Chihuly at Kew Gardens, London

Dale Chihuly, the celebrated US glass artist, exhibited at Kew Gardens 13 years ago. It was his most recent major outdoor show in Europe – and one of the most popular exhibitions ever held at Kew. Now he is back with Chihuly: Reflections on nature – 32 dazzling installations, including his Sapphire Star, the Seaforms series and a new work specially designed for the Temperate House, which recently reopened after £41m restoration. From August, the gardens will open late for selected Chihuly Nights, when the artworks will be illuminated and set to music. The Botanical and Pavilion restaurants will also stay open late, plus there will be ice-cream stands and prosecco bars.

• Included with entry to the gardens – from £16.50 adult, £4.50 child over four, until 27 October, kew.org

Soldiers of Sacrifice, Portsmouth

Photograph: James Sharp/Big Red Photography

Sculptor Alfie Bradley is perhaps best-known for Knife Angel, an eight-metre-high figure made from more than 100,000 knives collected during police amnesties (on tour, currently in Victoria Square, Birmingham). Now he has turned his attention to bullets. Soldiers of Sacrifice is a new sculpture incorporating 4,413 replica bullets – one for each allied serviceman killed on D-Day. The sculpture depicts Den Brotheridge, believed to be the first allied soldier killed on 6 June 1944, and was commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day. It is on display at the D-Day Story museum in Portsmouth, which has a five-day programme of events over the anniversary (5-9 June). Like the Knife Angel, it may go on tour later in the year.

• From £9 adult, £4.50 child, under-fives free, theddaystory.com

Bring the Paint, Leicester

This month, Leicester is hosting the second edition of Bring the Paint, an international street art festival. The inaugural festival took place in 2017 with a mix of live artworks, exhibitions, music, breakdancing, skateboarding and BMX. The 2019 event will feature 50 graffiti artists from all over the world, plus a bigger programme of activities, workshops for children and an affordable art fair. Empty shops will be transformed with 3D floor art and huge murals will appear across the city, joining dozens of existing street artworks, including those commissioned to celebrate Leicester City’s Premier League win in 2016. The main events take place in the St George’s cultural quarter on 25 May and the Frog Island area on 26 May.

• Free, 20-26 May, bringthepaint.co.uk

Folkestone Triennial, Kent

Antony Gormley’s Another Time XVIII in Folkestone. Photograph: Thierry Bal

Every three years, site-specific outdoor artworks by leading contemporary artists are commissioned for the Folkestone Triennial (next in 2020) – and many become permanent fixtures. This spring, 15 installations from the 2017 festival have been rehomed around the town, including pieces by Antony Gormley, David Shrigley and Lubaina Himid. One of the new acquisitions reflects the artist’s concern about climate change: Bill Woodrow’s The Ledge is a white steel sculpture of an Inuit figure and a seal on a thin layer of ice. It joins existing work by artists including Tracey Emin, Yoko Ono and Cornelia Parker, taking the town’s total to 45. The Clearing is a new cafe-bar in its own architectural installation on the first floor of the Quarterhouse cultural hub, and there will be art talks, tours and workshops over the summer.

• Free, permanent, folkestoneartworks.co.uk

World record attempt, Cornwall

The Newlyn School of Art is hoping to set a world record on the Cornish coast

The Newlyn School of Art has partnered with the National Trust for a Guinness World Record attempt: the most people painting a landscape outdoors at the same time. The mass installation, called Art For Good, will take place on the cliffs between Land’s End and Sennen Cove, with several hundred people – from beginners to professional artists – expected to pick up a paintbrush. Each will wear a coloured hat and be evenly spaced, so that from an aerial perspective they’ll form a dotted line intended to look like a footpath on an OS map. The money raised will be used to create a new clifftop path, and the plein-air painting will be followed by a mass beach clean. It is the first in a series of annual large-scale art events planned by the art school to raise awareness of environmental issues. Those who want to hone their skills in advance can sign up for a monthly painting workshop at the NT-owned Nymans in West Sussex (£70, next workshops 27-29 June).

