There are exhibitions you go to see, and exhibitions you experience. Ai Weiwei’s Button Up! at Aviva Studios undoubtedly falls into the latter category.
The internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist has brought the most ambitious exhibition ever staged in the North of England, filling the cavernous warehouse space with monumental works that examine empire, industrialisation, migration, censorship and power. It is an exhibition measured in millions of buttons, millions of Lego bricks and artworks stretching almost 50 metres long.
Whether you agree with every political conclusion Ai invites you to draw is almost beside the point. Few visitors are likely to leave without something to think about.
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But perhaps more significantly for Manchester, Button Up! represents another landmark moment in the city’s growing cultural confidence.
Just a few years after opening, Aviva Studios has already attracted some of the biggest names in contemporary art, from Yayoi Kusama to now Ai Weiwei. Convincing an artist of his stature to create major new works specifically for Manchester is no small achievement. It underlines Factory International’s ambition to compete not simply with London’s major galleries, but with leading international cultural venues too.
The exhibition feels entirely at home in the vast Warehouse space. Ai himself has acknowledged that its scale demanded monumental work, and the building proves once again why it is unlike almost any other arts venue in Britain.
Manchester also provides a fitting backdrop for these artworks. Rather than presenting a generic retrospective, Ai has rooted the exhibition in the city’s own story. The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution becomes both setting and subject, as he explores the relationship between Britain’s industrial rise, imperial expansion and China’s modern history throught his gigantic, often stark pieces.
The exhibition’s Eight-Nation Alliance Flags, uses four million salvaged buttons from a former English button factory to recreate the banners of the imperial powers that invaded China during the Boxer Rebellion. Elsewhere, Law of the Journey fills the space with an enormous inflatable refugee boat, while Wang Family Ancestral Hall painstakingly reconstructs a Ming Dynasty temple rescued from rural China.
The result is an exhibition that asks visitors to reconsider historical narratives. Manchester’s industrial success created extraordinary innovation and prosperity, but it also sat within wider systems of global trade and empire whose consequences continue to shape the modern world. Ai doesn’t offer answers, but he asks difficult questions about how wealth, power and exploitation remain interconnected.
Works constructed from Lego recreations of famous paintings and military imagery are interesting, but don’t have the same impact you get from standing under the enormous button flags or enormous refugee boat. For me its the works of sheer scale that create the moments of genuine emotional impact that would be impossible in a conventional gallery.
There is an undeniable ambition to the exhibition that mirrors the ambition behind Aviva Studios itself. It is difficult to imagine many venues in the UK capable of staging something on this scale.
That said, Button Up! is unlikely to become the sort of blockbuster exhibition that attracts huge numbers of casual visitors. Its subject matter is challenging, often bleak, and assumes a willingness to engage with complex questions about colonialism, migration, authoritarianism and historical responsibility. Combined with ticket prices that may prove a barrier for some audiences, it feels destined to appeal more strongly to those already interested in contemporary art than families looking for a straightforward day out. That would be a shame because beyond the politics lies a real feat of craftsmanship and storytelling. Whether constructed from reclaimed timber, porcelain, glass, tea, buttons or toy bricks, Ai transforms ordinary materials into works that provoke reflection from any visitor.
Either way, landing an artist of Ai Weiwei’s international stature reinforces the city’s reputation as one of Europe’s leading cultural destinations. Alongside its thriving music, theatre and festival scene, Manchester is increasingly demonstrating that it can host visual art on a genuinely global scale.
