Culture Diary w/c 10-01-22
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 – For the Love of People… The Films of François Truffaut, 18.20 @ the BFI – £6.50
Kicking off a major new season at the BFI, For the Love of People celebrates the cinema of François Truffaut, a critic who graduated from the fabled ranks of Cahiers du Cinema to become a leading figure of the French New Wave. This 90 minute survey of the famed auteur sees season programmer Geoff Andrew look at the themes, influences and, of course, films of Truffaut. See his autobiographical debut, The 400 Blows (above), in cinemas now.
Further Reading: French New Wave: A Revolution in Design
Tuesday – Preview: Cow Q&A with Andrea Arnold, 18.40 @ Greenwich Picturehouse, London
Oscar winner Andrea Arnold returns this week with Cow. The filmmaker’s first documentary, with it, she has chosen to detail the life of (as the title suggests) dairy cows. Arnold’s observational eye – and camera – follows the animals on a farm, as they graze, give birth, and produce milk. Humans, meanwhile, are heard but rarely seen, putting the lives of the titular cows at the core of what has been called a ‘profoundly empathetic and unexpectedly moving contemplation of life and our relationship with animals’.
Wednesday – Continuing Exhibitions @ Bluecoat, FACT, Tate Liverpool, and the Walker Art Gallery – £Various
Liverpool is currently home to a quartet of markedly different exhibitions; they are, however, unified by being well worth a visit. At Bluecoat you’ll find a trio of artists making work whose departure point is one of Black, female identity. FACT’s group show, Future Ages Will Wonder, ponders ‘new ways of understanding who we are and where we belong’. At Tate Liverpool, painter Lucy McKenzie is given her first UK retrospective, which addresses historical techniques, alongside contemporary concerns, with feminism to the fore. Staying with painting, the Walker showcases one of Britain’s most important artists, Walter Sickert.
Further Reading: A Modern Total Artwork – The Case For Lucy McKenzie’s Nova Popularna; Sickert’s Paper
Thursday – Look Climate Lab 2022 @ the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Other than the odd day here and there, this has been the mildest winter (so far) that I can remember. This isn’t just anecdotal: temperature records were broken across the UK over the new year weekend. Climate change, is becoming harder and harder to deny. But ‘what are the images we think of when we think of climate change, and what is our social responsibility when it comes to shaping the narrative?’ This is a question posed by Open Eye Gallery, as they hand over their spaces, between now and March, to a variety of practitioners whose role it will be to visualise the issues at hand, across themes of: energy, materials, transport, nature, and food.
Friday – Parham Ghalamdar: A Fine Kettle of Fish @ Home Manchester – FREE
Last seen (by us at least) at Manchester’s Islington Mill as part of a residency responding to themes of idle time and musing on the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns, artist Parham Ghalamdar is now the subject of a solo show at Home. Subtitled A Fine Kettle of Fish, new works (including site-specific paintings) interrogate ‘the relationship between chaos and order, presence and absence, life and death, painting and digital’.
Saturday – Lonelady, 19.00 @ 24 Kitchen Street, Liverpool – £12
Lonelady (AKA Julie Campbell) first appeared on our radar with 2010’s Nerve Up (Warp), a winning convergence of post-punk guitars and electro. Additionally, hers is a sound nurtured and augmented by the psychogeography lent it by Campbell’s Manchester. 2015’s Hinterland built on early promise, and late last year saw the release of Former Things. Received with equal enthusiasm, it is evidence, too, of future promise.
Sunday – Jocelyn McGregor: Mantle @ Castlefield Gallery, Manchester – FREE
There is a terrible, uncanny grotesque vibe (in a good way!) to the work of Jocelyn McGregor (above). As the exhibition blurb states: “A monstrous and fragmented body comes back to haunt the viewer.” Drawing influence from folklore, surrealism, horror and supernatural fiction in sculpture, installation, and animation, with Mantle, the artist’s first major solo exhibition, expect an exploration and dismantling of the ways in which female identity is bound up with nature, the home, and the machine.
Exhibition Closing: Louise Bourgeois in Focus @ Tate Liverpool – FREE
Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was an undisputed giant of modern and contemporary art. Perhaps best known for Maman, her 30 ft high sculpture of a spider, there is much more to her practice than sheer scale. So, if you haven’t yet, catch this in focus display – including examples of her sculpture, installation, painting, and printmaking – while you can.
Further Reading: Louise Bourgeois: “Art is a guaranty of sanity”
Mike Pinnington
Images: The 400 Blows new restoration; Lucy McKenzie installation shot; Parham Ghalamdar; Jocelyn McGregor (still of stop-motion animation)
