Culture Diary w/c 05-08-2019
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 – Reclaim The Frame: Dance With A Stranger + Q&A 6pm @ Home Manchester – £9.50
Following the murder of her lover, Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Mike Newell’s 1985 noir starring Miranda Richardson brings powerful context to the case that informed the 1965 abolition of the death penalty. In addition, BFI backed influencer project Reclaim The Frame, which aims to grow audiences for films told from a female perspective, are on hand for a post-screening Q&A hosted by Birds’ Eye View director at large, Mia Bays, alongside Newell, writer Charlotte Delaney and Criminologist Melindy Brown. Read our interview with Mia Bays.
Tuesday – Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
London born artist Penny Slinger is a self-proclaimed “Feminist Surrealist,” who “wanted to create art that reflected a state of mind. To be my own muse.” Working across photography, collage, film and sculpture, in the late 1970s, Slinger – at the height of her powers – disappeared from view. In subsequent years, her name has been lost amid the flotsam of time – Richard Kovitch’s film documents her story, bringing her out of the shadows.
Wednesday – The Liquid Club #7: Capital and Racial Violence by Denise Ferreira da Silva 6.30pm @ Toxteth Library, Liverpool – FREE
Liquid Club, a monthly discussion group which invites collective thinking and drives the development of Liverpool Biennial 2020, convenes this week to discuss the writings of philosopher and academic Denise Ferreira da Silva. Addressing the ethical questions of the global present, da Silva has spoken about capital, with particular regard to racial violence and the refugee crisis, topics that will act as departure points for this latest meet-up.
Women Over 50 Film Festival 6.10pm @ Home Manchester – £9.50/Concs
For 2019, Home Manchester has been running a year-long programme celebrating women in global cinema. Forming part of that programming, and challenging both sexism and ageism, the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) kicks off this week with a selection of shorts. The screenings will be preceded by an intro from festival director, Nuala O’Sullivan, who was inspired to start WOFFF after “going to short film festivals,” but finding “I wasn’t seeing many older women on the screen,” or around socially afterwards. Food for thought.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Frances Disley 6pm @ Output gallery, Liverpool – FREE
This week sees Output present their first commissioned work for the gallery, from Liverpool-based artist Frances Disley. A Biennial Associate Artist whose work has just entered the Arts Council Collection, for this new piece, Disley will be experimenting with “scent, sound, video, sculpture, texture and lighting.” Utilising the walls and floor, which will be adorned with fabrics and colour, the new work will be periodically activated by performer Pei Tong.
Friday – Christeene 10pm @ 24, Kitchen Street, Liverpool – £15
In an interview with the Guardian’s Tim Jonze from last year, “feral drag firebrand” and punk performer Christeene, declared “I’m giving y’all what you haven’t been getting.” She lands in Liverpool tonight bringing “raw unabashed sexuality” as she holds sway with “a gender-blending, booty-pounding, perversion of punk fully equipped with an arsenal of ferocious music.” Hang on to your hats, shit’s gonna get real.
Saturday – REAL WORK Curator Tour 11am @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
“REAL PEOPLE. REAL STORIES. REAL WORK.” runs the subtitle of Real Work, a new show that presents “uncensored stories about work that goes unrecognised”. Whether that’s freelance script writing or sex work, this latest FACT exhibition arrives at a time when the line separating work and life has been so obscured by technology and 24-hour access – via emails, notifications, etc. – as to become bleakly comic. Join a curator for the guided tour of new work from Liz Magic Laser and Candice Breitz.
Sunday – Sounds and Silence Cinema: Diary of a Lost Girl 7pm @ Phase One, Liverpool – £10
Hot on the heels of their collaboration on Pandora’s Box, director G. W. Pabst and star of the silent screen Louise Brooks teamed up again for 1929’s Diary of a Lost Girl. Both were made in the New Objectivity style of the post First World War Weimar years, and Diary… less acclaimed than Pandora’s Box, would be – said Roger Ebert – “the close of her glory days”. But, for all that, this film is worth seeing for Brooks’ portrayal of a woman facing betrayal with a kind of louche resilience far beyond period expectations. The screening is accompanied by an original live score, written and performed by Tony Judge.
Exhibition Closing: Van Gogh and Britain @ Tate Britain, London – £22/Concs
What’s left to be said about Vincent van Gogh, recently the subject of the “world’s first fully painted feature film,” who cut off his own ear, sold poorly in his lifetime and was pals with Paul Gaugin? Tate finds a new angle with Van Gogh and Britain, an exhibition which presents the largest collection of his paintings in the UK for nearly a decade and explores the artist’s love for Constable, Millais, Dickens and Eliot. Alongside some of his most famous works, the show examines how the likes of David Bomberg and Francis Bacon were inspired by Van Gogh, making a case for his influence on British modernism.
Mike Pinnington
Images, from top: Film Still, Dance With A Stranger (1985); Penny Slinger, An Exorcism (1970-77); Frances Disley; Candice Breitz, Sweat (2018). Photo by Rob Battersby.
