Culture Diary w/c 12-06-2017
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the UK – and most of it’s free!
Monday – Ruth Noack: A Museum In A School 6—9pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE (Booking Essential)
Budding curator? Then hear some sage advice from an expert tonight. Delivering a lecture about her curatorial practice, expect Ruth Noack to share her experience spanning arts festivals (including curating documenta and leading the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course), international gallery exhibitions (including Notes on Crisis, Currency and Consumption (2015)), as well as arts criticism and academia.
Tuesday – Exhibition Opening: Summer Exhibition 2017 10am—6pm @ Royal Academy of Arts, London — £14/15.50 (All Ticket Prices Include £3.50 For A Printed List Of Works)
Recently the subject of a BBC Two programme, the RA’s 250 year-old Summer Exhibition (pictured, below) was presented as the most exciting, democratic, and famous open submission exhibition in the world. Expect over 1,200 works for sale by artists established – including Julian Schnabel and Mark Wallinger – alongside emerging artists making their RA debut. Exhibition tours are every 45-minutes. Exhibition open until 18 August.
An Evening With MMU Writers 6pm @ International Anthony Burgess Centre, Manchester – FREE (Booking Required)
Spot the next big thing in writing tonight: students from Manchester Metropolitan University who are already award-winning poets, authors and journalists. Brought together by kick-ass literature organisation Bad Language and collective Feminisms in Public, expect live readings that creatively respond to the theme of gender and sexuality.
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Quentin Blake: The Only Way To Travel @ Jerwood Gallery, Hastings — £9/8/4.50
Perhaps best known for illustrating Roald Dahl’s hideously funny books, you can tonight both relive your childhood AND see brand new works from the Children’s Laureate Sir Quentin Blake (below). A major solo show, expect drawings in his usual frenetic style, but on fairly challenging topics — from mental health to the refugee crisis. Until 15 October.
Thursday – Future Station With Jeremy Deller 6—8pm @ Metal Liverpool — £3/Free If You Live In L7, L8, Or L15
Artists in the Liverpool City Region, listen up: you can have dinner with Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller tonight. Talking about his “Brian Epstein Died For You” posters that have been seen around Liverpool (commissioned for Sgt Pepper at 50), over hot food provided by the Metal team, there’ll be plenty of time to discuss the project in addition to career highlights and challenges.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Friday (Until Sunday) – Supersonic Festival @ Birmingham – Invidual Events Start at £5; Day Tickets £20
Aimed at “the adventurous listener”, here’s an excess of festival events from some of the worlds weirdest and most ambitious artists (trailer, top). Our highlights include Norwegian musician Jenny Hval, who you can expect to perform tracks from her critically acclaimed 2016 album Blood Bitch; the North-West’s own electric ensemble Ex-Easter Island Head, with “an ambitiously scaled work for sixteen prepared table-top electric guitars and percussion”; a live-coding masterclass for beginners from BAFTA-winning digital artist Dan Hett; and a screening of Melvins documentary The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale, featuring interviews with Mike Patton, J. Mascis, Josh Homme, and more.
Saturday – Exhibition Opening: Emma Hart and Jonathan Baldock: Love Life ACT II 10am—5pm @ Grundy Gallery, Blackpool — FREE
An exhibition in three acts – the first opening at PEER, London in November 2016 – expect ACT II at the Grundy to draw directly on the seaside town’s history of popular culture. Alongside some fairly psychedelic installations and soundtracks from the artists Emma Hart and Jonathan Baldock (above), expect an exciting new illuminated sculpture made in collaboration with Blackpool Council’s Illuminations Department; plus homages to Punch and Judy puppets, soap operas and more. See it until 12 August; Love Life Act 3 opens at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-sea in October.
Sunday – My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) 6pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £11/10/9/8
“When Hanif Kureishi’s script arrived through my letterbox, I wanted to shoot it right away”, said director Stephen Frears about his smash hit My Beautiful Laundrette (below). Shot over six months on a £600,000 budget, it was the first British film to openly depict a gay romance; it ended up being BAFTA and Oscar nominated and made a star out of its lead, Daniel Day Lewis. Shown again tonight to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales, expect sexual and racial politics wrapped up in a romance, all set in Thatcher’s Britain.
Laura Robertson, Editor
Images, from top: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015: courtesy Rikesh Sudra @Rikesh_Sudra. Quentin Blake, We’ll Get There Somehow, 2017 © the artist. Detail of LOVE LIFE: ACT 1, by artists Jonathan Baldock and Emma Hart. Image courtesy Jonathan Baldock
