Culture Diary w/c 03-12-2018
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!
Monday – RedHouse Originals Exhibition Launch Party 6pm @ Buyers Club Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Tonight at Buyers Club, RedHouse Originals, a gallery that specialises in limited edition prints by a dizzying roster of international artists, launches an exhibition of rarities at Buyers Club. Including prints by Candie Payne, Danny Larsen and Shepard Fairey, alongside the work, there’s cocktails and DJs from the get-go.
Tuesday – fs Presents: Thoughts on the air become words in print 6.30pm @ CBS Gallery and Studios, Liverpool – FREE
Part of Reading Week at CBS Gallery & Studios, Thoughts on the air become words in print, is part book launch, part performance lecture. The book documents a conversation that took place between artist Mark Simmonds, CBS Director Liam Peacock and Manchester-based artist Gideon Vass while birdwatching in Liverpool earlier his year. Here, Simmonds presents a “work-in-progress” performance lecture responding to a 1980s ornithological journal.
The Price of Everything 6pm @ FACT, Liverpool (also available on demand)
In 2004 award-winning filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn made My Architect, a portrait of his father, the noted architect, Louis I. Kahn. In The Price of Everything, Kahn turns his lens on art and the market – one in which only the super-rich can dabble with impunity. His subjects include dealers, gallerists and artists to get to the heart of contradictions between the purpose of art and its value (in dollars and otherwise). As Matthew Taylor notes in his review in December’s Sight & Sound, the critic Robert Hughes once declared: “the new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.”
Wednesday – FACT Lates: Broken Symmetries 6pm Til Late @ FACT, Liverpool – FREE
The end of November saw FACT launch their latest exhibition, Broken Symmetries, the result of a collaboration with Arts at CERN – the arts programme of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva. Curated by Mónica Bello and José-Carlos Mariátegui, Broken Symmetries “brings together artists who aim to understand and question the physical world by navigating the shifting realities of modern science”. Test the hypothesis at this special late-opening of the exhibition.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Michael Lacey 6pm @ Output Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
In a 2012 exhibition at Tate Britain, writer and critic Brian Dillon turned curator to chart the “mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day”. People, myself included, are fascinated with the ruin and what it represents. Tonight at Output Gallery, artist Michael Lacey (who we interviewed back in 2012) presents a new series of collage works, and continues his own decade-long exploration of what ruins represent and why they continue to enthral.
Friday – Tai Shani: Dark Continent Performance 6.30pm @ Nottingham Contemporary – FREE (Booking Required)
In case you haven’t already noticed, the patriarchy isn’t working. In fact, it’s broken beyond repair. Artist Tai Shani, keenly aware of this, has drawn on Christine de Pizan’s 1404 proto-feminist text The Book of the City of Ladies, to produce Dark Continent. Like the book, this new work presents an allegorical city of women – “a space and time where sensation and interiority lead the way for a possible post-patriarchal future”.
Saturday – SELF/PORTRAIT PARTY! 6-8pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE (WAITLIST)
Is taking a ‘selfie’ a feminist act? Do you think that selfies are causing an increase in narcissism or mental health problems? Hell, are selfies just a way for Instagram to make big bucks? Tonight, join our co-editor Laura, artist Teresa Eng (of Open Eye’s Snapchat To WeChat exhibition), Philosophy and Sociology PhD student Laura Harris, and make-up artist Aistė Jukštaitė for a rotating set of conversations around the contemporary self portrait – in the context of three areas: body, tech and culture – amid free drinks and make-up demos.
Philophobia Music’s End of 10 Years Bash @ Warehouse 23, Wakefield – £8 adv/£10 OTD
An independent record label founded in Wakefield, Philophobia Music was established in 2008 by Rob Dee. This year they celebrate their 10-year anniversary with a best-of compilation, and the publication of a book looking back over the highs and lows of a decade operating in indie music. This weekend, they mark the milestone with a special “End of 10 Years Bash”, which brings many of their current roster together. Check out our interview with Rob, and hear more from the label in a special playlist, here.
Sunday – Vienna Festival Ballet Present The Nutcracker 2.30pm @ Warrington Parr Hall – £12.50/£17.50/£19.50
Had your first mince pie of the season yet? If the festive spirit is coming on strong, the options by which to revel are mounting. From screenings of Die Hard and Gremlins, to panto and carolling, you can’t move for Christmas programming right now. Warrington’s Parr Hall contributes The Nutcracker, whose story begins on Christmas eve. Complemented by Tchaikovsky’s famous score, the fairy tale whisks us – like its protagonist – into a strange parallel world.
Mike Pinnington
