nd July to 6th September 2026 and spans the breadth of Ai Weiwei’s practice, from sculpture, ceramics and film to live performance.

Ai Weiwei, I suspect, would like me to feel guilt, and as I walk out of his new exhibition, guilt is what I feel. Not, though, over my complicity in Britain’s imperial deeds, or our more recent ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Ai Weiwei's Button Up! is mounted across a single vast space at Aviva Studios, Manchester - REUTERS/Temilade Adelaja Ai Weiwei, I ...