Culture Diary w/c 11-01-2016
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the arts listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Monday — The Revenant (2015) @ Cinemas Across The UK
Dogged by claims of cruelty to his actors and spiralling costs during an arduous shoot, Academy Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, Babel) finally releases his magnum opus this week. With Leonardo DiCaprio in the main role as 19th century explorer and fur trapper Hugh Glass, we follow him through the freezing US wilderness as he is brutally attacked by a bear, and left for dead by his unsympathetic travelling companions.
Tuesday – Exhibition Opening: Robots Lift Art 10.30-7pm @ A&D Gallery, London — FREE
Tiny vintage Japanese robots carrying equally tiny original artworks from young contemporary artists. Because why the hell not?
Black Souls (2014) 6pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £10.50/9.50
Following a violent feud between two rival Mafia families, Francesco Munzi’s slow-burn, beautifully shot tale of revenge and counter-revenge is a must-see for any fan of crime drama.
Henry Rollins: Charmingly Obstinate Tour 2016 7.30pm @ The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester — £24.50
Kicking off his UK tour with the announcement that “There are definitely some people I wouldn’t mind seeing burned to death”, the former Black Flag frontman turned radio DJ and journalist isn’t one to mince his words. See him talk live this week about his kill list, loves, hates, politics and career. See here for all tour dates.
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Champagne Life 10am-6pm @ Saatchi Gallery, London — FREE
Highlighting a serious gender imbalance and inequalities that still, unfortunately, pervade the art world along with many other workplaces, Saatchi Gallery has decided to ring in its 30th anniversary with its first, all-female exhibition. Featuring artwork by — rather than about — 14 international female artists, expect to see amusing taxidermy as “cultural collage between East and Western philosophy” by Iranian-born artist Sohelia Sokhanvari (above), plus the work from which the exhibition takes its name, an oil painting of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Minnie Mouse by American artist Julia Wachtel.
Exhibition Opening: Oliver Braid: The Nude Ignity 12-5pm @ Vane, Newcastle — FREE
What would a hand look like if it didn’t look like a hand? Oliver Braid’s latest solo show attempts to answer this and other big questions as indirectly as possible in his latest solo show. Focusing on ‘the eccentric wish to be both noticed and ignored’ plus ‘futuristic perspectives on audience engagement’, expect drawings and a new commission from Dundee-based artist, Sam Lyon, known for his digital JellyGummies project.
Thursday – Film Station: Nanook Of The North (1922) 6.30pm @ Metal Culture, Liverpool — FREE
A perfect companion piece to The Revenant… Perhaps the first full-lenth, documentary film ever made, watch the results of director Robert Flaherty’s year filming Inuit people in the arctic circle, as they hunt, trade, and migrate, barely untouched by technology or the outside world.
Jon Savage In Conversation With Kev Sampson 6.30pm @ Waterstones L1, Liverpool — £3/2
1966: the year of LSD, Vietnam protests, England winning the World Cup, and Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable… Tonight, music journalist, author (England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols, Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945 and Punk Rock) and filmmaker (Teenage, released later this month) discusses all the seismic shifts in pop culture via his latest book, 1966, with fellow author Kev Sampson.
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) 7pm @ A Small Cinema, Liverpool — £4/3 (Sold Out — Returns OTD)
“I know all things begin and end in eternity…” A fitting quote from David Bowie’s best film, considering the great man’s passing this week at the age of just 69. Adapted from the excellent science fiction novel by Walter Tevis, and directed by Nicolas Roeg (who had released the terrifying Don’t Look Now just three years before), this was Bowie’s first staring role; a tragic tale of an alien seeking help from another planet he doesn’t understand.
Friday — Exhibition Opening: Flat Death 10.30-5.30pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool — FREE
A must for anyone interested in art ethics, Open Eye’s new exhibition focuses on how we deal with death, through the work of Edgar Martins and Jordan Baseman. The former presents photography made after time spent at the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science in Portugal: expect forensic evidence, archival material and Martins’ own reflections on death. The latter presents one part of Baseman’s 2013 exhibition, Deadness: collected photography of the dead at funeral homes and at cemeteries, taken by their families. Not for the faint-hearted.
Exhibition Opening: Jerwood Encounters: Common Property 10am-5pm @ Jerwood Space, London — FREE
A new group show that seeks to question ‘common property’; or how the chaotic law of copyright is currently impacting on the way visual artists (many of whom Jerwood have supported over the years through funding and commissions) make and distribute their work. Expect explorations of digital technology by Antonio Roberts (pictured above), plus Owen Parry’s life-size ‘monument’ to the fictional romance between One Direction members Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, as dreamed up by the band’s infatuated fans, plus much more.
Saturday – Exhibition Opeing: Mick Peter: Pyramid Selling 2-6pm @ Drawing Room, London — FREE
Collecting, using and transforming fiction, illustration and graphic design, Mick Peter’s charming and absurd sketch-like sculptures ‘seem to have been cut from the flatness of the paper and dragged into three-dimensional space.’ Expect to thrown head-first into a richly imagined, 3D cartoon. See Peter in conversation at 2-3pm with writer Tom Morton, then enjoy a first-look at the show.
Last Day: The Haunting Of Hill House 2pm/7.30pm @ Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool — £14-25
It’s your last chance to see the Hammer Horror commission that our reviewer, David Rattigan, described as captivating and mesmirizing; noting: ‘the ghostly presence of Hill House, however, will remain with you long after you stumble out the front door and into the light.’ Read the full review here.
Sunday – Liverpool Radical Film Festival Presents Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution (2015) 5.30-8pm @ A Small Cinema, Liverpool — £4/3 (Sold Out — Check Event Page For Info On Added Daytime Screening)
“They were trying to change the government as we know it through terrorist activity.” A new documentary feature from US director Stanley Nelson about the Black Panther Party, using rare archival footage from the people who were there: police, FBI informants, journalists, white supporters and Black Panthers themselves. Expect a look into the impact of 1960s American culture and politics — the reverberations of which are still felt keenly today.
Laura Robertson
