Culture Diary w/c 07-04-2014

Moon, FACT, Monday

What’s hot this week? Our pick of the listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…

Monday – Shutter Social 6.30pm @ The Laboratory Liverpool — FREE

Love photography and filming? Meet like-minded folk at this informal collaborative evening, where the aim of the game is to learn more about smartphone filmmaking and stop-motion animation. Beginners welcome, and you’ll leave having made a short film.

PICK OF THE WEEK: The Double Negative Presents: Moon (2009) 8.30pm @ FACT Liverpool — £9.50/8.50

The first of three screenings during our residency at FACT, we’ve asked awesome University of Liverpool science fiction archivist Andy Sawyer to introduce one of our favourite sf films. Featuring a stand-out performance from Sam Rockwell (Seven Psychopaths/Confessions of A Dangerous Mind), Duncan Jones’ (knowingly) referential thriller tackles every futuristic theme, from planetary exploration, AI and cloning, to the very common topics of hating your job, homesickness, and what it means to be human. 

Adam Burns, TAINT, Tuesday

Tuesday – TAINT 11am-7pm @ Gallery for Russian Arts & Design (GRAD) London — FREE

With Russia in the news so much lately, here is a good opportunity to clue up on the culture. Featuring a collection of Russian and UK artists all reacting against classical painting — through sculpture, video, installation and, yes, painting — this is the first time GRAD have collaborated with contemporary artists. Aiming to bring new insight into Russian art and design, if their last exhibition – Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen — was anything to go by, this should be well-worth a visit.

Talk: Michael Mackenzie: Valley of Light 6.30pm @ Open Eye Gallery Liverpool — FREE

Using still life and landscape photography, Mackenzie’s work is a very personal take on his mother’s life in a small village in southern Italy. Here he discusses the project and the wider context of the migration of Italians to the north-west of England. A poignant companion to Open Eye’s current exhibition, Letizia Battaglia: Breaking the Code of Silence (see Sunday).

Wednesday – The Monuments Men (2014) 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic — £6/7

We love going to see film at the Phil. With the only working Walturdaw Cinema screen in the world, cheerfully rising out of the stage to the live music of resident organist Dave Nicholas, if you haven’t been yet you really should. Tonight’s offering is George Clooney’s caper The Monuments Men; a bunch of misfits who must stop the Nazis from plundering European artworks. See what Mark Kermode thought here.

Thursday – Tour: Encounters and Transformations 6.30-7.30pm @ Manchester Art Gallery — FREE

‘For here there is nowhere that does not see you, You must change your life.’ Taking the end of Rilke’s poem, The Archaic Torso of Apollo, as a starting point, senior lecturer in Art History (Manchester Met University) Michael Howard leads us on a tour around the gallery’s key Easter-themed artworks. In conjunction with The PassionArts Trail, exploring themes of transformation, grief, love, kindness and hope through art.

Friday – SPACE//SOUND 7pm @ the Bluecoat Liverpool — £10/£8

A running collaboration between the Drawing Paper and Deep Hedonia, this ’exploration in audio-visual environments’ shakes up what we think about drawing, and celebrates (and innovates) the time-worn tradition of making art to music. Promising live performances of special compositions (Ninetails, Outfit’s Andrew Hunt, Hot Hail) alongside live drawing and projections (artists Jon Barraclough and Madeline Hall), all in the surrounds of Liverpool’s oldest art gallery.

Saturday – Zone Tours 11am @ FACT Liverpool (meet at the Box Office then journey to Wirral) — FREE

Inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, artists Close & Remote have mapped out ‘The Zone’ onto Bidston Moss (Wirral) nature reserve, recreating an alien arena surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers, where ‘individual desires can be realised’. With your every move monitored by wearable and roving cameras, this should be  a completely bizarre experience. Comfy shoes recommended.

Puppet Show, Grundy Gallery, Saturday

Puppet Show Opening 2-4pm @ The Grundy Gallery Blackpool — FREE

Not for anyone with a particular fear of ventriloquists… Transforming the gallery into a potentially terrifying ‘puppet state’ for the duration of the exhibition, artists including Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Heather & Ivan Morison and Simon Starling explore puppets as impersonators, impostors and ‘dubious’ characters – “who say things or act in ways that humans often find inhibiting.” Freakish and fantastic.

Sunday – Letizia Battaglia Exhibition Tour 2.30pm @ Open Eye Gallery Liverpool — FREE

Led by the curatorial team, this tour explores Sicilian-born photographer Letizia Battaglia’s solo show; a UK first, this is a tiny fraction of her 600,000 shot archive. She is responsible for creating a remarkable document of one of the darkest periods of Italian post-war history, when the Mafia ruled Italy. See our review here.

Posted on 07/04/2014 by thedoublenegative