The best: Exhibitions around the North West this autumn

Featuring a fascinating collection of objects and stories, the Science and Industry Museum’s latest major exhibition Injecting Hope: The Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine explores the worldwide collaborative efforts to develop a vaccine against coronavirus, with a particular spotlight on the efforts here in Manchester.

The collection spans personal tales, videos and significant items from the period including a vial of the first COVID vaccine to be administered worldwide, Andy Burnham’s worker jacket from his media address, a bed from Manchester’s Nightingale Hospital and many more

Manchester Museum’s Wild explores our precarious but optimistic dynamic with the natural world, taking over the Exhibition Hall with a fascinating examination of the ways in which people around the world are rebuilding our connections with a planet in jeopardy.

Featuring an immersive installation, audio, film and interactive elements, as well as an array of natural history collections and artworks, Wild transports visitors across a captivatingly diverse global topography and a wide array of voices, from Aboriginal elders to academic researchers, to champion the innovative methods used to restore biodiversity and shape a sustainable future environment while challenging how we think about and interact with nature.

Also free to enter, Manchester Art Gallery’s spellbinding exhibition Unpicking Couture celebrates groundbreaking moments from the world of fashion. Told through a collection of stunning pieces from across the last century, the collection features unique pieces by Christian Dior, Azzedine Alaïa, Cristobal Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, Bruce Oldfield and Alexander McQueen, as well as a recently restored 1930s silk velvet jacket by Italian couturier Elsa Schiaparelli.

Leeds Art Gallery hosts a major retrospective of celebrated British documentary photographer, Peter Mitchell.

Known for documenting Leeds throughout his career, Nothing Lasts Forever, which comes nearly 50 years since his first exhibition at the gallery, examines and reflects upon key bodies of work from Mitchell’s storied career and features works previously unseen by the public.

Curated to recognise over a century of national public fortitude, this year’s Banner Exhibition delivers another sweeping textile timeline of ground-breaking protests and social unity in the long, tireless struggle for the rights we have today, with twenty-six historic and contemporary banners on display and free to explore.

Featuring art across history marbled with defiance, from trade union placards and Miners’ Strike slogans to more recent campaigns on disability and migrant rights, the exhibition occupies a quarter of the People’s History Museum for almost a full year.

Featuring nine commissioned artworks from Manchester-based artists in celebration of their respective footballing heroes, MARKERS honours the off-pitch impact of pioneering players in an exploration of their unique personal journeys, the skills with which they’ve equipped themselves and their involvement in causes spanning LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, women’s football and ethnic minority representation.

Heroes included in MARKERS includes Eric Cantona, Raheem Sterling, Park Ji-sung, Mary Phillip, David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Pete the Badge, Justin Fashanu and Lucy Clark.

The National Football Museum also provides a Community Creative Hub which encourages visitors to express their love for their favourite footballers with boundless artistic imagination.

Opening this August, the brand new dinosaur spectacular Jurassic World: The Exhibition sends visitors back to the prehistoric climes of the Trafford Centre overflow car park with an immersive, roar-some jungle experience which recreates scenes from the beloved movie franchise and brings Mancunians face-to-face with the brachiosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus rex and countless other creatures from the mysterious land of Isla Nublar.

Picturing Eccles is a new photography project from the historic town’s photographer-in-residence, Paula Keenan.

Developed in partnership with Open Eye Gallery, and to be showcased in an exhibition at Eccles Library, the collection and initiative has been designed to preserve the legacy of the town and its residents through existing photographs of memories created there.

Guests are invited to immerse themselves in an exhibition that combines art and science to spotlight one of nature’s most important creatures.

Bees: A Story of Survival explores how over 120 million years, bees have been an integral component in human survival, before examining how changes to the environment and climate mean their existence is under serious threat.

Soundscapes, interactive elements, projection and light all combine to place guests in the heart of the world of these tiny, vital creatures.

PLURIVERSE is the latest major exhibition from Lubna Chowdhary, an artist renowned for exploring the interconnectivity of objects in the material world across an eclectic range of cultural contexts.

This latest collection, which debuts at Graves Gallery, includes new drawings and sculptures developed during residencies in India and Italy earlier this year.

PLURIVERSE features a range of Chowdhary’s installations and new works alongside Certain Times LII, 2021, a striking glazed ceramic landscape of geometric, architectural, tile forms which recently joined the city’s visual art collection.

Blackpool’s Showtown has launched its first major exhibition, inviting British photographer, Andy Hollingworth to showcase his collection of photographs dedicated to the people who make us laugh.

Andy has worked with some of the UK’s most famous comedic personalities and I Photograph Comedians includes 50 prints of Andy’s photographs as well as objects of comedy memorabilia from his personal collection.

Andy Hollingworth said: “This retrospective of my work over the last 30 years reflects the changing faces of comedy in the UK and my interaction with them. I’m delighted that it’s being displayed at Showtown in Blackpool – the very heart of British entertainment for the last 100 years!”

Bharti Kher’s Alchemies is described as a celebration of diversity, discovery and personal identity.

A powerful exhibition of sculpture and 2D work by one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, the work hones in on themes of magical transformation and the ancient practice of trying to change ordinary metal to gold — alchemy.

Kher blurs boundaries between animals, humans, nature and objects, resulting in hybrid beings that combine the every day with the imaginary and the extraordinary.

Jamaican-born sculptor Ronald Moody is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, and this major exhibition, guest curated by Moody specialist Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski explores the development of Moody’s art as well as his contribution and impact on British and international art history.

Sculpting Life brings together more than 50 of Moody’s works ranging from large-scale wooden figures through to post-war experimentation with concrete and resin casting.

These works are set within the context of his contemporaries Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, artists he exhibited alongside such as Eileen Agar and his friend Jacob Epstein, as well as the Caribbean Artists Movement of which Moody was a founding member.

The Lowry’s brand-new free exhibition Queens celebrates the heroines of history and the modern world and asks ‘what kind of Queen are you?’

Drawing inspiration from the hit Tudor satire production Six, the collection showcases the incredible costumes and fan art from the show. Along with the collection, the exhibition is accompanied by a series of drop-in activities, specially commissioned artwork, family-friendly events, live music and dance parties.

A new major exhibition coming to Leigh’s Turnpike Gallery delves into how the arts can aid in recovery. Beyond the Surface features work from the Fallen Angels Dance Theatre, a groundbreaking north west arts organisation that uses dance and movement to support recovery.

Central to the collection is a new digital dance, sound and light installation titled Samadhi. By uniting professional and community dancers, the immersive piece plays out in its own gallery space, and is inspired by the real-life experiences of Fallen Angels’ north west recovery communities, offering a platform for dancers who are themselves in recovery.