Culture Diary w/c 18-02-2019
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 – Project 25 10am–5pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE
This week-long residency in Tate Exchange – a space at the gallery for collaboration and experimentation – marks the 25th anniversary of young people’s programming at Tate Liverpool. Project 25 uses this anniversary as a jumping off point for the future and to ask questions relevant to the collective and their peers, including: what will the world look like in 2044? What will be the jobs and careers of the future? And what will be the impact of the reduction of art and creative activities in education?
Tuesday – Art Brut 7.30pm @ Jacaranda Records Phase One – £15
Art Brut fizz with sardonic allusions and irony; they broke on to a beige ‘indie’ scene in the early 00s (Coldplay, Travis, the Stereophonics) with rabble-rousing single Formed a Band (above), and found instant darling status in the music press. In 2010 came a fourth album, then three years later a 10th anniversary compilation. Following an extended hiatus and line-up changes (don’t worry people, it’s still splendidly named Eddie Argos at the helm), last year they released fifth album, Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!, which they’re now touring.
Exhibition Opening: Here and Now 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery – FREE
An exploration through writing, photography and creativity of “wellbeing and experience”, new exhibition Here and Now is rooted in locale and community. Alongside host Open Eye Gallery, the project has been delivered with and supported by North End Writers and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, and features poet, Pauline Rowe and photographers, Becky Warnock and Robert Parkinson.
Wednesday – The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2019 8.20pm @ Home, Manchester
The Japan Foundation Touring Film programme, which has been screening in venues across the country since the beginning of this month, comes to Home Manchester this week. The programme’s theme is love, in all its forms, and “aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of Japanese relationships, ranging from conventional love stories, compassion for the fellow man, transgressive attractions, to profound renderings of the devastation felt with the loss of love”. Home’s offerings kick off with director Yukiko Sode’s second feature, Good Stripes.
Cognitive Conversations 6.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
This discussion asks: “How does digital technology affect the way we think and behave, and what is its impact on our experience of art?” It’s a good question, one which could well produce complex answers. Just as well, then, that a “hands-on augmented reality experience” is led with insight from different fields, including a neuroscientist, curator, designer and artists.
Thursday – City of Light, City of Sanctuary 5pm @ Sefton Park – FREE
Public art has its critics, but it often engages communities in ways that a traditional gallery experience doesn’t. A partnership between the Lantern Company and Writing on the Wall, City of Light, City of Sanctuary brings together floating lanterns, and a soundscape of music, poetry and stories with Sefton Park as its stage.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Light Blue 6pm @ The Royal Standard – FREE
Smells and music can unlock memories, while different shades of colours, such as the light blue of the title, have been shown to influence mood. Including sound pieces, scented installations and interactive tactile sculptures, this new TRS exhibition interrogates how the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch affect the way we perceive the world around us. Works from Alex Margo Arden, Hannah Bitowski, Kitty Jones and Michael Lacey look to provide a multi-sensorial smorgasbord.
Exhibition Opening: Flat + Earth 12pm @ Sidney and Matilda Gallery, Sheffield – FREE
A new addition to Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter, gallery/multi-purpose arts venue Sidney and Matilda is on the site of an old paper factory. A timely exhibition, Flat + Earth addresses “the tension and anxieties that arise” from societal upheaval, through the genre of landscape across paintings, drawing and sculpture, by artists including Gareth Kemp, Tom Down and TDN fave Mandy Payne.
Saturday – Bilge Pump and Friends 8pm @ Drop the Dumbulls – £5
Leeds survivors Bilge Pump formed in the mid-90s and were promptly declared by the NME to be “unlistenable guff”. Now, having sensibly ignored the once-powerful publication, they bring their art-punk sound – according to the bio on their label Gringo’s site – a “bastard concoction of all the best bits of The Jesus Lizard, Led Zeppelin, The Fall, Blue Cheer, Funkadelic and King Crimson” to Drop the Dumbulls this weekend. Ably supported by ATATAT, Friend Request, Chiz Turnross and more.
Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Six Memos – FREE
This group exhibition is inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The show, convened by CreArt, a “network of cities for artistic creation”, and curated by Branka Benčić, was previously staged in Spain and Poland, and completes its run here. Featuring artists from across Europe responding to Calvino’s essays on Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency, The Double Negative’s own Laura Robertson has created new text works for each show, this time collaborating with artist/designer Mark Simmonds.
Exhibition Closing: Haroon Mirza reality is somehow what we expect it to be – FREE
Described in our review as “a skilful reframing of reality”, Haroon Mirza’s exhibition at Ikon Gallery is the most comprehensive staging of his work in the UK so far. Including images, sculptural installation and electronic sound, reality is somehow what we expect it to be – a carefully-considered overview of a decade in Mirza’s practice – closes today.
James Yorkston 6.30pm @ Rough Trade Bristol – £9.99-£24.99 (CD-LP+)
Coinciding with this week’s release of new record The Route to the Harmonium, the lovably roguish singer-songwriter and author James Yorkston is in town for this in-conversation, acoustic set and album signing. Yorkston’s latest, he says, deals with “the life that carries on around me. There’s family, place, and the being away from family that the life of a touring musician brings… But there’s also reference to friends departed – the hows, the whys – And this album is about them, but it’s more about us, us who are left behind…”
