Culture Diary w/c 12-01-2015
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Monday – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 7.30pm @ Hull New Theatre — £21/29.50
Landing in Hull this week on the latest leg of it’s UK tour, the National Theatre’s ‘phenomenal’ (The Times) adaptation of Mark Haddon’s heart-wrenching and unconventional murder-mystery has bagged seven 2013 Olivier Awards to date. Following maths-crazy and autistic (we presume) teenager Christopher, who is accused of killing a neighbour’s dog, expect a complex family drama explored through breathtaking theatre production. See it until Saturday 17 January 2015, before it travels to Grand Opera House, York.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Tuesday — Off the Shelf: Michael Bracewell 7-8.30pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE (booking essential)
We last saw renowned writer, curator and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell at Liverpool Biennial’s Drinks With Lynne Tillman event and it was marvellous; both critics discussed passionately their love of art and writing and how the two are inextricably linked. In an intimate talk, Bracewell will be asking us to question ‘the authenticity, accessibility and value of art through digital and physical methods of appropriation and distribution’ amongst the suitable surroundings of The Serving Library (read our feature here). Bracewell has written extensively for magazines, museums and galleries on artists — including Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Bridget Riley, Wolfgang Tillmans, John Stezaker, Glenn Brown and Damien Hirst — so expect lively and thorough debate about how we disseminate art.
Wednesday — Locke (2014) 8.30pm @ Whirled Cinema, London – weekly membership £10
Did you know that under the railway arches of Loughborough Junction hides an ad-free independent cinema? Showing a regular selection of contemporary art house and foreign language films (through an excellent membership basis that means you can bring a friend for free), tonight you can see Steven Knight’s (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things) strange short thriller Locke. Having only recently seen it ourselves, we can tell you that Tom Hardy is on typically formidable form as protagonist Ivan Locke, who is having the worst night of his life. A clever premise that never leaves the claustrophobic confines of a car, all eyes are on Hardy; expect a riveting performance.
Thursday – Making Things Public: LJMU BA Art History Student Symposium 11am-1pm & 2-4pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE (drop in)
Join Dr Isobel Whitelegg (Senior Lecturer in Art History & Exhibition Studies/Research Curator at Tate Liverpool) and a bunch of Liverpool John Moores University BA Art History students for this special symposium. Expect to hear the students’ reactions to Tate Liverpool’s current exhibitions of Andy Warhol, Gretchen Bender and The Serving Library; as the event is held in the latter, special attention will be given to how the curators have used Claude Parent’s La colline de l’art 2014 (Liverpool Biennial’s commissioned installation) to house this new exhibition of cultural artefacts. All visitors are welcome to drop by, sit in and join the conversation.
Private View: Intermission by Frances Disley 6pm @ PAPER Gallery, Manchester — FREE
If an artist’s studio is a rehearsal space, then is the gallery a theatre? Such is the idea behind PAPER’s new solo exhibition by Artist-in-Residence Frances Disley (who was also behind last year’s excellent pop-up art gallery MODEL). Expect a wonderful array of technicolor, disjointed and ‘crude’ paper sculptures in different stages of completion, ‘which toy with both the process and the methods of display.’
Friday – Opening: Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014/ Portraits of Emotions 11am – 6pm @ The Tetley, Leeds – FREE
Opening their first exhibitions of 2015 today, The Tetley presents the Jerwood Drawing Prize (until 1 March 2015): an annual celebration of the best of British drawing through 51 works by 46 practitioners, selected from an astonishing 3,234 submitted pieces. You can also see paintings by Leeds-based artist Paul Digby; Portraits of Emotions (until 1 March 2015) depicts ‘joy’ through a display of four large-scale painted portraits made from manipulated photographs. A great way to start the 2015 art calendar.
Film Station: Time of the Wolf (2002) 6.30pm @ Metal, Liverpool — FREE
Described by the LA Times as ‘One of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie shocker, Night of the Living Dead’, expect a typically harrowing drama from Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke at tonight’s (free!) screening at train-station-based art space Metal. Following Anne Laurent (Isabelle Huppert) and her family as they try to survive in post-apocalyptic society under the threat of fire, starvation and finding proper shelter, Haneke asks: is possible for humankind to exist with any semblance of reason or personal values?
Saturday – Workshop: Animated Type Maker 12-4pm @ FACT, Liverpool — FREE (drop-in)
Love typography? Animation? Join Ian Mitchell (Programme Leader of the Graphic Design and Illustration at Liverpool School of Art) and students this afternoon to create a stop-motion style animation, under the influence of current exhibition Type Motion (see our review). The team will talk you through constructing and filming an animation, and the results will be broadcast on FACT’s huge, front-facing Disco Window every evening for the last two weeks of the show.
Sunday — Ji Liu, Piano 6.30pm @ St George’s Hall Concert Room, Liverpool — £25/7
And now for something completely different. Shanghai-born, award-winning pianist Ji Liu’s ‘impressive studio debut’ Piano Reflections ‘more than confirms him as a major talent’ (The Classical Source); recorded in Liverpool, and performed live tonight, it’s a brand new interpretation of works by composers Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, to Liszt, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. A great chance to see a young artist at the start of what promises to be a exceptional career.
