A Handpicked History Of Floral Art, Kabuki On Screen And A Poetry Competition What To See, Do And Create This Week

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Caroline Walker is one of my favourite working artists. The observations in her work are so exquisitely rendered that they often feel almost uncanny. Such was the case when I encountered her 2025 painting Kitchen Table.

It shows a young girl, perhaps five or six, drawing with quiet concentration, a pink felt tip gripped firmly in her hand. In the foreground sits a bright yet somehow wild bouquet – a mix of polished pink blooms and smoky lilac thistles. The paper it was wrapped in, along with the scissors used to trim the stems, spills across the table.

The scene struck me because it could have been lifted straight from my own childhood. To me, these flowers tell a story: a mother once as unbridled in her creativity as her young daughter, now finding moments for it where she can – arranging a shop-bought bouquet into something both sculptural and joyful.

But that's just my interpretation. Flowers have shifting meanings for different periods, places and people – which is why they make for a rich exhibition theme.

Walker's painting is on show at Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. Our reviewer, artist Judith Brocklehurst, likened the curation – featuring works by Walker alongside Henri Rousseau, Chris Ofili and Lubaina Himid – to a“handpicked” bouquet, each piece“selected for its colour, form or meaning”. The curators, she writes,“have certainly achieved a complex yet complementary arrangement”.

Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today is at Kettle's Yard until September 6 2026.

Read more: A new exhibition explores empire, love and loss through paintings of flowers from 1900

As an arts editor, I'm offered recommendations every day – TV shows I“have” to binge, books I“won't be able to put down”, exhibitions accompanied by a“great café”. Sometimes I nod politely, knowing I'll never find the time to watch all 28 seasons of a well-meaning recommender's favourite series. More often, though, their enthusiasm is contagious.

Such was the case when our deputy editor, Laura Hood, told me about her visit to the Michaelina Wautier exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Had there not been a laptop screen separating us on Zoom, I suspect she might have reached through and shaken my shoulders as she implored me to see it.

Art historian Gabriele Neher saw the show shortly after it opened and was equally galvanised. Painting in the 1600s, Wautier's portraiture is marked by an“elegant palette” and“mastery of textures”. These masterpieces were designed to defy the challenge that a woman can not paint like a man.

Read more: Michaelina Wautier review: an astoundingly skilled painter returned to her rightful place in the spotlight

Many times I've pressed Hettie Judah's book Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood into the hands of friends and her new book, How to Enter the Art World, sounds just as sage.

A particular strength, according to our reviewer sculptor Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, is that“Judah does not imagine her reader to be a blank tablet”. She writes for someone who already has a life – a person“at a transitional point as an artist”: perhaps a parent, someone changing careers, or returning to a long-held passion after years of work or care. It's a book that takes the complex needs of older artists seriously.

Read more: How to Enter the Art World by Hettie Judah offers a smørgasbord of sage advice

Kokuho, Japan's highest-grossing live-action film, is well worth seeking out at your local independent cinema this week.

A vivid, expansive epic spanning five decades and running close to three hours, the film is set in the world of kabuki – Japan's most popular traditional performing art. Professional kabuki remains a tight-knit, all-male sphere built on family lineage: actors pass hereditary stage names down to their sons, and successful outsiders are exceedingly rare.

That makes Kokuho's central question more culturally specific than the usual A Star Is Born-style narrative: what makes a great kabuki actor – relentless hard work, or the accident of birth?

Kokuho is in select cinemas now

Read more: Kokuho is Japan's highest ever grossing live-action film – a lavish kabuki epic about talent, lineage and sacrifice

This week The Conversation UK launched a new climate poetry award to bring science and creativity closer together, inviting UK-based researchers to write a poem inspired by climate change research.

The competition kicks off with a free introductory climate poetry workshop, led by poet Professor Sam Illingworth of Edinburgh Napier University, on May 13. Sign up here and find out more about how to enter here.

Read more: Introducing The Conversation Climate Poetry Award – for UK and Ireland-based academics

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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