Culture Diary w/c 02-09-2019

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 – Scalarama/Venues Nationwide – Prices Vary

The annual, nationwide celebration of cinema is back, running until the end of this month in venues large, small and often non-traditional. Inspired by the energy and DIY spirit of the legendary Scala Cinema, founded in 2011, the festival runs on the dictum of “by everyone, for everyone, everywhere,” foregrounding the passion of exhibitors and audiences above all else. Accessible and fun, a month of film and huge variation awaits; including tonight’s Edinburgh premiere of Kazuhiro Soda’s Inland Sea (2018) at Cinetopia Edinburgh.

Tuesday – All About My Mother 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8/Mubi: The Art of Transgression

With Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, Pain and Glory, currently in cinemas, now is a great time to discover and/or reacquaint oneself with the Spanish auteur’s back catalogue. Tonight, FACT screens All About My Mother, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Meanwhile, streaming service Mubi has programmed a season of films in his honour. Running chronologically, kick things off with 1983’s Dark Habits (his third feature) and expect the likes of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a key entry in the Almodóvar canon.

All About My Mother (1999), Pedro Almodóvar (still)

Exhibition Opening: Sense Sound/Sound Sense @ the Whitechapel Gallery, London – FREE

Founded in the 1960s by George Maciunas, Fluxus began as an international network of artists and composers. Its purpose, said Maciunas, was to “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art” with collaborations between artists and the overlap of art forms to the fore. This new exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery explores Fluxus artists’ interest in music and sound, and includes work by John Cage, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Claes Oldenburg and Yoko Ono among others. Look out for next month’s contemporary performance, FLUXUS LIVE: Apartment House.

Open City Documentary Festival @ Venues Across London – Prices Vary

Open City Docs was founded in 2010 to develop and support non-fiction storytellers. This week sees the festival hit venues across central London for the next seven days, aiming “to challenge and expand the idea of documentary in all its forms”. As well as the screenings, expect masterclasses and bootcamps aplenty, with industry veterans on hand to provide expert advice and practical support for budding filmmakers.

Ursula Le Guin

Wednesday – The Liquid Club #8: The Fisherwoman’s Daughter by Ursula Le Guin 6.30pm @ Liverpool Biennial Office – FREE

The Liquid Club, a monthly discussion group which invites collective thinking to help drive the development of Liverpool Biennial 2020, reconvenes this week to discuss their latest reading, Ursula Le Guin’s The Fisherwoman’s Daughter (1988). Best known for her science fiction and fantasy novels, this set of non-fiction essays was written by Le Guin in response to the struggle of maintaining her career alongside motherhood. In it, Le Guin writes that “…there is a heroic aspect to the practice of art; it is lonely, risky, merciless work, and every artist needs some kind of moral support or sense of solidarity and validation.” Hear, hear!

Thursday – Exhibition Opening: No Particular Place to Go? 35 years of sculpture at Castlefield Gallery 6pm @ Castlefield Gallery, Manchester – FREE

This exhibition marks, not just 35 years of sculpture at Castlefield Gallery, but also the organisation’s 35th anniversary. Informed by its archives and exhibition history, artists selected for No Particular Place to Go? have all shown at Castlefield previously. Alongside titans of sculpture, such as Sir Anthony Caro and Henry Moore, the more contemporary end of the spectrum is represented by the likes of James Ackerley, Charles Hewlings and Hilary Jack. Outside of Caro and Moore, each of the fifteen artists will be represented by a sculpture from the time of their original exhibition together with a more recent work.

Footnotes on Equality, Artlink Hull

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Footnotes on Equality 6pm @ Artlink Hull – FREE

What does equality mean to you? Is it equality of access? Of opportunity? This new exhibition, created by researchers as part of the European Commission-funded project Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe (GRACE), responds to issues relating to community, policy and legislation. During their research, the fifteen-strong team collected objects and ephemera, including field notes, recordings, transcriptions, artworks and readymades, building a picture of their findings, and challenging notions of equality.

Saturday – Zine & Photobook Fair 11am @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

In her Present Tense essay Zine Scene Meets Art Scene, Eleanor Wiseman writes about how the humble zine is: “A legacy of the punk era… [which] has found many iterations in the past few decades.” From extremely DIY photocopied examples of the 1970s and 90s riot grrrls, to today’s renaissance, zine culture is here to stay. For evidence, look no further than this weekend’s Zine & Photobook Fair, featuring talks, workshops and stalls. Look out for ROOT-ed, Yan Wang Preston, Café Royal Books and more.

John Benton-Harris: Saint Patrick's People, Café Royal Books

Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Kiss My Genders @ the Hayward Gallery, London – £15.50/Concs

“Celebrating more than 30 international artists whose work explores and engages with gender identity,” Kiss My Genders includes more than one hundred works from the past 50 years to articulate and explore non-binary, trans and intersex identities. From Peter Hujar, Juliana Huxtable and Joan Jett Blakk to Zoe Leonard, and Zanele Muholi – to name but a few – catch this timely and critically acclaimed group exhibition while you can.

Mike Pinnington

Images from top: All About My Mother (1999), Pedro Almodóvar (still); Ursula Le Guin; Footnotes on Equality, Artlink Hull; John Benton-Harris: Saint Patrick’s People, Café Royal Books. Feature image: Kazuhiro Soda’s INLAND SEA  (2018) at Cinetopia Edinburgh, tonight, for Scalarama

Posted on 02/09/2019 by thedoublenegative