Norwich
Plane Jam
Unmanned aircraft will enter the lower airspace of the city of Norwich as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, which runs from 6 to 21 May. Plane Jam is an intervention by the artistic collective HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) that grew out of the Parisian duo's residency at the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences. Miniature models of Airbus 380s suspended on an ingenious network of high-tensile steel cables will release remote-controlled emissions. Unlike the harmful toxins produced by real planes that we never see and can therefore ignore, these coloured clouds will be highly visible to thousands of pedestrians in the city centre, challenging common perceptions of low-cost air travel and highlighting its effect on global warming.
• http://nnf11.nnfestival.org.uk
London
Collect: The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects
From "chromatic landscapes" to sculptural chairs and radical ceramics, not to mention a constantly evolving "living wall", this year's Collect fair (6-9 May) joins forces with 37 galleries to present the best of contemporary crafts from around the world. Materials used include metal, glass, bamboo, lacquer and textiles. More innovative work will be shown in the new Project Space on the second floor of the Saatchi Gallery, which has hosted the fair since 2009. Matt Durran, for example, uses a variety of media and finds inspiration in dust clouds and the action of volcanoes. Katharine Morling reworks everyday objects such as ladders into "fragile sketches of their former selves, unravelling as stories in the mind of the 'voyeur'?".
• www.craftscouncil.org.uk/collect
London
Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich
The Barbican Centre celebrated the 70th birthday of Steve Reich in lavish style in 2006. This year, a marathon weekend of six concerts at the Barbican Hall and LSO St Luke's (7-8 May) explores the influence of the pioneer of musical minimalism and features all the new works he has written in the meantime. Most notable is WTC 9/11, his response to the events of 11 September 2001, when Reich's son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter were in his flat four blocks away from the World Trade Center: this string quartet will receive its European premiere in a performance by the Kronos Quartet. Many of the ensembles associated with Reich - Bang on a Can, eighth blackbird, So Percussion and Theatre of Voices - will also take part in Reverberations.
www.barbican.org.uk/reverberations
London
Mick Jagger: Young in the 1960s
To coincide with the launch of Mick Jagger: The Photobook (Thames & Hudson), the National Portrait Gallery is bringing together material from its own collection with new acquisitions to create a richly textured picture of the singer's early years of fame (until November). Highlights include Cecil Beaton's 1967 portrait of Jagger in Morocco, an image by Philip Townsend from the Rolling Stones' first official photo shoot, reportage of their press conference in Green Park featuring all the leading photographers of the day, Michael Cooper's study of the group for the cover of their album Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) and Michael Joseph's louche image of them with a menagerie of animals for the gatefold of Beggars Banquet (1968).
London
Breath: Helen Pynor
Award-winning Australian artist Helen Pynor spent the year 2009-10 working in London close to the Thames and became fascinated by its stories of accidental drowning. Her new exhibition at the GV Art Gallery in London (5 May to 2 July) focuses on the interior of the human body. Liquid Ground is a series of sumptuously produced, large-scale photographic images that depict languid, water-buoyed garments with organs drifting out through diaphanous openings. Also on display are framed, hand-cut Ordnance Survey maps of the tidal reaches of the Thames, where everything except waterways and roads has been excised to create maps resembling the circulatory and gastrointestinal structures hidden inside us all.
To submit details of forthcoming events and exhibitions, email: matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com.