Culture Diary w/c 12-10-2015
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the arts listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Tuesday — Performance Opening: Outsiders 7.45pm @ Playhouse Studio, Liverpool — £10/12
‘In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.’ So said Albert Camus in summarising his 1942 novel, L’Etranger (The Stranger); where a man kills another, without remorse, after the death of his own mother. In acclaimed writer Emteaz Hussain’s reimagined performance, it is fittingly two women, related to the victim and perpetrator, who come together to reflect on what really happened to their lives that day. Until Saturday.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Wednesday — Exhibition Opening: Frieze Art Fair 12-7pm @ Regent’s Park, London – Premium Day: £43; Standard: 36.55/ £26.90/23.65
160 international galleries, 1,000 leading artists… This year’s bumper Frieze promises a Sculpture Park curated by Clare Lilley (director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park); a talks programme from Gregor Muir (ICA London) and Christy Lange (Frieze magazine); seven new commissions from Frieze Projects (including Rachel Rose, winner of the 2015 Frieze Artist Award); a Reading Room; and Allied Editions — art priced from £40, with proceeds going directly to public institutions. NB: yep, it’s going to be too expensive — ironically — for most artists, but today’s the ‘premium’ day; go from tomorrow for cheaper tickets. Until Saturday.
Exhibition Opening: Fragments Of… 10am-7pm @ The Blue Factory, Dalston, London
Featuring emerging artists Alison Bignon, Jennifer Abessira, Scarlett Bowman, Jean-François Le Minh, Tristan Pigott and Walter & Zoniel (last seen at Liverpool Biennial 2014 with a jellyfish tank), this new show is based on a soon-to-be published manifesto of ‘Formationism’, written by the latter. Expect an experimental insight into each artist’s creative and conceptual journey. Until Saturday.
Mercury Jazz Quartet 1-2pm @ Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool — FREE
Wouldn’t call yourself a jazz fan? Mercury Jazz Quartet’s approach comes via grunge, dubstep, folk and ambient house. Expect ‘A whirling sound that sits somewhere in the space between contemporary jazz and popular music’ (Manchester Jazz Festival).
Thursday — Liverpool Irish Festival @ Venues Across Liverpool — Ticket Prices Vary
With a massive variety of events across art, film, music and theatre, visitors to this year’s festival can expect a programme to defy what we think of as Irish cultural production. Our pick? An experimental collaboration between alt-folk singer Ciaran Lavery and minimal electronic artist Ryan Vail called Sea Legs (tonight 8pm, LEAF, £9 OTD); a screening of Terri Hooley/punk rock biopic Good Vibrations (2012), featuring a Q&A and after party with the man himself and NME writer Stuart Bailie (24 Oct, 7pm, A Small Cinema); and the UK premiere of Meta-Perceptual Helmets, by Irish artists Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly and inspired by early 20th century visual perception contraptions (free across the city centre). Until 24 Oct.
Artist Talk: Niamh O’Malley & Sean Borodale 6-7.30pm @ The Bluecoat, Liverpool — FREE
Artist Niamh O’Malley discusses her new solo exhibition, Glasshouse, with artist, writer, poet and Liverpool University Literature Fellow Sean Borodale. Expect a focus on her new sculptural works that respond to The Bluecoat’s unique architecture, and on her distinctive use of reflective surfaces — like mirror and glass, ‘through which images are constructed, revealed and obscured.’
In Conversation About Jackson Pollock (A Tate Liverpool Event) 6.30-8pm @ Edgehill University, Ormskirk — FREE
Seen Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots at Tate (more below) and wondered about the artist’s struggle with depression, alcoholism and his obsession with Picasso? Join Catherine Marcangeli, curator of First Happenings: Adrian Henri in the ‘60s and ‘70s, currently at ICA London, and Stephanie Straine, curator at Tate Liverpool, as they discuss his complex life and work.
Friday — Exhibition Opening: Emma Gregory: Semi-Permanent Collections 10am-5pm@ Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool — FREE
Working with the University’s heritage collections, artist Emma Gregory initially from creative inspiration through the particular challenges involved in caring for organic specimens. Yet, when her father became ill,this archival residency developed into a far more personal direction; that of family loss, and preservation of memories . Expect drawings, prints and mixed media work acting as a ‘meditation on the transient nature of existence’. Until 2 April 2016.
Saturday — Exhibition Opening: Bisakha Sarker: Do Not Yet Fold Your Wings 10am-5pm @ The Bluecoat, Liverpool — FREE
Taking Dr Atul Gawande’s 2014 Reith Lecture series on The Future of Medicine, and the words of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Do not fold your wings’, as inspiration, artist and performer Bisakha Sarker presents her findings as video installation. A collaboration with choreographer Marc Brew, composer and musician Chris Davies, and artist/filmmaker Ansuman Biswas, expect an exploration of movement, hope and fear. Until 22 Nov.
Harvest Sun Presents: Vetiver 8pm @ LEAF, Liverpool — £12.10
The creative output of San Francisco-based folk artist Andy Cabic, Vetiver has been recording and touring since 1998. The new LP, Complete Strangers — co-produced and engineered by Thom Monahan and made with a rafter of musicians from San Fran and LA — the result is, according to Cabic, much like the title: “They share things in common but come from different places, different times… in an effort to connect the dots of life’s ellipsis.”
Sunday — Last Day: Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots/Glenn Ligon: Encounters And Collisions/Geta Brătescu @ Tate Liverpool — Former: £10/7.50; Latter: FREE
Where is there to go once you’ve reached the top? Expect a highly successful reassessment of Pollock, the archetypal heroic American artist whose career was widely deemed ‘over’ before his death in a car crash (with him at the wheel) in 1956; while Ligon represents the post-war US art scene’s legacy (albeit through a very personal framework), shot through with all of the struggle, questions and tentative resolutions that entails. The free show on the ground floor presents an equally powerful artistic vision: that of Romanian-born Brătescu’s vivid portfolio of performance, textile work, paper collage and film. Read more here.
Last Day: Josh Kline: Freedom 12-5pm @ Modern Art Oxford — FREE
His first ever solo show, Kline’s Freedom (showing alongside Kiki Kogelnik’s Fly Me to the Moon) expresses a strange and dystopian work, from media manipulation to 3D printing. Featuring four giant Teletubbies dressed in SWAT gear, guarding New York’s Occupy Wall Street camp, and a Barack Obama augmented with facial substitution software, expect a alternative take on political critique.
Laura Robertson
