Culture Diary w/c 30-09-2019
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 – In Conversation: Sol Calero 6pm @ Tate Liverpool – £5
Drop into Tate Liverpool right now, and you’ll be confronted by a colourful installation whose centrepiece is a big bus. That you can enter and sit in. Investigate that far and you find yourself transported – to who knows where – via an audio tour commentary of entirely fictional origins inspired by popular visual clichés of Latin America. Join Venezuela-born artist Sol Calero this evening for a conversation about her commission, El Autobús (2019).
Tuesday – Cut and Paste: Peter Kennard Artist’s Talk 6pm @ National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh – FREE
Currently showing at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is exhibition, Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage – “the first survey exhibition of collage ever to take place anywhere in the world”. The show includes works from prominent Dada, Surrealist and post-war artists, including Kurt Schwitters, Joan Miró, Hannah Höch, Henri Matisse and Robert Rauschenberg. Tonight, catch British artist Peter Kennard (perhaps best known for his 1980 work, Haywain with Cruise Missiles) in discussion about his own collage practice.
Wednesday – In Conversation: Paul Morley with Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive) 6pm @ Salford Museum and Art Gallery – FREE
Artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White’s Open Music Archive – which seeks to ‘challenge default mechanisms for the authorship, ownership and distribution of art’ – in simple terms, was initiated to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings. For their latest exhibition Everything I Have Is Yours (currently on display at Salford Museum and Art Gallery), the duo has gathered together songs and performers from the dawn of Manchester’s pop music scene. Join them this evening for a chat with music journalist Paul Morley, who will no doubt be delving deep into the themes and content of the project. Read our review
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Lucy Archer and Talia Laing 6pm @ OUTPUT gallery, Liverpool – FREE
This exhibition, subtitled Slippy Temperament: An Investigation into the Physicality of Time, is ‘OUTPUT’s first ever artistic collaboration’. It sees artists Lucy Archer and Talia Laing stage their first exhibition as a duo. While Archer specialises in drawing and installation, Laing’s fortes include collage and tapestry, so their collaboration – “two worlds [in which their] visions are held together to present something new” – should make for an interesting one.
Grimmfest 2019 from 6.30pm @ ODEON Manchester Great Northern – £8.50–£90/Concs
With Jordan Peele injecting hard-hitting social commentary into his films, and Ari Aster’s Midsommar mining folk traditions to create something new, these are exciting times for horror. But, in a genre often maligned for its male skew, what of female directorial talent? This year’s Grimmfest, which runs until Sunday, has a specific focus on women-led storytelling, and tonight’s opening includes three female-helmed features. Audrey Cummings’ She Never Died, ‘splatter-satire’ Satanic Panic (pictured), from debut director Chelsea Stardust, and Abigail Blackmore’s comedy horror, Tales from the Lodge. A feast awaits for those on the hunt for jump scares and fresh perspectives. Related: Post Horror? Give Audiences More Credit
Friday – Exhibition Opening: FUN: an exhibition 6pm @ Lancaster Library – FREE
Eight contemporary artists – all women – come together for FUN: an exhibition at Lancaster’s Central Library tonight. With no more information (that we could find) to go on other than the names of the participants, we have no sense of theme or content, but the inclusion of the likes of Pippa Eason, Sumuyya Khader and Flora Hunt has our interest piqued. The exhibition continues until 12 October, while Saturday and Sunday see the library play host to Fun Palaces, ‘an annual weekend of community-led events’.
Saturday – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 2pm @ Storyhouse, Chester – from £18
This retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic arrives at a time in which (some) people can, apparently, behave as they wish with little or no reproach. That said, there remains something grotesquely timeless about the inexorable erosion of the good Dr Jekyll, in the face of his increasingly all-consuming Hyde. As the blurb goes: ‘Will he control his monstrous alter ego, or shall we truly find ourselves aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde?’ Find out from today.
Sunday – Exhibition Closing: REAL WORK @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
“REAL PEOPLE. REAL STORIES. REAL WORK.” runs the subtitle of this show that presents “uncensored stories about work that goes unrecognised”. Making art in response to the slog of the everyday is hardly a new idea, but this FACT exhibition comes at a time when the line separating work and life has been so obscured by technology and round-the-clock access (via emails, notifications, etc.) as to become bleakly comic. Liz Magic Laser’s In Real Life explores the experiences of freelancers, while Candice Breitz’s Sweat, is the result of the artist’s collaboration with sex workers. Read our review
Sunset Boulevard 5pm @ FACT – £8
The marvelous Gloria Swanson stars as a washed-up silent era film star in co-writer and director Billy Wilder’s tragic take on the cruelty of age and the capriciousness of fame. The winner of three Academy Awards, black comedy Sunset Boulevard has everything – Hollywood excesses and delusions, the coming apart of the old studio system and grim ironies aplenty.
Mike Pinnington
Images and media, from top: Sol Calero (Tate Shots); Everything I have Is Yours, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, courtesy Jules Lister; Satanic Panic (film still); Sunset Boulevard (film still)