• Admission free, 1 September, discover an overview and registration details at newlynartschool.co.uk

Yorkshire Sculpture International

The Hepworth Wakefield is opening the Riverside Gallery Garden this summer. Photograph: Justin Slee

This major new sculpture festival kicks off this summer, with exhibitions and events at the venues that comprise the Yorkshire sculpture triangle – Leeds Art Gallery, the Hepworth Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – and there will be new public artworks in Leeds and Wakefield city centres. The festival will take place every three years: this inaugural event is curated by sculptor Phyllida Barlow. In addition, the Hepworth Wakefield is opening the Riverside Gallery Garden this summer, designed by landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith. At 6,000 square metres, it will be one of the UK’s biggest free gardens.

• Free, 22 June-29 September, yorkshire-sculpture.org

First There is a Mountain, touring

Photograph: Rosie Londsdale

Conceptual artist Katie Paterson has a new participatory work travelling around the UK over the summer. She has made a set of (compostable) buckets, one in the shape of each of five famous mountains: Kilimanjaro, Shasta, Fuji, Stromboli and Uluru. The pails will tour to 25 coastal art venues, which are also staging mass sandcastle-building events on local beaches. The public are invited to build the miniature mountains and then watch them disappear into the sea, perhaps prompting reflections on erosion, the power of nature and the passing of time. The tour started in Whitstable as part of the town’s biennale and is now travelling around the UK, including Scilly, Llandudno, Derry and Orkney.

• Free, next stop Llandudno on 19 May, last stop Southend-on-Sea on 27 Oct, firstthereisamountain.com

People’s Landscapes, Cheshire, Dorset, Derbyshire and Manchester

View from Kinder Scout in the Peak District national park. Photograph: Eli Pascall Willis/Alamy

The National Trust is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre with an artistic programme called People’s Landscapes, exploring places and people that have shaped England. The project is being overseen by Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller. In Dorset, the artist Bob and Roberta Smith is running painting workshops to celebrate the Tolpuddle Martyrs, forerunners of the trade union movement in Britain. In the Peak District, musician Jarvis Cocker has designed a guided walk “with artistic surprises” along the route taken by the Kinder Scout protesters in 1932. Artists Gary Winters and Grace Surman and their two children are creating work inspired by Peterloo to be displayed at Quarry Bank in Cheshire and Dunham Massey in Greater Manchester. Meanwhile, Amber, a film and photography collective, is exploring the Durham Coast’s mining heritage. There are lots of other events at NT properties, including a touring National Portrait Gallery exhibition called Nature’s Champions, featuring portraits of Beatrix Potter, David Attenborough, Joe Strummer and others who have helped protect the natural world (until 9 June, Dunham Massey; 22 June-8 Sept, Attingham Park, Shropshire; 21 Sept-8 Dec, Upton House, Warwickshire).

• Main programme launches in July, nationaltrust.org.uk

To all at Sea, Anglesey

Photograph: Anthony Garratt

Anthony Garratt, the artist behind the spectacular High and Low outdoor painting installation in Snowdonia, has a new project for 2019. It is inspired by a catastrophic storm of 1859, when the Royal Charter steamship was wrecked off the coast of Anglesey and more than 800 people died. A 4½-metre-wide, double-sided painting panel will be installed on the coast, near the site of the wreck. One side will depict the storm, the other a calm day at sea. The panel pivots on a central mast with the wind, like a weather vane. The wind data will be recorded and turned into a musical score, with lyrics by the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke, which will eventually be performed by a violinist and a Welsh male voice choir in tribute to the lives lost at sea.

• Free, painting installed on 20 May, musical performance on 26 October, toallatsea.co.uk

Sculpture at Wisley, Surrey

Lynn Chadwick’s Little Girl I, II and III. Photograph: Jonty Wilde/Courtesy of the Estate of Lynn Chadwick and Blain Southern

Wisley, the oldest and most-visited of the four RHS gardens, is holding its first major sculpture exhibition this year. Pieces by six 20th- and 21st-century artists have been placed around the 240-acre gardens, including four Henry Moore sculptures, a neon work by Tracey Emin and seated figures (Little Girl I, II and III) by Lynn Chadwick. Other highlights include larger-than-life works by Phillip King and Henry Bruce, and maquettes of Philip Haas’s Four Seasons sculptures. On 10 June, a new Welcome building is opening at Wisley, with a restaurant, cafe, shop and plant centre.

• From 30 May-1 Dec, £13.05 adult, £6.60 child over four, rhs.org.uk

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