Culture Diary w/c 08-04-2019
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 – Yak 7pm @ Arts Club, Liverpool – £12
Those with an appetite for live gigs merely stimulated rather than sated by BBC 6 Music Festival a couple of weeks ago can get their fix tonight as Yak continue the tour of second album, Pursuit of Momentary Happiness. Released earlier this year to critical acclaim, their garage rock allied to soaring ambition could be just the ticket for sweeping away any residual Monday blues.
Tuesday – Mid90s 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
“Along the way I could have directed plenty of mainstream comedies, films that reflected the success of the early work I did as an actor,” said Jonah Hill in an interview with the Guardian recently. “But,” he continued, “it is important that my first film did not let anybody’s ideas of what they thought I should be making define what I make.” What he’s attempted with directorial debut Mid90s is, instead, a coming of age time capsule of a movie. Dealing with boys on the cusp of manhood, it has sex, drugs and alcohol, sound-tracked by the likes of The Pharcyde, Pixies, Bad Brains and Nirvana.
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Hito Steyerl: Power Plants 7pm @ Serpentine Galleries, London – FREE
Artist, filmmaker and essayist, Hito Steyerl is an important artist. For Powerplants, her new exhibition project at the Serpentine, she mines her key areas of interest: digital, art, capitalism, and Artificial Intelligence. Looking especially at power and inequality in society, and taking the position that “’power’ is the necessary condition for any digital technology”, through data visualisation, a new video installation and guided tours, Power Plants seeks to lay bare the unequal wealth distribution in the communities surrounding the Serpentine.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: A Tittle Tattle Tell A Tale Heart 6pm @ Humber Street Gallery, Hull – FREE
Something of a mouthful, this new show from the Humber is also the first institutional presentation of Athena Papadopoulos’ work in the UK. The title, and point of departure for the exhibition, comes from the artist’s diaristic detective novel. For the exhibition, sculpture, sound installation, costume and performance will be employed to bring the narrative to life across two floors to produce, says the web blurb: “A hysterical, sublime and hallucinatory experience.”
Exhibition Opening: Sweet Debris 6pm @ Waterside, Sale – FREE
Featuring Theo Simpson, Hannah Farrell, Chris Rhodes and Phoebe Kiely, this group show foregrounds artists working in the medium of photography responding to the ubiquity of image-sharing platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. The exhibition’s curator Mario Popham says the artists’ works reveal “the richness and creative potential that remains in contemporary photographic practice today”. Great opportunity to see how interesting and varied new channels are being developed by practitioners in the field, whose work, says Popham, “searches for meaning and beauty amongst the detritus of modern life”. Read our interview with Phoebe Kiely.
City Poems & City Music Live 7pm @ Whitechapel Gallery, London – £20/£15
Featuring Jarvis Cocker, Thurston Moore, Big Joanie, CAConrad and Sophie Robinson, part one of City Poems & City Music Live promises to be a banger. Inspired by Liverpool Scene artist and poet Adrian Henri, the evening (curated by Sonic Youth frontman Moore) is the first of three seeking to gather “leading poets and musicians from the UK and the US”. Writing in Adrien Henri: I Want Everything to Happen!, Cocker says Henri lived and worked at a time when: “It didn’t really matter HOW you expressed yourself just as long as you DID”.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Survey 6pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
“A major study of new work by early-career artists from across the UK” is the rationale for this group exhibition from nominations made by more established peers, including the likes of Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Andy Holden and Rachel Maclean. Participating artists include Simeon Barclay, Rae-Yen Song, Hazel Brill and Frank Wasser, making for an eclectic mix of styles and disciplines, that covers film, performance, ceramics, installation and painting.
Exhibition Opening: Let The Hands Do The Talking 6pm @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE
Subtitled “exploring the value of touch in art”, the latest exhibition at Liverpool’s The Royal Standard features the work of Christine Stevens, Millie Layton, Mimi Winsor, and artists from the Bluecoat’s inclusive arts collective, Blueroom. Asking questions of the potential of learning through touch, and whether shifting the attention from outcome to process can enable art to become a universal and inclusive language, LTHDTT sets out to explore the inherent value of an artist’s making.
Art 360 After Dark 7.30pm @ Tate Liverpool – £10
Billed as an “immersive art and sound experience”, Art 360 After Dark at Tate Liverpool looks to change and enhance audience interactions with the gallery’s collection displays. Using audio/visual tech and performance, visitors will experience (using headphones provided) acts Breakwave, local Wirral band Annexe the Moon, DJ and visual artist Nanna Koekoek and award-winning composer/sound designer Phil Channell. The evening coincides with the launch party for the Meine Nacht record label.
Saturday – Translating the Street 12pm @ Alternator Studios, Wirral – FREE
Initiated by Alternator Studios’ Brigitte Jurack, Translating the Street sees the one-day-only presentation of the fruits of three artists’ micro-residencies. Photographer Casey Orr has been taking pictures of young people at purpose built “Youth Zone”, The Hive. Sculptor Chris Dobrowolski, meanwhile, has responded to 40 year old Kitstop Model Shop, and Kwong Lee, inspired by the availability of international cuisine on Oxton Road, brings some of those flavours into Birkenhead’s Central Library.
Record Store Day, Nationwide
It’s Record Store Day once again. While an essential way of recognising indie stores and getting your hands on a special, often niche, release, it’s worth remembering that these often magical places can be accessed all year round: no need to queue for hours just one day of the year. For those that insist, however, official RSD releases for 2019 include: Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert’s What The Night Bestows US, Elastica’s BBC Sessions, a reissue of The Fall’s Imperial Wax Solvent, and X-Ray Spex’s anthology, I Am A Cliché. More coloured vinyl than you can shake a stick at!
Sunday – Solyaris 3pm @ the Barbican, London – £10.50
Showing as part of the Barbican’s Smart Robots, Mortal Engines: Stanislaw Lem on Film, and Polish film festival, Kinoteca, Solyaris came four years before Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterful vision of Lem’s celebrated novel of trauma, loss and guilt. This screening of the earlier made-for-TV version, offers a near irresistible opportunity to see the familiar world-building in different guise.
Mike Pinnington
Images from top: Survey @ Jerwood Space, London, courtesy Anna Arca; Hito Steyerl, Actual Reality OS; Phoebe Kiely; Let The Hands Do The Talking; Casey Orr
