Culture Diary w/c 11-03-2019

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 – The Girl On The Train 7.30pm @ the Liverpool Playhouse – Tickets Prices Vary

Rachel spies what she perceives to be a perfect couple on her daily commute to London. From her vantage point she sees what she wants in a relationship, what she once had before her alcoholism got in the way. But things soon go awry. When Paula Hawkins’ psychological thriller was released in 2015, it was greeted by rave reviews with sales to match. The following year it was adapted for screen, starring Emily Blunt. Now audiences have the chance to see how the story’s unreliable narrator makes the move to the stage.

Tuesday – Bauhaus: Model and Myth + director Q&A 6pm @ Showroom Cinema, Sheffield – £4.50

As you may well know, 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the famous Bauhaus – a school of ideas in the field of arts, architecture and design. This film, made in 2009, “examines the artistic and political aims of the school” and includes interviews with former students alongside a wealth of archival material. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with one of the film’s directors, Professor Kerstin Stutterheim.

Wednesday – Muses, Anti-Muses, Counter-Muses 1.30pm @ Tate Liverpool – £5

Modernist artist Fernand Léger, whose career and influence is currently celebrated in an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, was a cultural omnivore, and a figure of generosity. A keen collaborator and head of his own free school, he gravitated towards and surrounded himself with a phalanx of like-minded individuals. He taught Louise Bourgeois and collaborated with architect and designer Charlotte Perriand. Here, Dr Hana Leaper (Liverpool John Moores University), Dr Sophie Oliver (University of Liverpool), and Professor Sarah Wilson (Courtauld, University of London) are joined by Kasia Redzisz, Senior Curator, Tate Liverpool in discussing Léger’s key female contemporaries.

Exhibition Opening: Reproduction: Gina Tsang 6pm @ Output Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

If you missed the recent exhibition of Gina Tsang’s work at Output, not to worry, because this week sees the gallery stage the artist’s 2018 MA degree show work, Reproduction. Bringing together video by Tsang and paintings by her father Bo, this is a “temporal work symbolising both clinging to and letting go of the past”, says the artist, one that acts as a family portrait of sorts, demonstrating the differences and similarities between generations.

Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Allan Sekula: Photography, A Wonderfully Inadequate Medium 6-8pm @ Marian Goodman Gallery, London – FREE 

Weaving together writing and photography in experimental montages – which he called ‘disassembled movies’ – the late American artist Allan Sekula was a true innovator in photographic storytelling. Expect this new retrospective, curated by Marie Muracciole, to explore his work as an iconic photographer and critic. Exhibition continues until 18 May.

Friday – Out of Blue + Director Q&A with Carol Morley 6.10 @ FACT, Liverpool – £12.40/£11.40

Perhaps best known until now for her 2011 documentary-drama Dreams of a Life, in 2014 Carol Morley made The Falling, a film chronicling a mass psychogenic illness (in the form of a fainting epidemic) at a girls’ school. Now, the director returns with Out of Blue, a neo-noir tracking the investigation into the murder of a leading astrophysicist in New Orleans. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Morley.

Saturday – Radical Sex Education: Sexuality, Pedagogy and Avant-Garde Film (Session 1: 12pm, Session 2: 3pm) @ Auto Italia, London – FREE 

Methodist ministers making psychedelic indie films about sex in the 1960s and ’70s? Join American curator and writer Herb Shellenberger today to hear about his research into the Multi-Media Resource Center and watch a rare selection of the group’s 16mm works. In session 2, Shellenberger will be talking to feminist filmmaker Alice Anne Parker; expect a screening of her 1971 educational film, Near the Big Chakra, made for women, by women, which features extreme close-ups of female genitalia.

Sunday – Exhibition Open: Women In Art: Hong Kong 10am-6pm @ The New Hall Art Collection, University of Cambridge – FREE 

A contemporary view of Hong Kong by seven female artists, all from different generations, launched last week in time for International Women’s Day. Expect calligraphic landscapes from the late Fang Zhaoling; spittoons and Margaret Thatcher from Jaffa Lam; and destroyed, Drowned Books from Yan Chi Choi. Exhibition continues until 31 July.

Exhibition Closing: Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures / Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho’s News From Nowhere 10am-5pm @ Tate Liverpool – £10.50-8.50/FREE

An artist in thrall to the modern world in which he lived, “Beauty is everywhere”, said Fernand Léger. He incorporated elements of life and the city into his work, and this exhibition sets out to demonstrate his enthusiasm for his times across paintings, murals, film and textiles. A different story of progress and tech is told on the other side of Tate Liverpool’s top floor, in Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho’s News From Nowhere. Using science fiction as their vehicle, the South Korean artists tell a cautionary tale about our responsibility to the present. More on these exhibitions in our overview here.

Mike Pinnington and Laura Robertson

Images from top: Still, from 2009 documentary Bauhaus: Model and Myth. Fernand Léger, The Acrobat and his Partner 1948 © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018. Dear Bill Gates, 1999; © Allan Sekula, courtesy of artist and Marian Goodman Gallery New York, Paris and London. Eyetoon, Jerry Abrams (1968). Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho El Fin del Mundo (The End of the World) 2012