Mr Monkey sees Faces of the North and Eyjafjallajökull (AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl) at the Royal Exchange Theatre, 18th October

Before seeing The Lady From The Sea Mr Monkey visited the Mezzanine Gallery of the Royal Exchange to inspect the latest exhibition, which turned out to actually be two exhibitions in one - Andlit norðursins (Faces of the North) by Ragnar Axelsson and Eyjafjallajökull (AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl) by Anna Maria Sigurjondottir. The photos, all black and white, in Ragnar Axelsson's Andlit norðursins (Faces of the North) exhibition and book show life in Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland over the past fifteen years.

The pictures show bleak landscapes, some with people in the foreground, others with tiny people in the distance and some with no people at all that Mr Monkey could see.

Mr Monkey was fascinated by the grainy quality of most of the images and by the way hills and cliffs lurked as outlines in the background of the landscapes. Anna Marie Sigurjondottir's exhibition, Eyjafjallajökull (AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl), centres on Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano that caused a certain amount of disruption to European air travel in April 2010.

All the pictures are dominated by the massive plume of ash from the volcano, and while they're all in colour in some of them it's hard to find any colour at all.

Mr Monkey thought the pictures show an intriguing contrast between landscapes turned completely grey by the ash, and others which are almost bucolic idylls with an ash plume added to the background.